early bird, and the last names could count on a day of waiting room magazines and Fox News droning in the background. While they sat there, they could wonder if they’d be tapped on the shoulder, handed a test tube, and escorted to the restroom to provide a sample for random drug and alcohol screening.
Much had changed since the good old days when most rigs had rollicking onboard taverns where off-duty workers could unwind. Rig workers could thank the captain of the Exxon Valdez for the abrupt end to that custom. Captain Joseph Hazelwood admitted to having “two or three” vodka drinks the evening his oil tanker drove onto a reef in a pristine Alaskan bay in March 1989, spilling ten million gallons of crude. Hazelwood was asleep in his cabin at the time of the grounding, and he was cleared of the charge of intoxication at his trial, but ever since the incident, drug and alcohol testing is an industry standard among U.S.-crewed ships, and very few now board a ship or rig under the influence. Almost to a man, the Deepwater Horizon’s crew wouldn’t even dream of trying.Guys had such fear of the consequences that they often arrived for their hitch with foul morning mouth, having avoided toothpaste completely for fear of it reading as alcohol on their Breathalyzer test.
Some workers still found a way to smuggle something aboard for off-duty consumption, a caper planned and executed with the care and attention to detail of a prison break. More common were those who viewed rig time as enforced detox. When their hitch was over, if they wanted to, they could go on a weeklong bender. But they were damn sure to stop drinking soon enough to pass the test at the heliport.
Every trip to the rig via helicopter came with another test as well, a test of faith. If you asked rig workers to rank their greatest on-the-job fears, crane accidents, hurricanes, and even blowouts would no doubt rank behind the helicopter commute.
Every few years, a helicopter ferrying rig workers goes down, and in some years it happens more than once. The worst catastrophe came in 1986, when a Chinook helicopter carrying forty-seven passengers and crew from the shores of Scotland to a North Sea rig went down in a storm. Only two survived.
Even when the weather conditions are perfect, a small error in navigation can create large problems. In 2007, when Transocean’s Discoverer Deep Seas finished up one well and moved a few miles away to begin another, the communication chain broke down and the incoming helicopter flight headed for the wrong spot. It arrived on location well past its point of no return, the point in the flight plan when there is no longer enough fuel to make it back to shore, and could not find the rig until it was almost too late.
When a helicopter does arrive, the danger is far from over. Twoobjects, one heaving up and down, rolling port and starboard, and the other jumping with each unexpected gust of wind, do not greet each other easily. Even after the craft touches down, a gust of wind can blow the long, narrow fuselage across the deck into personnel, steel bulkheads, or over the side into the ocean—a real-life dunk tank. As a result, more often than not, helicopter pilots do not shut down while refueling, but maintain reverse thrust with the rotors to hold the craft in position. The personnel disembark hunched over in fear of the rotors turning above their heads, grab their heavy luggage, and shuffle across the slippery deck. Until they descend stairs into the enclosed helicopter waiting room, they are not completely safe. In 2003, a pilot lifted off the deck of a Transocean rig in India and tripped over a net laid down to prevent her skids from sliding off the deck. As the chopper tilted over its blades dug into steel and shattered, launching steel fragments in every direction with such force that some were found embedded in the steel legs of the derrick more than one hundred feet away.
Of course, thousands of rig transport
Much had changed since the good old days when most rigs had rollicking onboard taverns where off-duty workers could unwind. Rig workers could thank the captain of the Exxon Valdez for the abrupt end to that custom. Captain Joseph Hazelwood admitted to having “two or three” vodka drinks the evening his oil tanker drove onto a reef in a pristine Alaskan bay in March 1989, spilling ten million gallons of crude. Hazelwood was asleep in his cabin at the time of the grounding, and he was cleared of the charge of intoxication at his trial, but ever since the incident, drug and alcohol testing is an industry standard among U.S.-crewed ships, and very few now board a ship or rig under the influence. Almost to a man, the Deepwater Horizon’s crew wouldn’t even dream of trying.Guys had such fear of the consequences that they often arrived for their hitch with foul morning mouth, having avoided toothpaste completely for fear of it reading as alcohol on their Breathalyzer test.
Some workers still found a way to smuggle something aboard for off-duty consumption, a caper planned and executed with the care and attention to detail of a prison break. More common were those who viewed rig time as enforced detox. When their hitch was over, if they wanted to, they could go on a weeklong bender. But they were damn sure to stop drinking soon enough to pass the test at the heliport.
Every trip to the rig via helicopter came with another test as well, a test of faith. If you asked rig workers to rank their greatest on-the-job fears, crane accidents, hurricanes, and even blowouts would no doubt rank behind the helicopter commute.
Every few years, a helicopter ferrying rig workers goes down, and in some years it happens more than once. The worst catastrophe came in 1986, when a Chinook helicopter carrying forty-seven passengers and crew from the shores of Scotland to a North Sea rig went down in a storm. Only two survived.
Even when the weather conditions are perfect, a small error in navigation can create large problems. In 2007, when Transocean’s Discoverer Deep Seas finished up one well and moved a few miles away to begin another, the communication chain broke down and the incoming helicopter flight headed for the wrong spot. It arrived on location well past its point of no return, the point in the flight plan when there is no longer enough fuel to make it back to shore, and could not find the rig until it was almost too late.
When a helicopter does arrive, the danger is far from over. Twoobjects, one heaving up and down, rolling port and starboard, and the other jumping with each unexpected gust of wind, do not greet each other easily. Even after the craft touches down, a gust of wind can blow the long, narrow fuselage across the deck into personnel, steel bulkheads, or over the side into the ocean—a real-life dunk tank. As a result, more often than not, helicopter pilots do not shut down while refueling, but maintain reverse thrust with the rotors to hold the craft in position. The personnel disembark hunched over in fear of the rotors turning above their heads, grab their heavy luggage, and shuffle across the slippery deck. Until they descend stairs into the enclosed helicopter waiting room, they are not completely safe. In 2003, a pilot lifted off the deck of a Transocean rig in India and tripped over a net laid down to prevent her skids from sliding off the deck. As the chopper tilted over its blades dug into steel and shattered, launching steel fragments in every direction with such force that some were found embedded in the steel legs of the derrick more than one hundred feet away.
Of course, thousands of rig transport
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