The offshore islanders
Amy Otchet
Viking B gas platform.
Maintenance work on the platform.
Tea break.
‘It’s your first trip offshore, isn’t it?” The question needs no formal response. Only a newcomer to Conoco’s Viking B gas platform could get lost in a dreamy gaze to the horizon or take a hesitant step on the metal grates of the decks, mesmerized by the sight of the North Sea rolling thirty metres below.
For offshore initiates, the sea appears to be a non-entity. The waves just fade into the background framing daily life. The closest you come to actually feeling them is when the crane rumbles to unload cargo—the vibrations gently rocking the platform perched on giant metal legs 140 kilometres off the coast of Lincolnshire (UK). Outside of a power failure, you won’t even hear the waves roll above the hum, grind and whine of the equipment that keeps about six million standard cubic metres of gas surging daily through pipelines lining the seabed to shore.
“At first, you’re just fascinated by the sea,” says Vera Swan, one of the few female employees on the catering staff looking after the crew of seventy-odd men. “You get worked up over sunsets and stand quietly with the others. But after six years, I forget that I am out to sea.”
“I’m new out here,” says Steve Slinger. “So the sea is still a novelty for me. I thought the North Sea was grey but it can be a beautiful turquoise blue. I’m still in the phase of looking out and thinking ‘Wow!’ But that will probably pass,” he says. “The hard part is not being able to go for a long walk. You feel penned in by the water. But I didn’t come offshore to admire the waves. I came because the money is good. At forty-five, I’ve got no formal qualifications but a lot of work experience. Where I come from in Scotland, you are doing quite well by making £15,000 [$25,000] per year.” Salaries offshore range between £28,000 [$45,000] and £70,000 [$115,000] for senior managers.
Money-making clearly surpasses sea-faring as the main offshore attraction. However, it is the routine of platform life which seems to drown out any romantic notions of life at sea. “It’s just not the same as when you’re on a ship and you actually go somewhere,” says Hank Rawlins, who has worked offshore twenty-three of his fifty-five years. On the platform, everything is programmed. After two weeks of holiday at home, crew members arrive by helicopter for fourteen days of twelve-hour work shifts, essentially spent adjusting, testing and maintaining the machinery used to measure and compress the gas piped in from five remote-controlled fields nearby. The slightest adjustment requires consultation with a supervisor. “You can feel like a robot,” quips crew-member, Mick Draper, “until you realize just what you are sitting on. Remember how easy it is to light your gas heating system at home and consider that out here, the gas pressure is 1,500 times that.”
But once the shift is over, the biggest decision may be whether to have rice pudding at dinner or a work-out in the gym. For Viking life is surprisingly civilized. Stewardesses make the beds every morning, with fresh laundry folded at the door and meals waiting in the mess hall. Evenings are spent flipping through the daily tabloids (delivered by helicopter) or the television channels. While alcohol is strictly forbidden, smoking is permitted. And home no longer feels so far away with free telephone calls available.
Yet for all the creature comforts, the sea still sneaks up on the platform. The sea is so much a part of daily life that people stop seeing it. For example, you start preparing for a possible plunge into the frigid waves (2-60C) before even leaving the coast. Crew-members and visitors alike actually practise finding their way out of helicopters which have crashed and spun upside down in the murky, cold water of special pools. Once offshore, no one dares walk the deck without donning a bright red suit. If anyone does slip off, a surveillance team can spot and scoop them up with a “mother ship” and her “daughter” constantly patrolling the platform perimeter.
With so much attention paid to the lives the sea may take, it is easy to overlook what it gives. Fishing was a favourite pastime until the helicopter pilots began complaining about the smells of dinner-packages taken home. Birds literally drop in, exhausted by the North Sea’s dimensions. Suddenly another day spent adjusting machinery gives way to tenderness and curiosity, as crew-members flock to the lost creatures, feeding them, charting their arrival and even taking them ashore by helicopter.
More importantly, “you find confidence,” says June Cerey, who does Viking’s laundry during the night shift. After raising her sixteen-year-old son, she decided at the age of thirty-five to carve out a new life for herself offshore. After getting past the usual jitters of walking the grated decks and feeling a “wee bit scared” of the helicopter, the real challenge lay in walking through the mess hall during dinner. “I’d get so embarrassed at being the only woman. They’re not the ‘rough and ready’ guys I expected, but real family men. Still, it takes some confidence.”
“There is also a real sense of freedom,” says Bob Thorpe, one of Viking’s two supervisors. “Out here, you concentrate on your work without everyday worries like a broken washing machine. You get job satisfaction. Then you go ashore, and you focus on your home and family.”
Above all else, the sea imposes self-reliance. “If there is an emergency, you cannot call an ambulance or firemen,” says Thorpe. “We rely on ourselves. This is why you don’t find the stereotypical macho guy out here. Men like that tend to be risk-takers, thinking they’re ‘too big’ to follow safety procedures. They just don’t last long because the rest of the crew won’t accept them, especially since Piper Alpha.” This is the name of another North Sea platform which exploded ten years ago, killing 167 of the 226 crew-members. A lethal mix of major design flaws, poor safety planning and incompetent leadership set off the fire. The sea proved to be the final escape. The sole survivors were those who jumped overboard.
Besides the give and take, the sea also demands respect, which may have been long in coming. When the North Sea drilling industry first began in the 1970s, environmental concerns were non-existent. Today companies like Conoco can no longer ignore them. According to the rules, the only thing to be dumped off Viking is human waste. Chemicals, fuel, bits of broken tools are carefully collected for disposal onshore. Yet despite all the precautions, gas leaks, primarily into the atmosphere, continue, even though they are a far bigger problem on drilling platforms.
On a more personal level, it is the sheer force of the sea which captures the crew’s imagination and respect. “I have been offshore for about ten years,” says Paul Preston. “I can walk past the waves in the morning without really seeing them. But I am still taken by the sea. During a storm, you see the strength of it and imagine the violence it can do. That’s when I realize what a minuscule dot we are on. Maybe you need to forget that you are surrounded by the sea. Because if you began thinking about all that can go wrong, you could never work out here.”
