“Con, Sonar. Torpedo in the water! Range 1500 meters and… and increasing sir…It’s not headed our way, Captain.”
“Not headed our way?” Phillips took a fast look at his Plexi chart and knew immediately what was happening. “Mother of God,” he breathed. “Ready on tubes two and four,” he said sharply. “Arm torpedoes!”
“Sir, tubes two and four ready, and torpedoes armed, aye!”
Seconds later two Mk 48 torpedoes were also in the water, and homing their way toward the distant tiger in the sea. By the time the Akula heard them and thought to turn its head and bear fangs, the Mk 48s had the target in their crosshairs, their active electronically steered ‘pingers’ guiding them unerringly forward. A moment later they struck home with a ripple of underwater thunder, two 295kg warheads striking the Russian sub and virtually blowing the boat in half. But the Tigr had already finished what it came here to do that morning. It had fired a single 650mm torpedo with a massive 450kg warhead, though it would never fire another.
The John Warner’s sonar man had been correct. The big torpedo was running away at high speed now, not seeking the American boat, but finding instead a much bigger prize in the dark waters ahead. It was homing in on the massive underwater segment of the British Petroleum/Exxon Mobile super rig dubbed Thunder Horse, and it was about to take down one of the principle production facilities in the Gulf. Hurricane Victor, raging with winds near 200 miles per hour above, would do the rest.
Hours later, when the storm had passed and raged inland on the Texas coast, a helo swooped low over the restless waters of the Gulf, the pilot aghast at what he was seeing. It was a British Petroleum ride, out from Port Fourchon in the Mississippi Region on an emergency rig tour after Hurricane Victor cut a swath through the production zone at sea. Thus far 15 platforms had sustained damage that would be at least a week in repair, perhaps longer. This was the last planned stop for the day, to the crown jewel in the joint BP-Exxon operation in the region. They were going out to Thunder Horse, the world’s largest semi-submersible oil platform, so big you could put three football fields up on the topside area. It was fully submersible now.
“Look at that!” the pilot pointed at the badly listing platform. Thunder Horse was keeling over on her massive industrial orange flotation columns, and apparently still taking on water. Constructed in Korea and delivered to Corpus Christi, Texas in 2004, the rig had problems from the very first. Some grease monkey had set in a bad six- inch pipe, and water was misrouted between ballast tanks causing a major list in 2005. The big platform almost tipped completely over during that incident, and it took a week to pump out the water and get the ballast tanks balanced again. Six weeks later it weathered a blow from Hurricane Katrina, and the last few brushes from the big storms never seemed to bother the immense platform-until now. The 650mm torpedo was a little more than the design engineers had ever planned for.
“What could have caused this?” The engineer aboard knew they had not suffered a direct hit from Victor this time. Yet the damage was plain to see. “Can you get a bit lower, I want to check the other side.” The platform had finally sorted out its teething troubles and was brought on-line in June of 2008. She was expected to deliver all of a billion barrels of oil over her 25 year industrial life span, but this was a problem that could cause a drastic setback in that schedule. The 250,000 barrels she might have contributed to that total today were obviously not going to be delivered, let alone the daily expected quota of 200 million cubic feet of gas. She was obviously floundering, and in very deep water, sitting right astride block 778/822 in the Mississippi Canyon, the bottom over a mile away, some 6300 feet below. One of her massive cranes was already completely underwater.
“Damn, with Mad Dog damaged we can’t lose Thunder Horse,” said the engineer.
Mad Dog was dubbed one of the 50 projects to change the world by Goldman Sachs, sporting the world’s largest single piece truss spar, one of the biggest lifts ever set in the Gulf of Mexico, about 190 miles south of New Orleans in the Green Canyon plot. The big dog was permanently moored to the seabed, with a capacity to produce up to 100,000 barrels of oil and 60 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, much smaller than Thunder Horse, but significant. She was also damaged, but still intact.
“Shall I spread the word?” The pilot gave the engineer a sheepish look.
“Better tell the techs on Mad Dog to get over here first,” said the engineer. Crews were already working to restore the 24-inch lateral connecting Mad Dog to the Caesar oil pipeline. Her Natural gas was transported via a 16-inch lateral connected to the Cleopatra gas pipeline, both part of BPs Mardi Gras Transportation System in the Gulf.
“Lord,” the engineer was scratching his head, eyes wide as he surveyed the platform below them now. “We’ve got a fire down there too! With Caesar and Cleopatra off line, and big rigs like this in the water, we’re buggered for weeks, mate. Better blow the horn. This baby needs help fast. Damn thing’s about to go down under!”
“Right-o,” said the pilot, flipping his headset on to begin transmitting. “Mad Dog, Mad Dog, this is BP Survey, Over. “
A scratch voice answered in a few seconds. “Go ahead, Survey.”
“Thunder Horse down, mates. Repeat. Thunder Horse down. Survey engineer says we’ll need all your people out this way on the double, with anything you can float, over.”
Someone swore on the other end of the transmission. Then the voice came back, “Roger that, Survey. Thunder Horse down.”
