Dive Diva's Posts - cDiver.net
2024-03-28T10:56:31Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1542703425?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1
http://community.cdiver.net/profiles/blog/feed?user=28kr1g3w1lemp&xn_auth=no
How Offshore Oil Leases Work
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-11-10:2371245:BlogPost:89749
2010-11-10T18:55:26.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>The following is an April 2010 interview with Professor John Lowe, explaining how, where and how much of the profits from GOM oil leases are generated and distributed. Yet diver wages continue to decrease.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Professor JOHN LOWE (Southern Methodist University): Thank you very much.</p>
<p>SIEGEL: And tell me first, if a company bids on a lease to drill offshore and gets the lease, to whom does he pay his rent?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Prof. LOWE: Well, it depends where that lease is…</p>
<p>The following is an April 2010 interview with Professor John Lowe, explaining how, where and how much of the profits from GOM oil leases are generated and distributed. Yet diver wages continue to decrease.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Professor JOHN LOWE (Southern Methodist University): Thank you very much.</p>
<p>SIEGEL: And tell me first, if a company bids on a lease to drill offshore and gets the lease, to whom does he pay his rent?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Prof. LOWE: Well, it depends where that lease is located. We have a fairly complicated structure of federal statutes that basically gives most of the states the right to income from leases within three nautical miles of the edge of their land and then gives them a share of the lease revenues that go to the federal government.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Twenty-seven and a half percent of the revenues that go to the federal government come back to the states for leases that are within another three nautical miles from the edge of the three-nautical mile limit from the shoreline. And then the Gulf Coast states, after Rita and Katrina, cut a special deal and they get 50 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf royalties.</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>SIEGEL: So this is a rich and varied answer to this question as to how much the states get.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Prof. LOWE: That's correct. It depends where the leases are located and which states are involved, and it's a lot of money. In fiscal year 2006, there were nearly $8 billion of bonuses and royalties generated to the federal government.</p>
<p></p>
<p>SIEGEL: But, Professor Lowe, you're talking about some distances of three nautical miles and another three nautical miles and then some more miles. Yesterday's announcement involved drilling 50 miles or more off the Virginia coast and 125 miles or more off the Florida coast.</p>
<p></p>
<p>First of all, say, 125 miles off the Florida coast, is that actually U.S. sovereign water out there 125 miles offshore?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Prof. LOWE: It's what we call the Exclusive Economic Zone, out to 200 miles. The president's announcement was structured to try to minimize conflict with state jurisdiction.</p>
<p></p>
<p>SIEGEL: And out there, does the state still have a claim to revenue from the leases that are struck so distant from the shore?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Prof. LOWE: At the moment, no, if we are talking about leases off of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. But I think we can anticipate that the Congress people and the senators are going to line up and claim the same sorts of revenue sharing that has been given since 2006 to Alabama, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.</p>
<p></p>
<p>SIEGEL: So the principle here is the revenue goes first to the federal government and then whatever the states can get out of the federal government, through Congress, they can get.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Prof. LOWE: I think that's a fair assessment. And the greater number of states off which oil and gas development is taking place, the larger is the potential group of Congress people and senators who are going to line up to support that kind of legislation.</p>
<p></p>
<p>SIEGEL: Once the <span class="goog_qs-tidbit-0">government determines what area will be put up for bid, how large do you imagine a typical lease would be for? How much seabed?</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="goog_qs-tidbit-0">Prof. LOWE: Well, typically offshore leases are 5,760 acres.</span> It's done on a block basis and they last - they have a primary term, meaning a period during which the industry can think about drilling and prepare to drill of five to 10 years.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This is a long and complicated process. We are not likely to see any additional drilling activity taking place, certainly not for a year and probably for two or three years.</p>
<p></p>
<p>SIEGEL: That's John Lowe, law professor at Southern Methodist University. He has written, among other books, "Oil and Gas Law in a Nutshell."</p>
Work Organization and Labor Law
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-10-05:2371245:BlogPost:86441
2010-10-05T18:31:48.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<font face="Times New Roman"><br></br>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><strong>The following is a excerpt from a large government document on the Lousiana Offshore Oil Industry. Enjoy.</strong></font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">As the processes and techniques associated with underwater construction evolved, a very</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">specialized labor force was required. Though some jobs, such as…</font></p>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br/>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><strong>The following is a excerpt from a large government document on the Lousiana Offshore Oil Industry. Enjoy.</strong></font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">As the processes and techniques associated with underwater construction evolved, a very</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">specialized labor force was required. Though some jobs, such as pipeline installation and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">platform removal, had fairly standard procedures, no two jobs were ever the same. Accidents,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">hurricanes, and general wear and tear presented unfamiliar circumstances for even experienced</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">divers. Pride and the fear that one diver would outdo another and win over a customer kept</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">divers attempting new feats:</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">When [the barge] capsized, they had about a 130 foot derrick standing. It</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">capsized and the derrick bent out to the middle of the river. They couldn’t do</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">anything. They couldn’t move it because the derrick had the barge anchored. It</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">was upside down and you had this derrick bent out towards the middle of the</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">river. I went down and burnt and cut it loose to where it dropped. That was kind</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">of scary and I don’t know if I would do that today. The other divers flat out</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">refused to do it. I said that I would do it (Daspit, personal communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Maryann Galletti, wife of John Galletti and co-owner of J&J Diving, describes how the company</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">evolved:</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">We started working out of a garage with two sets of diving equipment and no</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">vehicle. We gradually acquired equipment, property, a building. Within a span of</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">ten years, we had also bought a tractor trailer truck. John informed me he was</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">going to buy this tractor trailer truck for $12,000 and I liked to have a heart attack.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">He had the sights to see the work that was out there and all I could see was more</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">money, more money. It was like you would pay for one thing before you moved</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">onto another (Galletti, personal communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The era of the small companies was short lived. The rapid advance to deeper waters required</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">specialized equipment and knowledge to enable divers to work safely at ever-increasing depths.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Thus, during the 1950’s and early 1960’s the diving companies went through the process of</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">getting organized (Batteau 2001). A steady increase in offshore activity during the 1960’s drove</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">up demand for divers and meant that existing companies expanded and new ones formed. “The</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">explosive growth of offshore oil exploration and development brought round-the-clock overtime</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">and deep diving premiums. There was a lot of money being made by the younger divers, though</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">it was often at great risk” (Parker 1997, page 115). Divers were put into the water with little, if</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">any, training, and the greater depths substantially increased the risks associated with</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">inexperience.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">In addition, divers were under tremendous pressure to perform. The hierarchical nature of the</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">industry and separation of those with the ultimate authority over decisions from those on the</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">barges, rigs, platforms, and vessels led to circumstances within which divers were pushed to dive</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">even when conditions would dictate otherwise. Both when divers were called out in an</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">emergency and when they performed routine tasks such as laying pipelines, the work of people at</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">the surface was halted until the diver was out of the water. Entire crews were held captive on</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">barges and platforms while divers completed their work. Though the situation gave divers a</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">certain amount of autonomy, it also resulted in significant peer pressure to get the job done</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">quickly. Walt Daspit captures the sentiments expressed by most of the early divers:</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">[The barge captain] can’t say [to a diving company] you have to put this man in</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">the water. But, the next time they call for divers, he can say that he doesn’t want</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">whoever out here. So, you have to keep the barge captain happy. The main thing</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">in keeping the barge captain happy is getting the job accomplished….The barge</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">was surging. It was going up and down. The water was picking up. They wanted</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">me to go down and cut the pulling head loose. When I went down, the barge</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">surged down and I had my hand on the top of the handrail. A huge block, about 7</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">or 8 feet tall, came down and side-swiped my hand. My hand just went numb. I</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">unshackled the block and I was going back up to the surface….When I got to the</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">surface, I pulled the glove off and my finger was just hanging by a string (Daspuit,</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">personal communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">would-be divers were not hard to find. Andre Galerne, a company owner and early member of</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">the Association for Diving Contractors, commented on the problems associated with low diver</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">pay and benefits in the Gulf of Mexico:</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The price we were paying the divers was in my book much too low, and if a guy</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">can make the same amount of money by selling hamburgers to Big Mac, than to</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">be a diver, I think it’s exploiting the fact that the guy likes diving. [If we</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">advertised this as something other than diving], then the people will not be doing</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">that for the pleasure, so they will demand money. Diving is a different thing. The</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">guy is ready to dive at any price, because they want to dive (Galerne, personal</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">communication, 2001).</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Joe Schouest (personal communication, 2002) confirmed this, “I love diving. I’d dive for</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">nothing. Sometimes I’ve done it. I like the challenge.”</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Though divers and welders were easy to find, engineers were not. Several companies struggled</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">to find people to enter the industry. According to Anthony Gaudiano,</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Of course, you have to understand in those days, nobody wanted to be associated</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">with us. We were kind of wild outlaws and anybody who had any smarts would</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">look at this little two by four organization and say, ‘I can go to work for General</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Motors. Why should I be associated with this little bitty place?’ There were a few</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">who saw the potential but not very many. We didn't get the experts until quite a</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">number of years later when the revenue and the reputation were worldwide</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">(Gaudiano, personal communication, 1996).</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Due to the high costs of specialized equipment such as decompression chambers and a pool of</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">divers who would work under almost any conditions, the organizational culture of diving was at</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">first slow to change.</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Many companies continued to operate at the margins of safety, but injuries, deaths, and</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">expanding liability caught the attention of the oil companies. In the early 1960’s, Joe and Tom</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Sanford came to Louisiana as outsiders and were able to establish a clientele and obtain work</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">because at that time they were one of the only diving companies working in the oilfield with</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">insurance. Soon the largest companies were requiring proof of insurance, and by the mid-1970’s</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">the substantial extension of depth limits proved to be too expensive to be undertaken by</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">individual companies and required a joint industry financial program (Jones 1977, page 70).</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Rapidly rising insurance costs and fear of government intervention and of unionization among</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">the divers led companies to organize the Association for Diving Contractors to develop industry</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">standards and address safety concerns.</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The move from land to water affected the organization, or lack thereof, of the labor force. Divers</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">were engaged in underwater survey work beginning in 1929, about the same time that the first</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">efforts to organize divers began on the east coast (Parker 1997). Near shore, divers worked</font></font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">alongside unionized construction crews but remained independent until pile drivers unions</font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">successfully claimed submarine divers among their numbers. The unions are credited with</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">establishing better working conditions for divers on the west and east coasts. However, the move</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">offshore undermined union activity and influence over the offshore oil industry because oil</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">companies and drilling contractors operating drilling vessels were not signatory to pile driving</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">and diving union agreements. “Other than establishing the fledgling oil divers with standards of</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">safe work rules and pay scales precedent, the union had little influence over the offshore oil</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">diving industry” (Parker 1997, page 115). Despite significant efforts in the 1970’s, the unions</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">were never able to organize the labor force working in the Gulf of Mexico.</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The push into deeper water drove technological development, and the larger companies</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">responded by establishing research divisions. J&J Marine Services, one of the few early Texas</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">companies that also worked out of south Louisiana, was among the few small companies that</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">invested substantially in research. The company owners hired an independent scientist in the</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">early 1960’s to help develop decompression tables. At that time, the company employed only a</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">few divers, but the owners recognized the critical role that science and technology would play in</font></font></font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">the diving industry</font><font size="2" face="Times New Roman"><font size="2" face="Times New Roman">.</font></font></font></font></font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
Diving as a Factor in Offshore Oil and Gas Development (Part 4)
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-10-05:2371245:BlogPost:86440
2010-10-05T18:24:32.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<font face="Times New Roman"><br></br>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The diving bell provides physical protection for the diver and a more comfortable environment</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">within which to undergo decompression. However, though it enables the diver to descend to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">deeper depths and facilitates the return to the surface, it does not significantly alter the time on…</font></p>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br/>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The diving bell provides physical protection for the diver and a more comfortable environment</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">within which to undergo decompression. However, though it enables the diver to descend to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">deeper depths and facilitates the return to the surface, it does not significantly alter the time on</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">the bottom. The major breakthrough in that area came in 1957 when the director of the Navy’s</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Submarine Medical Center demonstrated that the body’s tissues would become completely</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">saturated with inert gas within 24 hours so that the period required for decompression for any</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">dive of that duration or longer would be the same (Zinkowski 1976). In the 1960’s when the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">concept was applied widely, the limits of both depth and time expanded exponentially. Military,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">scientific, and commercial interests converged in a period of rapid research and development of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">equipment, gas mixtures, and forms of work organization. According to the general</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">superintendent of one of the industry leaders at the time, “No industry today can boast of more</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">rapid technological development than commercial diving” (Morrissey 1966, page 88).</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Saturation diving systems are themselves complex environments, and their development required</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">parallel development of analyzers to read partial pressure of oxygen (systems were developed to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">include both galvanic and polarographic types of analyzers); controllers to maintain oxygen</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">levels; and analyzers for carbon dioxide (infrared); carbon monoxide (infrared); helium (thermal</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">conductivity); nitrogen (computation of difference); and relative humidity (electric hygrometric)</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">(UST 1968, page 41). Within the diving bell, scrubbers kept the moist atmosphere ventilated;</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">rack operators monitored readouts to safeguard against carbon dioxide and oxygen poisoning;</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and emergency gas bottles were installed to offer a few minutes of air in an emergency (Seib</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">1976).</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">These technological achievements introduced a host of changes in work organization and the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">social environment within which diving took place. The expense of constructing, operating, and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">maintaining saturation systems increased the capital needed to remain at the forefront of the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">industry. Small companies were either absorbed by larger ones or had to restrict their work to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">shallow environments. They had a hard time attracting divers when the innovation and recordsetting</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">was occurring elsewhere.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Companies gained greater control over the divers and their pay. Prior to saturation diving, with</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">decompression time tied to depth and time spent under pressure, deep work was done via bounce</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">dives wherein divers stayed on the bottom only a short period of time. Pay was tied to depth, so</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">divers could make huge sums of money in relatively little time. Both physiological and financial</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">factors limited the depths to which divers could go and the time they would remain there.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Saturation diving removed many of the constraints and set up new dynamics between divers and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">their employers. “With saturation diving and almost unlimited working time at depth, diving</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">performance is now being judged on how long a period of time divers are in the water – that is,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">20 hours a day in the water is somehow ‘better’ than 16 hours a day, even when less actual work</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">has been performed…(O)perators of lockout submersibles welcome a more accurate, qualitative</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">evaluation of work performed, and they are motivated to provide the performance that this</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">approach demands” (Duggar and Majendie 1979, pages 92 and 94).</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Saturation diving also changed the nature of the relationships among divers and between divers</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">and their supervisors. Instead of one diver working alone, as many as six divers and a tender</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">would work from a diving bell. Communication was managed via unscramblers on the radio and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">took place between the divers and the topside supervisor and not with tenders in the bell. Tenders</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">were excluded from decisions about the work to discourage them from taking charge of the</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">operations; if the tender entered the water to aid the diver no one would be tending and two could</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">be lost (Seib 1976).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Despite, and perhaps because of, the continued experimentation and ongoing danger of the early</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">years, divers continued to dive. Long hours in a diving bell could be excruciatingly dull, so</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">divers sought distraction. Some divers became avid readers while others worked longer than their</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">allotted time to avoid getting back into the deck chamber.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The continued advance of exploration and drilling toward deeper waters provided the stimulus</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">for invention, innovation, and dissemination in commercial diving. These technological advances</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">that made it possible for humans to work at great depths below the water’s surface also made</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">way for new technologies associated with the construction, maintenance, and operation of oil and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">gas platforms and pipelines. In the following section, a brief overview of the history and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">development of underwater welding illustrates the links.</font></font></p>
<p></p>
Diving as a Factor in Offshore Oil and Gas Development (Part 3)
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-10-05:2371245:BlogPost:86439
2010-10-05T18:20:49.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<font face="Times New Roman"><br></br>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">To meet the goal of increased bottom time and more rapid ascent, both mechanical and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">biochemical problems had to be overcome. Under pressure, the density of air increases and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">impairs breathing by reducing the mechanical efficiency of the lungs. Divers’ bodies absorb…</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br/>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">To meet the goal of increased bottom time and more rapid ascent, both mechanical and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">biochemical problems had to be overcome. Under pressure, the density of air increases and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">impairs breathing by reducing the mechanical efficiency of the lungs. Divers’ bodies absorb</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">more air under pressure than at the surface. Atmospheric pressure doubles with each 33 feet of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">depth, and with each doubling the volume of gas is reduced by half. The longer the diver is</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">down, the more compressed air circulates through his system. When the pressure decreases upon</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">ascent, the gas expands. The diver must rise in stages to allow the blood to circulate and air</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">escape slowly in a process known as decompression. Rapid decompression leads to the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">dangerous condition known as the “bends.” Decompression tables established safe rates of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">ascent. Then, decompression chambers allowed divers to be brought up quickly, repressurized,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and decompressed slowly while at the surface. Other divers could continue the job during the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">process. Consequently, the ability to function in confined quarters became an important</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">requirement for divers.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The fundamental physiological concern was to provide divers’ bodies with levels of oxygen that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">would sustain life while reducing gases whose volume underwent significant changes with</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">changes in air pressure. By altering the gas mixtures divers breathed, both depth and bottom time</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">could be increased, so various gas mixtures were tried. Oxygen is toxic at high levels and results</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">in convulsions and death; as the pressure of the gas goes up the percentage of oxygen must</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">decrease. Divers with high oxygen tolerance have a distinct advantage. Carbon dioxide is also</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">toxic, and materials to absorb the excess gas were inserted in helmets. Nitrogen has a narcotic</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">effect at depths beyond 100 feet, so a replacement carrier for oxygen was sought. Helium</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">tempers the taste buds, causes dehydration of the sinus cavities, and, because its thermal</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">conductivity is greater than that of air, carries heat away from the diver’s body. It also comes out</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">of the system more slowly than nitrogen and affects the vocal cords resulting in the “Donald</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Duck effect.” Nevertheless, the problems associated with helium proved to be the most amenable</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">to solutions, and helium-oxygen mixtures that had been developed by the Navy decades earlier</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">were widely used in oilfield diving by the late 1960’s. The high cost of helium led to efforts in</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">the 1970’s to develop rebreathers that would recycle the gas and to efforts to replace helium with</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">nitrogen.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Divers worked in confined spaces at high pressure, lived for up to several weeks at a time in</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">close quarters, and took risks relying only on the word of supervisors and company doctors that</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">new methods were safe. Every new invention required additional human capacities and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">experimentation on divers, and many innovations were motivated by injuries and deaths. Still, as</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">each new innovation came along, divers could be found to try it out. Macho pride, the desire to</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">be the first, prospects for higher pay, and a love of diving all played a role:</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">I like the gas work. I quit doing anything above 150 feet of water. Greed</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">overcame my fear. You could go down and work an hour or two and you would</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">get paid more than you spent working a week in some waters (Daspit, personal</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">[Being in diving] a long time starts to define who you are almost (Taylor, G.,</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">personal communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Problems with heat were addressed through the use of suits that were heated either by surfacesupplied</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">hot water or electric wire. Hot water suits were preferred even though they initially</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">scalded the divers; divers reported that they would leave the front of their suits open to allow</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">cold water to mix with the heated water coming from the surface.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The introduction of new gas mixtures meant new mechanisms for generating and then delivering</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">those gases to the divers; standard air compressors were no longer adequate and gas mixtures had</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">to be purchased from elsewhere. Significant invention and innovation accompanied the</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">development of diving masks and helmets. One of the first Navy artifacts to be modified for</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">oilfield work was the Mark V helmet, which had been developed prior to WWI and remained in</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">use until the 1980’s. The helmet and full diving suit with which it was used weighed as much as</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">200 pounds. Working in the Gulf of Mexico around rigs and platforms, divers needed flexibility</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">and the ability to climb up and down, in and out among platform legs and tangled pipes. In</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">addition, divers were frequently given a small area on the barge from which to work; in this</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">space they had to cram their air compressor, tanks, radio, and everything else they brought along.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Masks that were originally designed for SCUBA were adapted for use with hoses and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">compressors because they were smaller and used less air; however, the lack of any head</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">protection was a disadvantage in construction work. Beginning with the end of WWII, Gulf</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Coast divers acquired access to Japanese helmets, and these became popular among some divers.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">By the 1960’s, several Gulf coast divers had designed and built their own hats. Walt Daspit, who</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">was motivated by Joe Savoie to design and construct his own hat, describes why:</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">The first guy that came out with a lightweight diving helmet was Joe Savoie. We</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">were working on one of McDermott’s barges with Chuck Gage and we saw Joe.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Joe was explaining to us what he was going to build. He was going to use an</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">aqualung, which was a sterile diving dress that was used at the time. It was a</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">front entry and you would wrap up tight and you would stay dry. Joe was going</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">to put a neck ring on it… He wanted to build a helmet out of a race car crash</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">helmet. Then he was going to the faceplate visor and a neck ring and tie it. He</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">was explaining that to us and drawing it. I said, “Joe, you can’t do that because</font></font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
Diving as a Factor in Offshore Oil and Gas Development (Part 2)
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-10-05:2371245:BlogPost:86438
2010-10-05T18:12:24.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<font face="Times New Roman"><br></br>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Outside the industry, the U.S. Navy was the principal source of technology and personnel. As</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">early as the 1930’s, the Navy began experimenting with gas mixtures that would allow divers to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">go deeper and stay underwater longer. Diving was an important responsibility of the Navy in…</font></p>
<font face="Times New Roman"><br/>
</font><p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Outside the industry, the U.S. Navy was the principal source of technology and personnel. As</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">early as the 1930’s, the Navy began experimenting with gas mixtures that would allow divers to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">go deeper and stay underwater longer. Diving was an important responsibility of the Navy in</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">WWII, and divers conducted salvage operations, helped construct ships, cleared ship channels,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and performed numerous other tasks. During the war, new techniques of underwater welding,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">burning, and the use of explosives were advanced, and new tools and equipment were developed</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">for undersea construction and other work. Though Navy divers started several Gulf Coast diving</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">companies during the 1950’s, the attitudes, tasks, technologies, and forms of work organization</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">in the oilfield were markedly different from those of the Navy. The transition was difficult for</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">some divers. The following two career divers describe the same situation from two different</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">points of view:</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">After the war was over… life got boring. For some reason or other I decided it</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">would become more interesting if I would become a Navy diver. … I graduated</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">from the Navy Deep Sea Diving School…in 1946. I went on from there and was a</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Navy Deep Sea Diver up until the time I retired from the Navy … in 1960…</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Then, immediately, if I had never tasted boredom before, I got a hell of a taste of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">it after retiring. I was not finding myself being very well adapted to most civilian</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">occupations so I quickly found myself down at the Gulf Coast - New Orleans -</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and became a commercial, professional diver in the offshore oil fields… Most</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">divers on the Gulf Coast were not highly trained or highly experienced, either</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">one. They were just people who knew how to put on the diving gear and make an</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">effort. Yet, the Navy training had value because I knew a lot about decompression</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and treating the bends that others did not know. On the other hand… even though</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">I was highly experienced, 15 years in the Navy, I began immediately a heavy-duty</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">learning curve figuring out how to do things in lightweight gear. The thing that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">sticks in my mind as heavy duty is how hairy it was. As compared to Navy diving</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">where you always have a chamber setting topside, here you are doing it with</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">nothing. You got your tender, you got a little old compressor, your face mask,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">your wet suit, your gear, and you are pretty much on your own. If you have a</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">diving accident then it is shame on you, especially if it requires decompression</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">because no chambers. Even if there were, nobody who knows how in the hell to</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">use it….Once I saw that I could do it, it was a horrendously nightmarish thing</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">psychologically. … But it was the hardest part, just getting used to the danger. It</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">was such a relief when I finally got to the west coast where decompression tables</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and chambers were the norm (Taylor, G., personal communication, 2002).</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">I used to do a lot of experimental diving for the Navy, checking out different</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">equipment, showing them how it can work. The Navy divers wouldn’t do some</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">things, so we’d do it. …The Navy master divers would come out and see what we</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">were doing, shake their heads, and say, “No way we’d do this in the Navy.”</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">That’s what you had to do to get the job done. There were some innovations, like</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">the frying pan shaped O ring to use in the flange groove and help keep divers</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">from losing fingers. We got new wrenches. I was concerned about safety, but in</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">commercial diving if you are going to think about safety you are not going to get</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">anything done. Offshore, everything around you is dangerous; you’ve got to take</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">your chances there (Schouest, J., personal communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">When the U.S. Merchant Marine began to decline (Gibson and Donovan 2000), some mariners</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">turned to the offshore oil and gas industry for work. The wages paid to offshore mariners were</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">far below those to which seamen had become accustomed, so some took up commercial diving</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">because it required many of the skills they had developed on ships and offered more lucrative</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">financial opportunities than work on oilfield vessels. Though some of the early divers enrolled in</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">commercial diving schools, formal training was not considered a necessity and some even argued</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">they could better prepare divers themselves. Walt Daspit, a career diver, describes his path</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">through the Merchant Marine:</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">I graduated from high school in ’45 and I joined the merchant marine when I was</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">17. In 1946, there was a general seaman’s strike. All seamen went out on</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">strike… When the seaman’s strike was over after about three or four months, I</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">went back to sea again. Somewhere around 1950, I was about to get drafted</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">during the Korean War so I joined the Air Force. Right before getting discharged</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">I came across a magazine that had schools for higher occupations and one was</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Spalding School of Deep Sea Diving. It showed a picture of a diver wearing</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">heavy gear and it said that divers make as much as $200 a day. I said, “Well, that</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">is for me.” After I got out of the service about ’52, I went back to sea and got</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">enough money to go to diving school. I began diving school in the fall of ’53 and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">got out in January of ’54 (Daspit, personal communication, 2002).</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Communication problems between divers and those on the surface were significant. In most</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">early underwater jobs, especially those performed under conditions of no or low visibility, a</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">single diver worked alone. Many early divers argue that more than one diver would have</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">increased the danger because divers would then have had to worry about one another. Divers</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">communicated with the surface via hand signals on a rope, and they and their tenders worked out</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">complicated systems known only to themselves. Communication was necessary when a diver</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">required tools, wanted the people on the barge to raise or lower cables and equipment, and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">needed to inform the tender that he was trapped or could not breathe. Loss of communication</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">required aborting the dive.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Though radios were customary within the Navy by WWII, they were large and bulky, and</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">commercial divers did not commonly use them. Diving helmets were equipped with telephones,</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">but hearing was often disrupted by the noise of breathing gas entering and exiting the helmet.</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Fixing communication devices to masks proved a significant challenge. Divers experimented</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">with earphones, transceivers, and devices they could purchase at electronics stores, but they did</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">not forego the use of ropes and hand signals. William Brown began diving for his uncle in</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">California at age 16 during WWII when older divers were scarce:</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">We had what they called sound powered phones at that time [1945]. You didn’t</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">have any magnification or anything. It had two sticks and you wore a skull cap</font></font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">and you put these things on each ear and you would tape it up. It was very</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">uncomfortable. [The diver] had a bull horn on his chest that you could talk into</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">.</font></font></p>
Diving as a Factor in Offshore Oil and Gas Development (Part1)
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-10-05:2371245:BlogPost:86437
2010-10-05T18:05:52.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<b><font face="Times New Roman"><br></br>
</font></b><p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">The following is an excerpt from a government document on the Louisiana Offshore Olifields. It gives a historical insight of the evolution of GOM oilfield divers and the ADCI. Enjoy.</font></b></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The first diving operations in the Gulf of Mexico were little more than topside jobs completed…</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<b><font face="Times New Roman"><br/>
</font></b><p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">The following is an excerpt from a government document on the Louisiana Offshore Olifields. It gives a historical insight of the evolution of GOM oilfield divers and the ADCI. Enjoy.</font></b></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The first diving operations in the Gulf of Mexico were little more than topside jobs completed</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">underwater. Men recall jumping off of boats, barges, and platforms to retrieve dropped objects,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">install clamps, or check for oyster beds. They did not have, nor perceive a need for, any formal</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">training as divers.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">However, the progress into deeper water was rapid, and keeping the rigs, platforms, pipelines,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and vessels operating called for modification and innovation. Underwater jobs required longer</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">than the time a man could hold his breath and expanded to include inspection, installation of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">anodes for protection against corrosion, and salvage. Those already working in the industry</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">began to look outward for new technologies developed elsewhere, and those with the interest and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">training in underwater work saw the industry as a new opportunity.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Working from within the industry, local workers used the air compressors available on boats and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">acquired war surplus equipment to create systems that would allow them to breathe while</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">underwater. The early jobs were in depths under 100 feet, and divers could stay down as long as</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">they wanted without suffering ill effects, so there were ample opportunities for them to learn how</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">to manipulate tools and perform tasks underwater. Through magazines and trade publications</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">individuals acquired information and ideas. Each diver had to come to the job with his own</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">mask, hose, and compressor, and anyone who acquired the equipment was likely to form his own</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">company. Technological diffusion was rapid, facilitated by the loose organization of diving</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">companies and their propensity to join together when more than one or two divers were needed</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">on a job.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) was developed in 1947 but was not</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">readily adapted for offshore work. Specialized tanks and compressors were not available in New</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Orleans until the mid-1950’s, and even then they were rare. Roy Smith, a diver who introduced</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">SCUBA gear to the offshore industry in the Gulf described the early days:</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">In the early ‘50’s, around ’53 or ’54, work was slow, so my friend and I said,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">“Why don’t we go to Grand Isle?”… I was in the U.S. Coast Guard during the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">war, so I went and got my operator’s license and started working on boats. After</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">awhile, the platforms grew in number, and I got more interested in diving. I</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">wanted to dive. There was no SCUBA diving at that time. Since I was the captain</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">of a boat, I got me a gas mask and a hose and would dive around the boat. A</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">friend of mine and I had heard about them diving with SCUBA gear in Florida, so</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">we said, “Let’s go see it.” … Rowland’s Sporting and Army Goods Store in New</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Orleans ordered an aqualung. They didn’t know what to do with it, so they called</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">me. We threw it overboard and all took a dive with the tank. I bought the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">aqualung from him. They found a surplus compressor from a submarine and put it</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">in their store and started filling tanks (Smith, personal communication, 2002).</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">A few years later, in 1957, Ronald and Walter Daspit, natives of Lafayette, Louisiana, developed</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">a “bailout bottle” that could be worn on a diver’s belt and provide a short-term, emergency air</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">supply for a diver whose surface air supply had been cut off.</font></p>
The Lakeview Gusher, Granddaddy of Oil Spills
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-06-19:2371245:BlogPost:76790
2010-06-19T17:27:47.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>The San Joaquin Valley has had many gushers, starting with the Shamrock gusher in 1896 and continuing with the spectacular Midway gusher in 1909. But none of these wells came close to rivaling the Lakeview No. 1 which flowed, uncapped and untamed, at 18,000 barrels a day for 18 months in 1910 and 1911.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Julius Fried, a grocer by trade, picked the site for the Lakeview well because he thought a clump of red grass indicated good oil land. When Fried and his partners naively…</p>
<p>The San Joaquin Valley has had many gushers, starting with the Shamrock gusher in 1896 and continuing with the spectacular Midway gusher in 1909. But none of these wells came close to rivaling the Lakeview No. 1 which flowed, uncapped and untamed, at 18,000 barrels a day for 18 months in 1910 and 1911.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Julius Fried, a grocer by trade, picked the site for the Lakeview well because he thought a clump of red grass indicated good oil land. When Fried and his partners naively spudded their well in the axis of a syncline on New Years day in 1909, hopes ran high. Yet drilling progressed slowly, and their company went broke when the well reached only 1,655 feet. Neighboring Union Oil offered to help by taking over the drilling operations, but only in their spare time when crews were available.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"Dry Hole Charlie" Woods, a driller with a string of "dusters" to his name, was assigned to the well. Charlie's luck changed on the morning of March 15, 1910, when the well came in with a roar from a depth of 2,225 feet and blew the crown block off the top of the derrick with an estimated initial flow of 125,000 barrels a day. On coming to work that morning, Charlie solemnly commented that Lakeview "must have cut an artery of the earth's great central storehouse of oil, whereas all previous wells had been merely pinpricks in the earth's thick hide."</p>
<p></p>
<p>A roaring column of sand and oil twenty feet in diameter and two-hundred feet high gushed into the air, and issued a stream of oil at its base, dubbed the "Trout Stream" which flowed down every adjacent ditch and gully. Rather than diminishing in force, the gusher grew stronger each day and eventually buried the engine house in a mountain of sand. Although the wooden derrick remained standing a few weeks longer, eventually it too, and all the drilling equipment as well, were completely swallowed up by a huge crater that formed around the drill well.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Torrents of oil poured from the wild well, and hundreds of men worked round the clock building sandbag dams to contain the crude in twenty large, open air sumps. The flow continued unabated, and thirty days after the well first blew in the flow was estimated at 90,000 barrels a day. The Lakeview No. 1 quickly became America's most famous gusher.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A four-inch pipeline leading to eight 55,000 barrel tanks, about 2-1/2 miles away, was installed in the amazingly short time of four hours. From the tanks, an eight-inch line carried the oil to Port Avila on the California coast.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Lakeview's roaring and spouting began to be measured, not in days, but months. It seemed little discouraged by the feeble efforts of humans to control it. Besides the labor of holding the oil, there was constant anxiety and fear. Adjacent landowners sued. Workmen cursed the sticky flood and labored in fear that spray from the well, carried on the wind for up to ten miles, could cause accidental fires. Preachers and their flocks prayed that oil might not cover the earth and bring about its flaming destruction. The entire oil industry wilted as this seemingly inexhaustible fountain brought crude prices down to 30 cents a barrel. Even Union Oil Company, with endless lawsuits, labor bills and low-priced crude on its hands, began to despair of having made the "richest" oil discovery in history.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Despite precautions, a nearby well known as "Tightwad Hill", blew out and caught fire midway through the life of the Lakeview gusher. Apparently, light from the fire of the Tightwad was so bright that tourists were able to view the distant Lakeview gusher even at night.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In desperation, a wooden box of massive timbers was pulled over the gusher with heavy cables, but oil still spurted out at 48,000 barrels a day. Eventually, this box too was destroyed by a huge crater that formed with a central cone of sand thirty feet high.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The gusher was finally brought under control on October, 1910 by building an embankment of sandbags, a hundred-feet in diameter, around the well and its crater. When this embankment reached a height of twenty feet, it created an oil pool over the crater that was deep enough to reduce the oil flow from an uprushing column to a gurgling spout.</p>
<p></p>
<p>When the bottom of the hole caved in on September 10, 1911, the well died. Although Lakeview No. 1 produced 9.4 million barrels during the 544 days it flowed, less than half of this oil was saved-the rest evaporating off or seeping into the ground.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Even after the old hole was cleaned and new casing installed, Lakeview No. 1 never again flowed more than 30 barrels a day and was finally abandoned. Because deeper wells drilled nearby missed the reservoir from which the old well produced, they were dry holes. Two wells which did penetrate this reservoir found it drained. One, the Lakeview No. 2, did strike oil in May, 1914, but from a different sand at a depth of 2,622 feet. No. 2 flowed 1700 barrels a day and produced 38,376 barrels of oil and 15,000 barrels of emulsion before the 4-1/2 inch casing collapsed just above the oil sand.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Easily missed, the Lakeview reservoir was a narrow, oil-filled channel of sandstone, a few feet wide by a mile long, onlapping onto an angular unconformity. In fact, the Lakeview No. 1 actually missed this sandstone by several feet, yet fluid pressures within the reservoir were so great that the oil forced its way out through the enclosing shale and into the adjacent well bore to create the greatest gusher California has ever known.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The version of events accepted by the State of California puts the flow rate near 100,000 barrels a day at times. “It’s the granddaddy of all gushers,” said Pete Gianopulos, an amateur historian in the area. The ultimate volume spilled was calculated at 9 million barrels, or 378 million gallons. According to the highest government estimates, the Deepwater Horizon spill is not yet half that size.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Today, little evidence of the spill remains, and outside Kern County, it has been largely forgotten.</p>
Punitive Damages Awards When Vessel Owners Refuse to Pay Maintenance and Cure
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-06-19:2371245:BlogPost:76788
2010-06-19T16:17:47.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>Prior to the summer of 2009, the courts did not allow injured seamen to recover punitive damage awards in cases where a vessel owner refused to provide an injured seaman with maintenance and cure benefits. As such, in cases where there may have been issues relating to the veracity of the seaman’s complaint, there was no real penalty for the vessel owner denying such benefits. Although there were several strategic reasons for paying, or not paying, these benefits, punitive damages were not…</p>
<p>Prior to the summer of 2009, the courts did not allow injured seamen to recover punitive damage awards in cases where a vessel owner refused to provide an injured seaman with maintenance and cure benefits. As such, in cases where there may have been issues relating to the veracity of the seaman’s complaint, there was no real penalty for the vessel owner denying such benefits. Although there were several strategic reasons for paying, or not paying, these benefits, punitive damages were not part of the decision making process.</p>
<p><br/>However, the United States Supreme Court, in June of 2009, ruled in Atlantic Sounding Company v. Townsend that a ship owner who willfully or wantonly refuses to provide medical care to a seaman who was injured while in the service of the vessel could be subjected to punitive damages. This Supreme Court ruling has drastically changed the strategies associated with the decision to pay, or not pay, maintenance and cure benefits.<br/></p>
<p>To better understand the issues presented to vessel owners by this recent Supreme Court ruling, it is important to provide a brief analysis of a vessel owner’s maintenance and cure obligation. A vessel owner’s liability for maintenance and cure is similar to a shore based employer’s requirement to supply workers compensation benefits. Essentially, a seaman has a right to recover maintenance and cure as a result of injuries or sickness accruing while he is in the service of the vessel. The right does not depend upon the seaman proving that the vessel owner was negligent or that the vessel was unseaworthy. As such, maintenance and cure should be provided until the employee reaches maximum medical improvement from his illness or injury. The cure obligation includes all nursing, medicines, doctor and hospitalization related to the illness. The maintenance obligation includes the provision of a per diem to compensate the seaman for the room and board that he or</p>
<p>she received while aboard the vessel. <br/></p>
<p>The standard of proving a case that a seaman is entitled to maintenance and cure benefits is easy. The employee only has to show that an injury or illness occurred while the employee was in the service of the vessel. It is very difficult for a vessel owner to win a maintenance and cure claim unless it is a clear case of fraud on behalf of the employee.<br/></p>
<p>Although the injured seaman’s case is very easy to make, prior to Townsend, there was no real penalty for a vessel owner refusing maintenance and cure. Vessel owners have pursued two different strategies for defending these claims. One, the vessel owner could deny maintenance and cure benefits to the injured seaman and, if it believed that the seaman would retain an attorney and file suit, file a pre-emptive declaratory judgment action in federal court seeking an order from the court stating that the payment of maintenance and cure benefits is not necessary. However, sending this clear message to the employee that the company does not believe that he or she sustained a compensable injury almost always prompts the employee to retain an attorney who will file suit on the worker’s behalf. The other option is to pay the costs associated with maintenance and cure while reserving the right to defend any liability based lawsuit filed by the injured worker. Although the second option is far less aggressive with regard to the maintenance and cure claim, it is a much better strategy in the long term when it comes to defending a negligence or unseaworthiness claim brought by the injured worker against the vessel owner. One, a seaman that is receiving benefits is less likely to file suit. Two, courts usually award maintenance and cure to injured workers during trial if the employer is unable to show conclusively that there was no injury or that fraud was involved. Thus, employers taking the high road and paying maintenance and cure, which is usually not very expensive, can minimize the chance of a larger judgment being rendered against the company later.<br/></p>
<p>However, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Townsend changed the analysis that vessel owners must make in this situation. Now that the courts can award punitive damages and attorneys’ fees against vessel owners for the willful denial of maintenance and cure benefits, injured workers now have leverage that they can use to obtain benefits. It is important to note that the Supreme Court did not rule that vessel owners should be subject to punitive damages, they only ruled that they could be subjected to punitive damages. This leaves a considerable amount of discretion to the trial courts in determining which situations warrant such an award. <br/></p>
<p>The Townsend court reached its conclusion based upon three theories of admiralty and common law. First, punitive damages have long been available at common law as a remedy for willful or outrageous conduct. Second, the general rule that punitive damages were available at common law extends to claims arising under federal maritime law. Finally, nothing in the Jones Act or general maritime law undermines the applicability of punitive damages to the maintenance and cure concepts. As such, a fact finder, whether it be a judge or a jury, can evaluate the facts of each situation and determine (1) whether an employee is entitled to maintenance and cure benefits, (2) whether the employer’s denial of benefits was willful, and (3) whether punitive damages and attorneys’ fees should be awarded to the seaman for the denial of such benefits.<br/></p>
<p>Furthermore, the Townsend court did not rule as to the amount of punitive damages that could be awarded. As such, substantive due process rules apply and the court should look to easily calculable formulas to determine punitive damages. The Supreme Court, in previous cases, has stated that very few punitive damage awards that exceed a single digit ratio between the punitive and compensatory damages will satisfy substantive due process requirements. Thus, as the courts work out the details surrounding the award of punitive damages for the denial of maintenance and cure benefits, they will probably be limited to punitive awards that are no more than ten times the compensatory damage award. Although this limit on the size of the award will keep judges or juries from issuing awards that are beyond the scope of reason, these awards will still be significant. For example, if a court awards an injured seaman a $300,000 compensatory damage award for serious personal injuries that he suffered, the court could award a punitive damage award of $3 million dollars.<br/></p>
<p>In addition to evaluating the likelihood and amount of a potential punitive damage award, it is also important to consider that most insurance policies do not provide a vessel owner insurance coverage for a punitive damage award. By nature, punitive damage awards are meant to punish the offender. It is against public policy to have insurance policies that provide coverage for punitive damages. If covered, the award would no longer serve as a deterrent from the unwanted conduct.<br/></p>
<p>As the courts continue to grapple with the issue of whether to award punitive damages or not, vessel owners are left in a position of uncertainty. Although no appellate level decisions have been rendered, several district courts have evaluated the Townsend language and reached different conclusions. Although all of the courts that have cited Townsend have noted that punitive damages could be awarded, not all of them have decided to do so with others making such an award.<br/></p>
<p>Considering the Supreme Court’s ruling in Townsend, it would be prudent for all vessel owners to review their pending personal injury files to determine if proper maintenance and cure has been provided. Furthermore, as new claims are administered, it makes sense to provide maintenance and cure benefits to all employees that suffer an illness or injury while in the service of the ship unless there is some clear indication of fraud. Even if you are able to avoid punitive damages for the denial of such benefits, the easy standard applicable to a maintenance and cure claim virtually guarantees that such claims will be paid in the end. As such, there is no need to risk a punitive or attorney’s fee award for the denial of benefits that you will ultimately pay in the end.</p>
Ocean Odyssey Blowout v. Macondo Blowout, a Case of Deja Ju?
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-05-26:2371245:BlogPost:74199
2010-05-26T21:30:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><em><font face="" size="1"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560156528?profile=original"></img></font></em></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><em><font face="" size="1">A long, dark shadow dimmed the bright hopes of the North Sea oil and gas industry after the June 1988 the Piper Alpha tragedy</font></em> <em><font face="" size="1">that killed 167. So two short months later, news of the Ocean Odyssey blowout reopened emotional wounds and increased the trepidation about the North Sea industry among the local…</font></em></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><em><font size="1" face=""><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560156528?profile=original"/></font></em></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><em><font size="1" face="">A long, dark shadow dimmed the bright hopes of the North Sea oil and gas industry after the June 1988 the Piper Alpha tragedy</font></em> <em><font size="1" face="">that killed 167. So two short months later, news of the Ocean Odyssey blowout reopened emotional wounds and increased the trepidation about the North Sea industry among the local population.</font></em></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2" face="">Introduction</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font face="">For the times, the $110-million dollar Ocean Odyssey was a state-of-the-art facility. The 390-foot (120 meter) long, 226-foot (69 meter) wide, self-propelled, semisubmersible drilling rig was classed for unrestricted worldwide ocean service. It was designed to simultaneously withstand 100-knot (190 km/h) winds, 110-foot (34 m) waves, and a 3-knot (5.6 km/h) current. The derrick was fully enclosed with a heated drill floor permitting operations down to −35 °C. And the rig had other advanced extreme-condition features—columns strengthened to withstand some ice impact, the marine riser equipped with a feature similar to a cow-catcher</font> <font face="">to keep floating ice off it. (The marine riser connects the rig to the well on the ocean bottom, through which drill pipe is passed and mud is circulated.)</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">While contracted to Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), now a subsidiary of BP, conducting high pressure, high temperature drilling in the North Sea, a blowout occurred September 22, 1988.</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="2" face="">The Day’s Events</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">Drilling mud must be circulated to return cuttings, cool the drill bit, and provide pressure to keep reservoir fluids in the reservoir during drilling. Because of a severe loss in circulation, drilling stopped on the exploratory well September 21 to try to control the problem. Early the next morning, ARCO representatives decided to pull out of the hole to try to regain circulation, against the judgment of others on board. Newspapers reported that the Odyssey passed Department of Energy and American Bureau of Shipping inspections mere weeks before the incident. But staff “had been raising questions about the risks being taken with surges of high pressure and reports of gas leaks."</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">Mud and barite supplies were limited. The bit was tripped out to 13,200 feet, and the ARCO rep decided to stop and circulate.</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">Around noon, casing pressure rose quickly with substantial mud returns and gas vapor present at the drill floor. The circulating pressure was not great enough to prevent a gas influx and the well began to flow. The control room operator was alerted to a gas kick—an unplanned influx of reservoir fluids (oil or gas) into the well bore. The crew was ordered to lifeboat stations and to abandon. Around 1255 hours, the first explosion occurred and the four remaining crew on the drill floor evacuated to lifeboats. Around 15 minutes later, catastrophic failure of the choke hose, caused by the uncontrolled flow of aggressive fluids, led to the release of large quantities of gas; fires ignited on the rig and on the surface of the sea beneath the rig.</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="2" face="">Fate of the Crew</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">At some time in the hour and a half between mustering at the lifeboats and the first explosion, the off-duty, 25-year-old radio operator was ordered to leave his lifeboat and return to the radio room to continue communications. Later, while trying to evacuate the rig, he died from the effects of smoke and fire in the pilot house. It was later reported that lifeboats were equipped with their own radio equipment, questioning the necessity of sending the operator back to the rig.</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">Of the 67 crew members on board, 58 were evacuated by TEMPSC (totally enclosed motor propelled survival craft) lifeboat—the first and only use of TEMPSCs for evacuation in the North Sea until April 1997. Eight crew members jumped directly into the sea after missing the launching of the lifeboats; they were picked up by fast rescue craft from the Notts Forest, the Odyssey's stand-by vessel. Crew members in the lifeboats reported waiting with the boat hatches open for the remainder of the crew until the first explosion occurred and boat launching began. Survival-suited lifeboat occupants were frantically trying to close the hatches as a wall of fire approached, and the four drill-floor crew members who had stayed behind arrived and jumped aboard through the hatches.</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="2" face="">Causes</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">The direct cause of the blowout was attributed to failure of subsea wellhead equipment after many hours of kick control. The Guardian reported that it was not known whether the blowout preventer (BOP) worked or if gas fractured the choke line at another point and burst through to cause the incident. Two survivors who were in charge of submersible video cameras that inspected the state of the equipment, including the BOP, told the Guardian that “the stand-by electric motor on the hydraulic system on the rig, which powers the BOP, was known to be burnt out, and that the annular preventer inside the BOP had been damaged and was not working for two days before the blowout.” ARCO responded that the Guardian reported factual inaccuracies, stating that the pressure rating on the blowout valve was adequate for the pressure. The Observer reported in 1990 that independent tests “uncovered allegedly dangerous welding faults in a high-pressure gas line on the rig.</font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1" face="">After the rig was moved from location and the well bridged over, a remotely operated vehicle survey was conducted that discovered:</font></p>
<ul>
<li><font size="1" face="">BOP showed that the flexible choke line joining the rigid BOP choke line to the lower marine riser package (LMRP) had failed. Severe erosion was observed between the lower inner and outer choke valve actuators and the lower choke valve block. Fluid was venting from the valve block and the severed choke line.</font></li>
<li><font size="1" face="">When the rig pulled off location, the LMRP failed to disconnect properly and the riser parted at the first weld on the first joint of riser. Drill pipe was draped over the top of the BOP stack and strung out to a distance of 35 feet from the BOP; the BOP was inclined at 1.4 degrees leaning to +315 degrees azimuth—the direction the rig pulled off location.</font></li>
<li><font size="1" face="">The upper and middle pipe rams in the BOP were closed, the upper and lower failsafe kill valves were closed as was the lower annular preventer. Drillpipe and a bottomhole assembly had been hung off in the BOP.</font></li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.25in" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="2" face="">Aftermath</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">In a Fatal Accident Inquiry, the Aberdeen's sheriff court criticized the Offshore Installation Manager and ARCO, stating:</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face=""><em>“The death of Timothy Williams might reasonably have been prevented (i) if the Offshore Installation Manager (OIM) had not ordered him from the lifeboat to the radio room; (ii) if the OIM, having ordered Timothy Williams back to the radio room, had countermanded that order when the rig was evacuated, and taken steps to see that the countermanding order was communicated to him.”</em></font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">ARCO representatives, the court concluded, had not followed safe and correct drilling practices including failure to correctly identify shut-in drillpipe pressure, failure to correctly calculate the circulation time of the gas kick, and failure to shut in the well once the well began flowing uncontrollably.</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">For some years after this incident, the UK Department of Energy banned drilling in areas with anticipated reservoir pressures in excess of 10,000 psi.</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1"><font face="">The Ocean Odyssey spent several years rusting in Dundee</font><font face="">'s docks. But it has since been redeveloped as an ocean-going satellite launch pad called Sea Launch. It is based at Long Beach, California where the spacecraft are assembled before the rig is relocated to the equatorial Pacific Ocean for launch.</font></font></font></p>
<h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="2" face="">Practical Lessons</font></font></h2>
<ul>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Stop work if you consider it unsafe</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Assess and understand major hazards and potential accident events</font></font></li>
</ul>
<blockquote><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Ensure that this assessment addresses possible impact on escape, temporary refuge, and evacuation facilities. The assessment also should provide input into the facility philosophy for escape, temporary refuge, and evacuation along with emergency response requirements.</font></font></blockquote>
<ul>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Test emergency response capability against potential major accident events</font></font></li>
</ul>
<blockquote><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">A better understanding of the hazard and potential accident event consequences along with testing and familiarity with the response requirements and equipment might have resulted in the radio room operator not being sent back to the radio room.</font></font></blockquote>
<ul>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Once the decision is made to board the lifeboats and evacuate, it should include all personnel</font></font></li>
</ul>
<blockquote><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">No one should still be trying to control the incident. Lifeboats then can be launched as soon as boarding is completed.</font></font></blockquote>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Furthermore, the 2005 UK Health and Safety Executive (UK HSE) report on high pressure, high temperature developments lists industry practices to prevent future events including:</font></font></p>
<ul>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Intensive quality assurance procedures</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Design changes to well configuration</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">New inspection processes</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Special handling and installation procedures</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Selection of experienced design and operating teams</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Use of supply and service resources with a proven track record</font></font></li>
<li><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Open exchange of information between HPHT operators</font></font></li>
</ul>
<h2 style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="2" face="">References</font></font></h2>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Beavis S. (n.d.) Report alert ‘could have saved oilmen.’ (publication unknown).</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Bowcott O, Hetherington P. (n.d.) Fluid leaks ignored on blow-out rig. Guardian.</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1"><font face="">Ocean Odyssey (modified 6 March 2009). Wikipedia. Online at</font> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Odyssey" target="_blank"><font face="">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Odyssey</font></a> <font face="">. Accessed 19 August 2009.</font></font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1"><font face="">Gillespie JD, ARCO Alaska Inc.; Wann KE, ARCO British Ltd. (1990). The Ocean Odyssey: Well Control Project II. IADC/SPE Drilling Conference, Houston, Texas. Abstract Online at</font> <a href="http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=00019916&soc=SPE" target="_blank"><font face="">http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=00019916&soc=SPE</font></a> <font face="">. Accessed 19 August 2009.</font></font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1"><font face="">High pressure, high temperature developments in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. Research Report 409 (2005). Highoose Limited for the U.K. Health and Safety Executive. Online at</font> <a href="http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr409.pdf" target="_blank"><font face="">http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr409.pdf</font></a> <font face="">. Accessed 19 August 2009.</font></font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><font size="1"><font size="1" face="">Radio order caused rig death, says union. (28 November 1989) Guardian News and Media Limited.</font></font></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left" class="MsoNormal" align="left"><font size="1"><font size="1"><font face="">(3576) Report to EERTAG on Ocean Odyssey Survivors Report (1997). United Kingdom Health & Safety Executive. Online at</font> <a href="http://www.hseresearchprojects.com/projectsearch.aspx?id=1055" target="_blank"><font face="">http://www.hseresearchprojects.com/projectsearch.aspx?id=1055</font></a> <font face="">. Accessed 19 August 2009.</font></font></font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="1"><font face="">This post is from IRC's September 2009 bulletin.</font> <font size="1"><font face="">>></font><a href="http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs037/1102467289629/archive/1102652302252.html" target="_blank"><font color="#FF7700" face="">Read more</font></a><br/><font face="">To read all of IRC's Bulletins, Practical Lessons From Major Accidents, see the</font> <a title="Archives" href="http://ui.constantcontact.com/rnavmap/evaluate.rnav/pide3YC98f6rCMWqFtEUu0oxBb187" target="_blank"><font color="#FF7700" face="">Archives</font></a> <font face=""><br/>Visit IRC's</font> <a title="website" href="http://www/ircrisk.com" target="_blank"><font color="#FF7700" face="">website</font></a> <font face="">for information about our hazard and risk assessment and management services</font></font></font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
History of BP Includes Role in 1953 Iran Coup After Nationalization of Oil
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-05-12:2371245:BlogPost:72912
2010-05-12T23:08:08.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>Interesting interview linking BP, the CIA, and the rise of modern terrorism in the Middle East. 60 years ago BP was called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Excerpted from an interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of <i>All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror</i>.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>STEPHEN KINZER: Well, I’ll tell you an interesting story to start off. I was recently on a panel in the National Cathedral in Washington, and one of the…</p>
<p>Interesting interview linking BP, the CIA, and the rise of modern terrorism in the Middle East. 60 years ago BP was called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Excerpted from an interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of <i>All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror</i>.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>STEPHEN KINZER: Well, I’ll tell you an interesting story to start off. I was recently on a panel in the National Cathedral in Washington, and one of the other panelists—we were talking about Iran—was Bruce Laingen, who had been the chief American diplomat in Iran and was the most prominent figure among the hostages that were held there for 444 days. And I knew that Laingen had become an advocate of reconciliation with Iran, which I consider quite remarkable, considering the ordeal that he suffered, so I wanted to talk to him. I hadn’t met him before. And we exchanged some emails after that. <br/></p>
<p>He told me an amazing story. He said, “I had been sitting in my solitary cell as a hostage for about a year, when one day the cell door opens, and there is standing one of the hostage takers, one of my jailers. And all of my rage and my fury built up over one year sitting in that cell just burst out, and I started screaming at him, and I was telling him, ‘You have no right to do this! This is cruel, this is inhumane! These people have done nothing! This is a violation of every law of god and man! You cannot take innocent people hostage!’” He said, “I went on like this for several minutes. When I was finally out of breath, the hostage taker paused for a moment, and then he leaned into my cell and said, in very good English, ‘You have no right to complain, because you took our whole country hostage in 1953.’”</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>That story really reinforced to me the connection and the fact that those hostage takers took those hostages not out of nihilistic rage, but for a very specific reason that seemed to make very good sense to them. In 1953, the Iranian people had chased the Shah out, but CIA agents working inside the American embassy in Tehran organized a coup and brought him back. So flash forward to 1979, people of Iran have chased the Shah out again. He has been admitted into the United States. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p>What happened was that in the first half of the twentieth century, Americans had a super good image in Iran. The only Americans there were doctors and school teachers and people who really were selflessly devoting themselves to Iranians. Meanwhile, the British and the Russians and the French and other colonial powers were ripping Iran apart and stealing and looting everything of value there. So they, people in Iran, had a very high, exalted opinion of the United States, perfect country, the ideal country. And the words of Franklin Roosevelt in all his radio speeches during the Second World War also had a big impact on Iranians. And, of course, there was a big World War II conference in Tehran that just focused Iranians on the ideals of freedom that the Allied powers said they were fighting for. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>So in the period after World War II, Iranian nationalism came to focus on one great cause. At the beginning of the twentieth century, as a result of a corrupt deal with the old dying monarchy, one British company, owned mainly by the British government, had taken control of the entire Iranian oil industry. This one company had the exclusive rights to extract, refine, ship and sell Iranian oil, and they paid Iran a very tiny amount. But essentially the entire Iranian oil resource was owned by a company based in England and owned mainly by the British government. <strong>That was Anglo-Iranian Petroleum, later to become British Petroleum and BP.<br/></strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Anyway, what happened was that Prime Minister Mosaddeq, who really was an extraordinary figure in his time, although he’s been somewhat forgotten by history, came to power in 1951 on a wave of nationalism aimed at this one great obsession: we’ve got to take back control of our oil and use the profits for the development of one of the most wretchedly impoverished nations on earth at that time. So the Iranian parliament voted unanimously for a bill to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company, and Mosaddeq signed it, and he devoted himself during his term of office to carrying out that plan, to nationalize what was then Britain’s largest and most profitable holding anywhere in the world. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Bear in mind that the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and ’30s and ’40s all came from Iran. The standard of living that people in England enjoyed all during that period was due exclusively to Iranian oil. Britain has no oil. Britain has no colonies that have oil. Every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world was fueled 100 percent by oil from Iran. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p>Suddenly, Iran arrives and says, “Oh, we’re taking back the oil now.” So this naturally set off a huge crisis. And that’s the crisis that made Mosaddeq really a big world figure around the early 1950s. At the end of 1951, <i>Time</i> magazine chose him as Man of the Year, and they chose him over Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower. And they made the right choice, because at that moment Mosaddeq really was the most important person in the world.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Actually, it was at this time that Aramco, the Arab American Oil Company, came into Saudi Arabian, and their deal was a fifty-fifty split, so 50 percent for the country that has the oil and 50 percent for the company that comes in and builds the refinery. That had the air of fairness that ordinary people could understand, but the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company would not give in one inch. And that just made the Iranians more and more radical. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p>The British tried all sorts of things to bring Mosaddeq down. They imposed a crushing economic embargo on Iran. They required all their oil technicians to leave. Many of them wanted to stay in Iran and work for the nationalized company. The British wouldn’t allow this. So, since they had been very careful not to train anyone how to run the oil refinery, any Iranians, that was the end of the possibility of oil refining. Just in case the Iranians could figure out how to extract any oil, the British imposed a naval embargo around the port, where oil is exported from in Iran. The British took Mosaddeq to the United Nations, they sued him in the World Court, and lost both times. The British were arguing that the Iranian oil industry was their private property and that Mosaddeq had stolen it from them. That was their complaint, but they failed to get any redress in international fora. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>So then the British decided they would have to overthrow Mosaddeq, and they started a plot to do that. But Mosaddeq figured out what was happening, and he did the only thing he could have done to protect himself: he closed the British embassy. He sent home all the British diplomats. And among those diplomats were, of course, all the spies and the secret agents that were arranging the coup. So then, the only thing that Prime Minister Churchill could think of to do was to ask Harry Truman, the American president, to do this job for us: Can you please overthrow Mosaddeq, because we don’t have anyone in Iran now that can do it? And Truman said no. Truman believed that the CIA could be a covert action and intelligence-gathering agency, but he never wanted it to get involved in overthrowing governments. So that was the end of the line for Britain, until there was regime change in the United States. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p>We had the election of 1952. Dwight Eisenhower took office. John Foster Dulles became his secretary of state. And Dulles had spent his whole adult life working as a lawyer for giant international corporations. And the idea that a country should be able to get away with nationalizing such a big company, such a big corporate resource, was, as Dulles very well understood, a great threat to the system that he had been representing all his life, the system of multinational enterprise. And he realized that it was in the interest of the United States, as he saw them, to make sure that no such example could be set. So the new administration, the Eisenhower administration, reversed the policy of the Truman administration. They agreed to send a CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, to Iran in the summer of 1953. And that’s the story that I tell in my book. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>It just took Kermit Roosevelt three weeks in August of 1953—Bag of money and a few other very interesting resources. He was a real-life James Bond. This guy was a real intrepid secret agent, and the story is just amazing how he did this. But it’s really an object lesson in how easy it is for a rich and powerful country to throw a poor and weak country into chaos. So at the end of August 1953, Mosaddeq was overthrown. At the moment, that seemed like a great success. So we got rid of a guy that we didn’t like, and we replaced him with someone else, the Shah, who would do anything we wanted. It seemed like the perfect ending. He was under house arrest for the rest of his life in his village in Iran. So that coup seemed like a success at first. But now, when you look back on it, it serves as a fascinating object lesson in unintended consequences. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p>Just very briefly, we placed the Shah back on his peacock throne. The Shah ruled with increasing repression for twenty-five years. His repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, what we call the Islamic Revolution. That revolution brought to power a clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs. That revolution also inspired radicals in other countries, like next-door Afghanistan, where the Taliban came to power and gave shelter to al-Qaeda with results we all know. That instability in Iran that followed that revolution also led Iran’s great enemy next door, Saddam Hussein, to invade Iran. That not only set off an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, but it also brought the United States into its death embrace with Saddam. We were the military allies of Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War, and we were supplying Saddam with military intelligence, with Bell helicopters that he used to spray gas on Iranian positions. President Reagan sent a special envoy twice to Baghdad to negotiate with Saddam and ask him how we could help him. And, of course, that envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. So that instability set off by that revolution also led the United States into the spiral in Iraq that brought us to the point where we are now. <br/></p>
<p></p>
<p>That revolution in Iran also spooked the Soviets. They were terrified that there would be copycat fundamentalist revolutions all along their southern flank. And to prevent that, they invaded Afghanistan. That brought the United States into its position in Afghanistan, where we brought Osama bin Laden there, we trained all these tens of thousands of jihadis in how to kill infidels, which they later became the Taliban. We later became the infidels they wanted to kill. So why is this all so important for today?</p>
<p></p>
<p>They call it in the CIA “walking back the cat.” You can walk back the cat endlessly on this one. And the reason the story is so relevant is that it tells us the main thing you need to know in assessing the current idea of an attack on Iran, which is the worst consequences are ones you can’t even imagine. Not even the wisest analysts, the most prescient specialists, in 1953 could ever have imagined all these consequences. Ah, the Shah’s going to fall; there’s going to be mullahs in power; the Soviets are going to invade Afghanistan; all these other things will happen. It shows you that when you violently interfere in the affairs of another country, you’re like setting off a wheel at the top of a hill. You let it go; you have no idea how it’s going to bounce. <br/><br/><br/><br/></p>
We've Come A Long Way - 1943 Guide to Hiring Women
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-05-10:2371245:BlogPost:72579
2010-05-10T21:10:07.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><img width="575" alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560157066?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024"/></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><img width="575" alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560157066?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024"/></p>
Workers Tell of Night Their Oil Rig Exploded
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-05-08:2371245:BlogPost:72243
2010-05-08T18:22:08.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<div><div class="caption">By Ian Urbina and Justin Gillis</div>
<div class="source">The New York Times</div>
<div class="updateTime"><span id="udtD">updated <span class="time">9:18 a.m. CT,</span> <span class="date">Sat., May 8, 2010</span></span></div>
<div class="updateTime"></div>
</div>
<p class="textBodyBlack">NEW ORLEANS - Nearly 50 miles offshore at the big oil rig floating on a glassy-calm sea, a helicopter landed early on the morning of April 20, carrying four executives from BP, the…</p>
<div><div class="caption">By Ian Urbina and Justin Gillis</div>
<div class="source">The New York Times</div>
<div class="updateTime"><span id="udtD">updated <span class="time">9:18 a.m. CT,</span> <span class="date">Sat., May 8, 2010</span></span></div>
<div class="updateTime"></div>
</div>
<p class="textBodyBlack">NEW ORLEANS - Nearly 50 miles offshore at the big oil rig floating on a glassy-calm sea, a helicopter landed early on the morning of April 20, carrying four executives from BP, the oil company. The men were visiting the Deepwater Horizon to help honor the crew for its standout safety record.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">The rig workers were buzzing for another reason. They were nearly done with the latest job. It had been a little tricky, but it was nothing they could not handle.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">As night fell, Micah Joseph Sandell, 40, was in the small cab of his crane, three stories above the bustling deck.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Two floors down from the helipad, men in red coveralls waited for dinner in a hall lined with gold safety plaques. Eugene Dewayne Moss, a 37-year-old crane operator, realized he needed to tear himself away from a movie to get ready for his overnight shift.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"I thought, Oh man, I've got to go," Mr. Moss recalled. "I got up, turned my TV off."</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Seconds later, a thundering explosion rocked the rig, the beginning of a terrifying night for the men who would survive one of the most harrowing disasters in the history of the oil business.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><strong>Tornado of fire<br/></strong>All over the ship, men snapped into action. Sleeping workers leapt from their beds. Then came a second explosion, even louder than the first.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">They later struggled to describe it — a tornado of fire, a nuclear bomb, a jet engine exploding. But a half-dozen rig workers interviewed this week all agreed on one thing, recalling that moment: "We all were sure we were going to die," said Dennis Dewayne Martinez, 30, a supervisor on the rig.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"></p>
The Deepwater Horizon was one of the most sophisticated drilling rigs on the planet.<p></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Commissioned in 2001, the ship, 396 feet from stem to stern, could park in the water, lock onto satellites to measure an exact position and shoot water out of a series of thrusters to maintain that position.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Even with waves crashing against the keel, the rig could steady itself for the precision work of sending drill pipes more than six miles down, dead straight, through the ocean floor and deep into the earth’s crust.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Only the year before, the Horizon had set a world record by punching through 35,000 feet of water and rock — nearly seven miles — in the Gulf of Mexico, creating a well called Tiber for BP, the oil giant once known as British Petroleum.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><strong>Celebrating oil discovery<br/></strong>This time, the Horizon was drilling an exploratory well about 47 miles off the Louisiana coast, in a stretch of the sea floor known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252. BP and some partners had paid the federal government $34 million for the lease, and the Horizon crew had celebrated when they found oil there.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">But the Horizon was a drill ship, not a production vessel, so the workers had been told to cap the well for later use and move on to the next job.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Up on the bridge that April night, the officers were keeping close watch on the Damon B. Bankston, a 260-foot cargo ship that was pumping special drilling mud through a hose from the rig.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">The job of sinking the well had gone relatively smoothly — extending the well, pipe by pipe, until it punched through to the oil below. Then the crew shoved a final long stretch of pipe deep into the reservoir.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">As the job unfolded, however, the workers did have intermittent trouble with pockets of natural gas. Highly flammable, the gas was forcing its way up the drilling pipes.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">This was something BP had not foreseen as a serious problem, declaring a year earlier that gas was likely to pose only a "negligible" risk. The government warned the company that gas buildup was a real concern and that BP should "exercise caution."</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">At one point during the previous several weeks, so much of it came belching up to the surface that a loudspeaker announcement called for a halt to all "hot work," meaning any smoking, welding, cooking or any other use of fire. Smaller belches, or "kicks," had stalled work as the job was winding down.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">By mid-April, the crew was in the mop-up stages of the operation. The day before the blast, workers from Halliburton, the oil services contractor, had finished one of the trickiest tasks in building a well: encasing it in cement, with a temporary plug of cement near the bottom of the pipe to seal the well.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><strong>'Almost done, baby!'<br/></strong>The Halliburton workers used a less common technique for the cement, whipping nitrogen gas into it to create a kind of mousse. This type of cement, if used correctly, forms a tighter seal, but it is trickier to handle.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Still, all in all, it had been a pretty routine job for the Horizon.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"Almost there," said one supervisor as he left the 11 a.m. daily meeting on April 20. "We’re almost done, baby!"</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Some of the men had heard they might even get a bonus for finishing ahead of deadline.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">It happened so fast.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Just before 10 p.m., the crew was using seawater to flush drilling mud out of the pipes. Suddenly, with explosive fury, water and mud came hurtling up the pipes and onto the deck, followed by the ominous hiss of natural gas. In seconds, it touched some spark or flame.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Three stories above the deck, the blast blew Mr. Sandell out of his seat and to the back of his cab. As he scrambled down the ladder, fire leaped up to envelop him. Another explosion sent him flying 25 feet to the ground.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"I took off running," Mr. Sandell said. "How, I can’t tell you."</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">He joined the other men in a sprint to the two lifeboats on the rig’s bow. Men were climbing over one another to get inside the covered lifeboats, which look like capsules and can hold up to 50 men each.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">The assistant driller who was supposed to take muster — or roll call — panicked. Instead, he handed Mr. Martinez the clipboard before climbing into a lifeboat.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"Hurry up!" the men already in the boats screamed. "Lower the lifeboat!"</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><strong>Tower in flames<br/></strong>Mr. Martinez said they needed to wait for others. The men in the boats yelled that there was no more time — the 242-foot steel tower in the center of the rig was engulfed in flames. They were certain it was going to fall their way.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">In one lifeboat, a worker lay on the deck, trying to stanch the blood flowing from a deep gash in his neck. Others tried to rub the insulation from their eyes, after the walls of their cabins collapsed. Still others were caked in the clay-brown mud that had shot out of the well after the first explosion.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Most of the men had on bright orange life jackets. Some men, having been thrown from their bunks, wore little else.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Not everyone could get to the boats. Through a porthole, Mr. Moss watched as some co-workers — black silhouettes against the flames — jumped from the rig. "You can’t see them good enough to tell if they had life jackets on or anything," he said.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Within 10 minutes, the two lifeboats closed their doors and dropped about 100 feet down to the water below.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">A small boat was nearby. Albert Andry III, a recreational fisherman, and his buddies were bobbing near the rig, trying to catch the fish that schooled near it.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><strong>'Go! Go! Go!'</strong><br/>When Mr. Andry — who was contacted by a reporter after he posted an account of his experience on the Internet — noticed water gushing from the center of the rig, one of his friends, who had worked on rigs, knew something was wrong.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"Go! Go! Go! Go! Gooooo!" the friend yelled. Mr. Andry opened his throttle wide, covering 100 yards or so before the rig exploded.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"The rig blew a few more explosions after that and began to burn down," he wrote later on a Web message board, where he also posted photos and videos of the scene. "Some of the rig began dripping into the water and the platform tilted in and turned RED HOT."</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">From their lifeboats, the Horizon crew radioed for help. The Bankston, the cargo boat that was attached to the rig when the blowout began, had managed to pull away, and now the captain was pulling survivors off the lifeboats.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Frantic emergency calls summoned planes, helicopters and Coast Guard fireboats to the stricken rig.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">On the Bankston, the men cried. They prayed. Nobody talked much as they watched the orange tongues of flame from the Horizon lick the sky, reflecting off the still water.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">The men were kept aboard the rescue ship, in the middle of the ocean, for a full 12 hours. Worse than the wait, they said, was being forbidden to call their families. The men were told that the Coast Guard wanted to conduct interviews before the workers spoke to family or anyone else.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Rumors spread that the BP executives who had visited the rig were up on the Bankston’s bridge using the ship’s radio or a satellite phone to call home.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Helicopters thwocked overhead. Boats darted around the rig searching for survivors. Word soon came that 11 were missing. (Of the 126 on board at the time of the disaster, 115 survived, of whom 17 were injured.)</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">As he watched the hulking rig, his home for much of the past eight years, slowly tilt and falter, Mr. Martinez thought about his father’s ring. The only time he ever took the ring off was when he was working. It was now headed to the bottom of the sea.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"I lost my daddy when I was 23, he was 46," he said.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><strong>Pork chops and hot dogs<br/></strong>Another worker, startled by a memory, jammed his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a small photograph of his son. He caught his breath, stared at it, then exhaled.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Finally, the Bankston started its 12-hour journey back to shore. It stopped on the way to pick up a couple of medics from another rig. At a second stop, it picked up Coast Guard officials, who immediately began passing out forms for the men to fill out and to describe what they saw. Some were pulled aside for interviews.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Some relief arrived: blankets, and for supper, pork chops and hot dogs.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Conversation followed, but mostly they just traded questions. What could possibly have gone so horribly wrong? If the cement job worked, how had gas leaked up the pipe and sparked? Others wondered about a device on the sea floor called a blowout preventer and why it did not seem to have activated.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Pulling in to Port Fourchon, the men fell silent again.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">"To me it all felt like a nightmare," Mr. Sandell said. "And I still wasn’t sure if I was awake.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">As he and others climbed off the Bankston, they were greeted by several Coast Guard and company officials sitting around a table stacked with forms.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack">Behind the table was a row of portable toilets. And as the crew members approached, each was handed a cup for a mandatory drug test. The search for an explanation would begin with them. That search continues.</p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><em>Ian Urbina reported from New Orleans, and Justin Gillis from New York. Andrew Lehren contributed reporting from New York, and Clifford Krauss from Houma, La. Toby Lyles contributed research.</em></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"><em>This story, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/us/08rig.html">Workers on Oil Rig Recall a Terrible Night of Blasts</a>," first appeared in The New York Times.</em></p>
<p class="textBodyBlack"></p>
<div class="copyright"><em>Copyright © 2010 The New York Times</em></div>
He Taught the World to Extract the Fuel, Then Watched Everyone Else Get Rich
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-04-25:2371245:BlogPost:71175
2010-04-25T16:43:15.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<div class="konafilter" id="article-byline">By Megan Barnett Apr 23, 2010</div>
<div class="konafilter" id="article-dek"></div>
<div class="konafilter">He taught the world how to extract the fuel, then watched everyone else get rich.</div>
<p></p>
<p>When you think about how many trillions of dollars have been made on oil, how many lives have been lost over access to the fossil fuel, and how much the commodity has contributed to the advancement of developed nations during the past century, it’s…</p>
<div id="article-byline" class="konafilter">By Megan Barnett Apr 23, 2010</div>
<div id="article-dek" class="konafilter"></div>
<div class="konafilter">He taught the world how to extract the fuel, then watched everyone else get rich.</div>
<p></p>
<p>When you think about how many trillions of dollars have been made on oil, how many lives have been lost over access to the fossil fuel, and how much the commodity has contributed to the advancement of developed nations during the past century, it’s almost impossible to believe this: The man responsible for the first oil drill died poor, and so did the investor who originally backed him.<br/><br/>In 1858, Seneca Oil Company was formed in Pennsylvania by a group of investors who wanted to explore ways to extract oil from the ground. The company sent Edwin Drake, a shareholder and acquaintance of the company’s founders, to Titusville, Pennsylvania, to investigate. Drake was no engineer -- he’d gotten his start as a train conductor. James Townsend, the president of Seneca, chose Drake for the mission primarily because he had free rail passes.<br/><br/>Drake was met with skepticism in Titusville. Sure, the oil bubbled up in the area and sometimes it was collected from the surface, but drilling for it seemed downright crazy. The name Crazy Drake was officially born.<br/><br/>Drake spent the first year coping with one failed attempt after another. He had difficulty finding the right workers and equipment to drill for oil in the same way salt mines were drilled at the time.<br/><br/>By 1859, Seneca Oil pulled the plug on the project. It had already financed the project with $2,000 and it refused to invest more without more promising evidence the drilling would eventually work.<br/><br/>Drake was undeterred and Townsend continued to support the effort. Despite the fact that his company had given up on the venture, Townsend gave Drake another $500 to continue his efforts.<br/><br/>As it turned out, it didn’t take much longer to strike black gold. Drake and a capable conductor managed to figure out how to get a cast-iron pipe deep into the earth’s surface and, on the morning of August 28, 1859, the men arrived at the drilling site to find they’d struck oil 69 feet down. They began bringing the oil up with a hand pump, poured it in bathtubs, and transferred it to whiskey barrels. Oil was officially in business.<br/><br/>So what happened to Drake and his determined backer, Townsend? It seems neither man had the business acumen to patent the drill. Almost immediately, other entrepreneurs began using his method to extract oil in the surrounding areas of Titusville, and an oil boom began.<br/><br/>Townsend left Seneca Oil and eventually lost all of his money on Wall Street. <br/><br/>According to some sources, in 1900, Seneca Oil sold its leases to a subsidiary of Standard Oil, which was formed by John D. Rockefeller shortly after Drake created the drill. The Supreme Court later determined Rockefeller's firm to be a monopoly and split Standard Oil into seven new companies. These later evolved into <b>Exxon Mobil</b> (XOM), <b>British Petroleum</b> (BP), <b>Chevron</b> (CVX), and others.<br/><br/>As for Drake, the rapidly increasing output of oil led to lower prices, which put him out of business just four years after his invention launched the boom. By 1870, Drake was ailing and impoverished, and the people of Titusville convinced the Pennsylvania legislature to help him out. To thank him for his efforts, the state granted him a $1,500 stipend, which was paid annually until his death in 1880.</p>
Norway's Underwater 'Guinea Pigs'
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-04-03:2371245:BlogPost:68593
2010-04-03T04:51:35.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p></p>
<p><img alt="Diver Brushneen" border="0" height="191" hspace="0" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44518000/jpg/_44518307_diver400.jpg" width="400"></img></p>
<div class="cap"><font size="2">Mike Brushneen, one of the British divers who died in the North Sea</font></div>
<p></p>
<p>By Iain Haddow <br></br>BBC News</p>
<p><br></br></p>
<div class="bo"><b>The North Sea oil rush of the 1970s offered big rewards for high-risk work and claimed several lives. Now families of British workers who died in Norwegian waters want to understand what happened to their loved ones.</b><p></p>
<p>In the early 1970s, the North Sea was a watery Wild…</p>
</div>
<p></p>
<p><img border="0" hspace="0" alt="Diver Brushneen" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44518000/jpg/_44518307_diver400.jpg" width="400" height="191"/></p>
<div class="cap"><font size="2">Mike Brushneen, one of the British divers who died in the North Sea</font></div>
<p></p>
<p>By Iain Haddow <br/>BBC News</p>
<p><br/></p>
<div class="bo"><b>The North Sea oil rush of the 1970s offered big rewards for high-risk work and claimed several lives. Now families of British workers who died in Norwegian waters want to understand what happened to their loved ones.</b><p></p>
<p>In the early 1970s, the North Sea was a watery Wild West.</p>
<p>The world's economies were being pushed towards recession by astronomical oil prices.</p>
<p>In the relentless pursuit of oil, untapped sources under the ocean floor became the new panacea for Western governments.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Tempted by the high rewards - some would say greed - hundreds of British deep-sea divers took part in the exploration of the North Sea oil fields in British and Norwegian territorial waters.</p>
<p>They were the aquatic equivalent of the prospectors who had, a century earlier, searched the deserts and canyons of North America for 'black gold'.</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Huge earnings</b></p>
<p></p>
<p>They are known as the pioneer divers.</p>
<p></p>
<p>According to a 1975 article in the Times, a North Sea deep-sea diver could earn as much as £2,000 a month - the equivalent of £14,000 today.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But according to retired divers on both sides of the North Sea, a disproportionate number of British divers perished in Norwegian hands because safety was routinely and knowingly compromised in the interests of profits.</p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="ibox"></div>
<div class="ibox">NORWAY'S OIL BOOM 1965-1990 <br/><ul>
<li class="bull">2,500 divers issued with Norwegian diving certificates</li>
<li class="bull">12 British fatalities in Norwegian sector of North Sea</li>
<li class="bull">123 disabled Norwegian pioneer divers compensated</li>
<li class="bull">No disabled foreign pioneer divers compensated <i>Source: NSDA, Norwegian govt</i> <br/></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="bo"><p>On one side, the widows and families of the dead divers speak of conditions that would have caused the most hardened of cowboys to choke.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Norwegian government, they argue, bears ultimate responsibility because it turned a blind eye to hazardous diving, and in some cases, knowingly approved of illegal working practices.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In short, they say their loved ones were treated as human guinea pigs.</p>
<p></p>
<p>On the other side, the Norwegian government, oil producers and diving companies deny any wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Ann Marie McCreath, from Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland, is one of those searching for answers.</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Unexplained accident</b></p>
<p></p>
<p>Thirty-seven years ago in March, her father, Mike Brushneen, was killed in an explosion on a Norwegian diving vessel, the Ocean Viking, in the North Sea.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><img style="WIDTH: 164px; HEIGHT: 207px" alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560156782?profile=original" width="628" height="300"/></p>
<p><font size="1">Mike Brushneen died in 1971 in an</font></p>
<p><font size="1">explosion on a Norwegian vessel</font></p>
<p></p>
<p>Ironically, he was never supposed to take part in that dive.</p>
<p></p>
<p>He had been promoted and was due to be relocated with his family to Aberdeen. But his employer was desperately close to pumping oil.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A man of Mike Brushneen's experience was required to help deal with a problem on the well heads, that was holding up production.</p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="bo"><p></p>
<p>Ten minutes before the end of the dive, he was killed in an unexplained accident.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Within days, his widow and three children were taken from the family home in Stavanger and flown to Newcastle upon Tyne.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Since then, Mrs McCreath has heard nothing from the Norwegian government, the oil producer or the dive company that employed her father.</p>
<p></p>
<p>There was no accident report and nothing on the death certificate to explain his death.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Her efforts to seek information from the authorities have drawn a blank.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"It's all about greed," she tells the BBC. "They really needed the money. They basically used those men as pieces of equipment."</p>
<p></p>
<p>"It's been horrendous. It destroyed our family. We had very little money as we grew up. My mother lived off a widow's pension, but we got nothing from the Norwegian government."</p>
<p></p>
<p>"It's hard to believe that as recently as 25 years ago, these things were going on in civilised countries."</p>
<p>Mrs McCreath's father is one of 17 divers killed on the job on the Norwegian continental shelf - 12 were British and one a US citizen.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The relatives of all four Norwegian divers have been paid compensation by the government in Oslo.</p>
<p>By contrast, only three foreign families - two British and the American - have received a payout.</p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="bo"><p>Six months ago, Ann Marie heard of Tom Wingen by chance when she entered her father's name in an internet search engine.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Mr Wingen is a spokesman for the Norwegian North Sea Divers Alliance NSDA and has been instrumental in bringing a class-action law suit against the Norwegian government.</p>
<p></p>
<p>He's one of 24 retired Norwegian pioneer divers who have gone to court to seek redress.</p>
<p>Collectively, they argue that they should be compensated for loss of earnings because of their work-related injuries. They say they contributed to Norway's economic transformation.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"I'm seeking recognition", Mr Wingen says. "Not just for Norwegians, but for the British too."</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Floodgates risk</b></p>
<p></p>
<p>The Norwegian government has already paid compensation to 123 disabled divers.</p>
<p>It has admitted it has a "moral and political" duty to pay for their injuries, but has not acknowledged any legal responsibility.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Observers say it is reluctant to do so, in case it opens the floodgates to hundreds of new claims.</p>
<p>Neither the Norwegian government nor the state-run oil regulator, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, nor the main diving companies will comment on the men's families' allegations while the class-action law suit is ongoing.</p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="ibox"></div>
<div class="ibox">“ <b>These guys had no respect for human life; they were motivated by greed</b> ” <br/></div>
<div class="ibox">Clare Lucas <br/>Daughter of diver, Roy Lucas</div>
<div class="bo"><p></p>
<p>Clare Lucas from Sheffield says it has been too easy for those responsible to avoid blame.</p>
<p>Ms Lucas lost her father, Roy, in 1983 in an explosion on a Norwegian semi-submersible oil rig, the Byford Dolphin.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Five people were killed in the accident.</p>
<p></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560156845?profile=original"/></p>
<p><font size="1">Roy Lucas and Billy Crammond died</font></p>
<p><font size="1">in 1983 along with 3 other men</font></p>
<p></p>
<p>She accuses the Norwegian government of turning a blind eye to poor safety standards.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"So many people have been killed and they got away with it," she says. "These guys had no respect for human life; they were motivated by greed."</p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="ibox"></div>
<div class="ibox">“ <b>The state admits a responsibility on the basis of moral and political aspects, but does not acknowledge any legal liability.</b> ” <br/></div>
<div class="ibox">Norwegian labour ministry statement</div>
<div class="bo"><p></p>
<p>"My mum got no financial help for me and my brother and sister from the Norwegian government."</p>
<p>At the time, another diver, Billy Crammond, was blamed for causing the Byford Dolphin explosion, in which he too was killed.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The shame drove Mr Crammond's widow, Ruth, to move away from her native Scotland.</p>
<p></p>
<p>It was only recently that she was given an alternative explanation for her husband's death through Tom Wingen's organisation, the NSDA.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"Just six weeks ago, I found out that if a certain bit of equipment had been installed the accident would never have happened," she says.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"I felt ashamed, I felt that people were crossing the road so they didn't have to talk to me, so I moved to England.</p>
<p></p>
</div>
<div class="bo"><p></p>
<p>"I am very angry and I am looking for someone to come to me and say 'we are very sorry for what we have put you through for 25 years'.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"Yes, they are talking about compensation and yes, it would help. But the most important thing to me is justice and the truth. All they wanted was the oil and the money."</p>
<p></p>
<p>Ruth has since moved back to Fife.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Billy Crammond's daughter, Linda, adds: "I am very angry because I have now heard that if they had only spent £10 [on equipment], my dad and other dads would be alive today."</p>
<p></p>
<p>The NSDA says poor record-keeping and deliberate stone-walling by the authorities are making it difficult for foreign divers and their families to pursue their claims.</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>'Americans dying'</b></p>
<p>Mr Wingen has heard from scores of Britons expressing an interest in joining the class-action lawsuit. At least 250 people - 150 Norwegians and 100 foreigners - have come forward.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Ann Marie McCreath says the more she learns about the dangers of deep sea diving, the more determined she is to fight.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"The North Sea is now one of safest places to dive," she says, "partly thanks to the trade unions."</p>
<p></p>
<p>"But these horror stories are still going on in the Gulf of Mexico", Ann Marie concludes. "They don't have any safety procedures and there are Americans dying there every month."</p>
</div>
<div class="footer"></div>
<div class="footer"></div>
<div class="footer"></div>
<div class="footer"></div>
<div class="footer"></div>
<div class="footer">Story from BBC NEWS:<br/><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7314283.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7314283.stm</a><br/><br/>Published: 2008/03/27 10:55:10 GMT<br/><br/>© BBC MMX<br/></div>
When Hell Freezes Over
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-03-31:2371245:BlogPost:68308
2010-03-31T18:32:59.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?</p>
<p>Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats…</p>
<p>The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?</p>
<p>Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.</p>
<p></p>
<p>One student, however, wrote the following:</p>
<p></p>
<p>First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.</p>
<p></p>
<p>With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This gives two possibilities:</p>
<p></p>
<p>1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.</p>
<p></p>
<p>2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.</p>
<p></p>
<p>So which is it?</p>
<p></p>
<p>If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I go out with you", and take into account the fact that I went out with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct . . . leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."</p>
<p></p>
<p>THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A."</p>
Santa Barbara’s Commercial Diving Heritage Runs Deep
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-03-19:2371245:BlogPost:66956
2010-03-19T22:51:57.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>Few realize the South Coast is the birthplace of the commerical deep-sea diving industry. Award-winning SBCC professor Don Barthelmess <font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(243,242,223)">aims to get the word out.</font></p>
<p><font size="1">By <span class="article_author"><font color="#A22921">Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk Staff Writer</font></span> | Posted on 05.03.2008</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Is necessity the mother of invention? Sometimes. But in the case of modern commercial deep-sea diving,…</p>
<p>Few realize the South Coast is the birthplace of the commerical deep-sea diving industry. Award-winning SBCC professor Don Barthelmess <font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(243,242,223)">aims to get the word out.</font></p>
<p><font size="1">By <span class="article_author"><font color="#A22921">Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk Staff Writer</font></span> | Posted on 05.03.2008</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Is necessity the mother of invention? Sometimes. But in the case of modern commercial deep-sea diving, the mother was oil, the father was money, and the home was Santa Barbara.</p>
<p>About 45 years ago, in a prelude to man’s successful quest to extract oil from the deep coastal waters off Santa Barbara, a group of locals developed revolutionary technology that, to this day, continues to define the field.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Meanwhile, few Santa Barbarans are aware of the historic role this area has played in shaping the industry. But one Santa Barbara City College marine diving technology professor aims to spread the word.</p>
<p>Don Barthelmess, this year’s winner of SBCC’s "Faculty Lecture Award" — the school’s highest honor for faculty — is known for a style of "constructivist" teaching that places a high value on getting students out of the classroom and into the ocean waters.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As this year’s recipient of the award, Barthelmess in early April had to deliver an honorary lecture on the topic. Barthelmess, who is on sabbatical, decided to focus on the local history angle, and spent three solid months gathering research, tracking down key players and even creating a Discovery Channel-style video showcasing historic footage mixed with fresh interviews.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“I let the story unfold from the players who were there,” said Barthelmess, speaking from his Mesa condominium that he shares with his wife and two teenagers. “That really makes it realistic — when it comes straight from the players’ mouths.”</p>
<p></p>
<p>Given the area’s historical link to the industry, it is no coincidence that SBCC boasts one of the most renowned marine diving technology programs in the world, and the only one at the community-college level in the nation. Every year, SBCC graduates about 30 marine diving technology students, many of whom land diving jobs around the world — jobs that can earn some experienced divers as much as $5,000 to $8,000 a month.</p>
<p>But there is a flip side: The work is dangerous, and not well-suited for someone looking to stay in one place.</p>
<p>“It’s a young person’s career,” said Barthelmess, 48, who has taught the class for nearly 20 years. “It can definitely segue into different things. … It’s not a 9-to-5 type of environment. But that’s what makes it interesting for most people.”</p>
<p></p>
<p>It used to be that a diver could find plenty of steady work in Santa Barbara. But the days of South Coast offshore oil exploration peaked in the 1970s and early ‘80s. In the intervening years, the number of major diving contractors in the area has shrunk from seven to one, the Oxnard-based Divecon, which does mostly routine maintenance work. (The president of the company, Ted Roache, is a graduate of the SBCC program and is also a Mesa resident.)</p>
<p></p>
<p>The story of how Santa Barbara became the birthplace of modern commercial diving is detailed, but boils down to how the ocean waters here harbor a unique triumvirate of resources: oil, the Channel Islands, and a giant underwater snail known as abalone, Barthelmess says.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Although offshore diving as the world currently knows it started in Santa Barbara in the early 1960s, it did exist before then. Before the revolutionary changes, however, commercial diving was a micro-industry, centered largely on the collection of abalone, which were harvested for seafood.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In the waters near Santa Barbara, the Channel Islands were an abalone magnet, and as such attracted a small group of professional divers who were paid to pluck the mollusks from underwater rocks.</p>
<p>At the time, divers could not submerge themselves at a depth of anything beyond 250 feet, because at that point the air pumping into their hoses from ships on the surface contained nitrogen, as does all the air we breathe. At great depths, the nitrogen morphs into a narcotic.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“It’s similar to having too much to drink — it clouds your judgment,” said Barthelmess, who went on to describe a disconcerting occasion during his career in which he lost track of time deep under water and tightened a screw for 20 minutes when he thought it had taken only five.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In 1997, the state closed the abalone fisheries for commercial and sport divers in Southern California, partly because the mollusk had severely declined in population. (Barthelmess keeps a cereal-bowl-sized abalone shell that he uses for a cigar ashtray on the table of his deck at home.)</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, an enterprising young Channel-Islands abalone diver had an idea. His name was Dan Wilson.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Back then it was common knowledge that beneath the ocean of water lay another ocean of untapped oil. Wilson, who died in August at his home in Montana from a progressive illness at age 78, knew if someone could figure out how to break the 250-foot barrier, deep-sea divers would be able to do the work that was necessary to drill for oil. This included guiding giant drill bits to their targets on the sea floor. Wilson also knew that breaking the barrier would pique the lucrative interest of the oil companies.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A gifted diver, Wilson had been trained by an ex-Navy master at the Sparling School of Deepsea Diving in Los Angeles. The Navy had long been able to plunge men to depths of 400 feet and beyond by supplementing oxygen with helium, thereby reducing the narcotic dangers. But the Navy used gear that was too heavy for commercial diving — the helmets alone weighed 100 pounds. Wilson set out to create a hybrid.</p>
<p></p>
<p>With the help of a still-existing company called Santa Barbara Radiator, Wilson soldered a standard scuba regulator mouthpiece inside his abalone helmet. At the time, commercial divers did not use regulators; the air was pumped straight into their helmets. With Wilson’s design, they would continue to breathe that air, but breathe the oxy-helium mix off the regulator once on bottom.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Then, in a daring move, Wilson and a small group of divers put the device to the test by attempting the unthinkable: a 400-foot plunge, which would set a world record for the deepest commercial dive. It worked.</p>
<p>“When that happened, it opened the eyes of the oil companies,” said Barthelmess.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In 1962, Wilson, and three other Santa Barbarans — Lad Handelman, Whitey Stefens and Ken Elmes — each put in $10,000 and formed General Offshore Divers. Immediately, they began snapping up major contracts, their first being Phillips Petroleum. (Handelman and Stefens still live in Santa Barbara, and both attended the April 9 lecture.) Other diving companies followed suit.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In a matter of six years, demand surged from a need for 150 divers worldwide to 5,000.</p>
<p>“It started what I call the Santa Barbara helium rush,” Barthelmess said.</p>
<p></p>
<p>To help meet the demand, SBCC started its Marine Diving Technology program in 1968.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Meanwhile, to better allow divers to perform long deep-sea missions, Wilson invented another piece of diving gear known as a commercial diving bell, a kind of underwater elevator that brings divers to great depths while dry.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This led to another problem, however: The diving gear was too bulky for the divers to fit comfortably into the bell.</p>
<p>In 1965, yet another pair of Santa Barbarans — Bob Kirby and Bev Morgan — solved the problem by developing sleeker equipment. To this day, the Santa Barbara-based Kirby Morgan Dive Systems is the world’s leading manufacturer of commercial diving gear.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Later, Handelman — who now lives on Miramonte Drive, up on TV Hill — set out to launch his own company, Oceaneering International. Oceaneering ultimately bought out a company that had purchased General Offshore Diving. By the 1980s, it had become the largest commercial diving contractor in the world. (Today that claim belongs to Caldive International, which also was launched on Stearns Wharf by Handelman. Both are now publicly traded.)</p>
<p></p>
<p>“They didn’t do this just to be cool,” said Barthelmess. “There was a driving force behind it — it was market-driven.”</p>
<p></p>
<p>If the work was adventurous, it was also dangerous. During 1960s and ‘70s, Barthelmess said the South Coast area witnessed at least 20 deaths. In 1975, the SBCC program experienced its only student fatality to date, when a pupil went unconscious underwater for unknown reasons. (The accident report was inconclusive, and the college was never deemed responsible.)</p>
<p></p>
<p>One of the biggest hazards of diving is ascending to the surface too quickly. When this happens, a diver runs the risk that tiny bubbles of gas will form in his bloodstream, like a bottle of fizzy water opened too quickly. The results can be gruesome.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The symptoms, known in the industry lingo as “getting bent,” start with pain in the joint areas. If bubbles lodge themselves in the central nervous system, divers can suffer from paralysis, extreme fatigue, vision impairment, loss of bladder and bowel control, and worse.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>When this happens, the only cure is for a diver to sit for hours in a decompression chamber. Fortunately, Barthelmess said the industry has become much safer over the years, and getting “bent” has become much rarer.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“Older divers will sometimes brag about getting bent — they wear it like a badge,” said Barthelmess, shaking his head. “That’s like saying, ‘I’m a carpenter and I have chopped off my fingers with a skill saw five times.’ Chances are you’ve done something wrong.”</p>
<p></p>
<p>These days, most diving work exists outside of Santa Barbara. Right now many students get jobs in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil exploration and production is thriving.</p>
<p></p>
<p>After several weeks of classes, the students and instructors go to Stearns Wharf each Monday morning, where they set up camp and dive off the wood planks across from Moby Dick Restaurant.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Eric Manfredonia, a journeyman tile-setter and San Marcos High graduate, said he learned about the class from his mother, who saw an ad at a job fair.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“This just seemed like more interesting work,” he said, sitting on a bench in full gear minus helmet after working with an underwater welder.</p>
<p></p>
<p>For Manfredonia and other students who have lived in California for at least one year, the class costs $20 a unit. (To obtain a marine tech certificate, the total cost of the nine-month program amounts to about $2,100. For a full two-year Associate-in-Science degree, the in-state cost is $2,750. For out-of-state students — who make up roughly 40 percent of the enrollment — the cost for the two-year program is about $13,000.)</p>
<p>Not all of the students are from in-state — or are men, for that matter. Robyn Hynes came to SBCC from Long Island, N.Y., where her father used to own a large seafood shop.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>While she admitted that having less upper body strength than her male counterparts made it more difficult, Hynes said the biggest challenge for everybody to overcome is the psychology of diving.</p>
<p>“Being down there messes with your head a little bit,” she said.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Although now a tenured professor, Barthelmess himself has enjoyed a successful career in the field.</p>
<p>A certified diver since the late 1970s, he later became trained and certified to pilot a one-man submarine known as a Mantis. In 1983, while working for New York-based International Underwater Contractors, Barthelmess set a national record for the deepest working dive, piloting a Mantis into 1,979 feet of water on a drilling mission for Conoco in the Gulf of Mexico. (The record for an atmospheric diving suit is now around 2,300 feet, he said.)</p>
<p>It was during this same two-month operation that Barthelmess experienced his closest brush with death. A giant, half-mile-long drill had become stuck in the ocean mudline, and the oil company decided to break it loose by pounding it with a pile-driver.<br/><br/>Meanwhile, Barthelmess was manning the Mantis alongside the giant drill, submerged in 1,900 feet of water. When the pile-driver slammed the drill pipe, something happened that no one had anticipated: It buckled into a “C” shape, thereby hurling itself within inches of Barthelmess’ pod.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“I obviously screamed ‘All stop!’” he said. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. We had been up for 62 hours straight.”</p>
<p>In 1980 he moved to Santa Barbara, and started working in the waters of the South Coast, eventually getting promoted to a management post for the same company. But in 1989, he saw a posting for a professor position at SBCC, and applied. He got the job. He later served as the department’s program director from 1994 to 2003. In 1996, Barthelmess redesigned the Marine Diving Technology program to meet rapid technological changes in the field. Two years later, it received the Exemplary Program Award from the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In 2003, he completed an undergraduate degree in occupational studies at Long Beach State University and later earned a graduate degree in educational technology from Pepperdine University.</p>
<p>Barthelmess was nominated for the award by students and fellow faculty. A small committee of eight senior faculty members made the ultimate decision, which, by design, comes as a surprise to the winners. Barthelmess was no exception. He still remembers coming out of an SBCC locker-room after a workout, only to see eight beaming senior colleagues with champagne. At that point, Barthelmess realized that he had won the award.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“I said, ‘Oh, no!’” he remembers. One of them answered, “Oh, yes!”</p>
RADIATION DANGER FOUND IN OILFIELDS ACROSS THE NATION
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-03-08:2371245:BlogPost:65054
2010-03-08T17:20:52.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<h6 class="byline">In the 1980's at the bequest of Firefighter Unions, firefighters were dying at younger ages and cancer was not listed as a job hazard. A nationwide study was conducted to determine if firefighters suffered from higher rates of cancer than the general population. The published data found that cancer rates among firefighters were up to 300 times greater than the general population, despite the fact that firefighters wore breathing apparatus and layers of protective gear when in…</h6>
<h6 class="byline">In the 1980's at the bequest of Firefighter Unions, firefighters were dying at younger ages and cancer was not listed as a job hazard. A nationwide study was conducted to determine if firefighters suffered from higher rates of cancer than the general population. The published data found that cancer rates among firefighters were up to 300 times greater than the general population, despite the fact that firefighters wore breathing apparatus and layers of protective gear when in the toxic environments of their job. I often wonder if divers are not subjected to similar toxins in their work environment.</h6>
<h6 class="byline">By KEITH SCHNEIDER, Special to The New York Times</h6>
<h6 class="dateline">Published: December 3, 1990</h6>
<br />
<div class="articleTools"><div class="box"><div class="inset"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="articleBody"><p><strong>MORGAN CITY, La.—</strong> Radium from the earth's crust has been brought to the surface in decades of oil drilling, causing widespread radioactive contamination of the nation's oilfields.</p>
<p>The problem is only now being examined by the oil industry and the Federal Government, which has no regulations to deal with oilfield radiation.</p>
<p>A naturally occurring radioactive material, radium has been found in every oil-producing region in the country, from Alaska to Florida, causing low levels of radiation in pumps, pipes and storage tanks. The radium leaches from mineral deposits into water that comes to the surface with oil. Worst in the South</p>
<p>But the contamination is worst in the South and along the Gulf Coast, where radium concentrations in the water are much higher than in other regions. Compounding the problem in the South is that for years oil companies routinely poured billions of gallons of the water into thousands of unlined ponds before pumping it back into the ground or releasing it into wetlands.</p>
<p>"When I got here in 1988, this radium contamination in the oilfields was the only environmental problem that I had never heard about," said Dr. Paul Templet, the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. "At first I didn't believe it. But we investigated it, found out it was true and now it's our newest environmental problem."</p>
<p>The oil industry, he added, "can no longer use the environment as a free disposal system." Questions About Health Risk</p>
<p>State environmental officials do not know the extent of the health risk to oil workers who handle drilling equipment contaminated by radium or to people exposed to radium-contaminated water and soil. But they are worried that exposure to radium raises the risks of cancer and other illnesses. The oil industry contends that the risk is minimal or virtually nonexistent.</p>
<p>Tests of wells in Louisiana and other Southern states have found that the oil-water mixture pumped to the surface contains radiation levels 5 to 30 times higher than the Government allows to be released from nuclear power plants. In contrast to the heavily regulated nuclear power industry, where emissions are strictly controlled and workers heavily protected, radiation in the oil industry has been wholly uncontrolled.</p>
<p>Tests this year on four ponds, or oil pits, in Louisiana found that three of them contained radium concentrations in the soil at least as high as those found at abandoned uranium mills in the West and old nuclear weapons plants in the Midwest and East. The Government is now spending billions of dollars to clean up these mills and weapons plants, and experts suggest that if the Government holds the oil industry to the same standards of safety, the costs of cleaning up oilfield radiation could also reach into the billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Buck Steingraber, a geologist for the Mobil Oil Corporation and chairman of a committee at the American Petroleum Institute that is studying the radium issue, said: "I do not believe the oil and gas industry is going to shirk their responsiblity for cleanup where it's necessary. The question of cost is going to be determined by the standards of safety that are set by regulators." Abandoned Oil Pits</p>
<p>Louisiana officials do not know how many oil pits exist, but most are in the marshes in the southern part of the state or in the pine forests of the north. Many have been abandoned by their owners and are seldom fenced off to keep people or animals away.</p>
<p>Scientists consider the oil pits to be biological dead zones, where no vegetation or wildlife can exist. Officials say the greatest health threats from the pits come from airborne radium dust or from radon, a colorless, ordorless radioactive gas produced from the natural decay of radium. Environmental officials are concerned that if the pits are filled in and homes and businesses built are built over them, the buildings could be contaminated by radon, which has been shown to be a cause of lung cancer.</p>
<p>"There are 70,000 active wells and 120,000 inactive wells in the state of Louisiana," said Glenn Miller, Administrator of Radiation Protection Division at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. "We don't know how many of them could be contaminated. This problem has been out there for years and nobody wanted to talk about it."</p>
<p>Outside the South, particularly in California, Pennsylvania and Alaska, the use of oil pits was prohibited or stopped early in the development of the industry because the excess water contains high concentrations of salt and toxic oil-based chemicals. In these states the contaminated water is pumped back into the ground.</p>
<p>But in the southern oil states like Texas, the industry has operated for most of its history with virtually no environmental controls. This has been especially true here in Louisiana, which is only now trying to address the situation. It has adopted new regulations requiring oil companies to close oil pits by 1993 and is about to propose regulations to require companies to halt discharges of the contaminated water into wetlands and bays. Other Southern states are also considering environmental measures.</p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency is conducting its own study of the problem.</p>
<p>Although the oil industry acknowledges that it has known for at least 50 years that radium is present in water pumped up with oil, uncontrolled contamination from radium was not seen as an important health and environmental issue until April 1986, when an oilfield worker found radioactive pipes in a well in Mississippi. Pipes Used on Playgrounds</p>
<p>An investigation of the problem revealed contamination not only in the field but also in the yards where the pipes were cleaned and in nearly 30 schools around the state where old oilfield pipes were used in playground equipment, railings and awning supports. The old pipes were also used to train welders in some of Mississippi's vocational-technical classes.</p>
<p>One pipe cleaning yard found to be contaminated was in Laurel, Miss. The Shell Oil Company and Chevron USA Inc., two of the yard's biggest clients, paid a total of $100,000 to dig up the soil and haul it to Chevron's uranium mill in Texas. The yard's owners and former workers have filed suit against Shell and Chevron, asserting that the companies were negligent in not issuing warnings about radiation in the pipes. One of the suits is scheduled to be tried in March in Federal District Court in Hattiesburg, Miss.</p>
<p>Radium has been recognized since the early decades of the 20th century as one of the most toxic radioactive substances. It is most dangerous when particles are inhaled or swallowed. Radium emits alpha and gamma radiation, and once the particles are lodged in tissue, they bombard surrounding cells with damaging radiation that can disrupt the biochemical processes that control growth and reproduction. Can Cause Cancer</p>
<p>In the 1920's, scientists discovered that exposure to high concentrations of radium caused lung and bone cancer and other severe bone diseases in workers in New Jersey who painted luminous dials on watches with paint made from radium. More recent studies of residents in Iowa, North Carolina and Florida who were exposed to much lower concentrations of radium in drinking water pumped from wells found that the rates for birth defects and some forms of cancer were above national averages.</p>
<p>The discovery of extensive radium contamination in the oil industry has provoked a new debate over the health threats from exposure to low levels of naturally occurring radioactive materials.</p>
<p>The American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry trade group, has begun a study to look at the health risks to pipeyard workers and to the public.</p>
<p>The institute conducted one study last year that showed that 99 percent of all oil equipment tested across the country produced less than 2 millirem per hour of gamma radation, the level at which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires companies to protect their workers.</p>
<p>But state officials across the South have found old pipes and equipment, some used in public buildings, that emit radiation levels as high as 8 millirem per hour. If someone stood close to thes pipes for four hours they would receive as much radiation as one bone X-ray.</p>
<p>Tests by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality have attempted to assess the threat from contaminated oil pits. In one pit southeast of Houma and east of Morgan City, the department found radium readings as high as 533 picocuries per gram in the soil. Natural background radium in Louisiana's soils and sediments range from 4 to 8 picocuries per gram.</p>
<p>The high radium levels found in the pit are comparable to those found at the nuclear weapons production plants and uranium mills around the country, which are now being cleaned up by the Energy Department. The department considers radium levels in soil at its plants safe if they are 5 picocuries per gram or less.</p>
<p>Experts suggest that the greatest potential threat to workers in the oil industry comes from cleaning radium-contaminated debris from drilling equipment. Just as dirt accumulates inside a kitchen drain pipe, sludges containing radium collect on the inside of oil drilling pipes and on the bottom of tanks. The sludge forms rust that is radioactive enough to be classified as low-level nuclear waste. Contaminated Dust in Air</p>
<p>When the pipes are cleaned, radium-contaminated dust fills the air and can be inhaled or swallowed. At a pipe cleaning yard in Lafayette, Louisiana's radiation inspectors discovered radium levels high enough that an employee working full time in the area could absorb more radiation than the average nuclear industry worker.</p>
<p>Last year, Louisiana became the first state to require pipe cleaning companies to protect workers with masks.</p>
<p>Here in Morgan City, 90 miles southwest of New Orleans a center for Louisiana's offshore oil activity the Shell Oil Company has stirred protests with a plan to dispose of radioactive oilfield wastes by pumping them back down an abandoned well 40 miles offshore, near Eugene Island.</p>
<p>Shell is storing pipe-cleaning wastes in more than 1,600 barrels at an industrial yard here near the center of town. Shell executives said they planned to build a processing plant to mix the pipe rust with drilling mud. That mix would then be shipped to the abandoned well and pumped back into the ground.</p>
<p>They say disposing the wastes in abandoned wells is safer and less expensive than shipping and storing the wastes, at a cost of $300 to $500 a barrel, at a site in the desert 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. The site is the nation's only repository for storing naturally occurring radioactive materials. Three other sites, in Washington State, Nevada and South Carolina, are licensed to accept the waste but have discouraged it, saying the waste would take up too much room.</p>
<p>The proposal to use the abandoned wells has gained support from the Department of the Interior, but some Morgan City residents say they are concerned that if Shell's proposal is approved by the state and Federal governments, Morgan City could become the center for processing radioactive wastes for disposal offshore.</p>
<p>"We're just finding out about this now, and it's got us nervous," said Merlin Price Sr., a Morgan City resident and a law-enforcement officer in St. Mary Parish. "They say it's going to be safe, but nothing has been proven. It's the first time anything like this has been done in Louisiana and it's all happened very quietly."</p>
</div>
The Problem with Stainless Steel
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-03-08:2371245:BlogPost:65033
2010-03-08T13:54:54.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p><font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fff4f2">The following article appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of the "Old" Underwater Magazine. Dr Harvey P. Hicks, PhD. was a regular contributor to Underwater Magazine and a column in each issue called The Corrosion Column. This article addresses the problems with Stainless Steel.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">UnderWater Magazine Article reprint: Summer 1999…</font></b></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p><font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fff4f2">The following article appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of the "Old" Underwater Magazine. Dr Harvey P. Hicks, PhD. was a regular contributor to Underwater Magazine and a column in each issue called The Corrosion Column. This article addresses the problems with Stainless Steel.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">UnderWater Magazine Article reprint: Summer 1999</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">"Corrosion Control: Galvanic Corrosion and Stainless Steel"</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">By</font></b> <font face="Times New Roman">- Harvey P. Hack, PhD.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Galvanic corrosion is the most frequent cause of unexpected corrosion failures in seawater. It has caused</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">failures of ship fittings and deckhouse structures, fasteners, hull plating, propellers, shafts, valves,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">condensers, and piping. In sea atmospheres, galvanic corrosion causes failures of roofing, gutters, and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">car trim. The reason that galvanic corrosion causes so many failures is that it can occur any time that two</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">different metals are in electrical contact in seawater. Since most structures and devices are made of more</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">than one kind of metal, this diversity of materials is common and frequently overlooked in corrosion</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">prevention activities. Let’s look at why this type of corrosion happens, and how to identify it.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Metals in seawater corrode by releasing metal ions into the water around them. This happens at different</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">rates for different metals, but in all cases the metal must first lose one or more electrons for it to be able</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">to go into solution in the water. These electrons travel to another part of the wetted metal surface and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">react with something in the water, usually dissolved oxygen. The balance between the reaction where</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">metal ions go into the water (the anodic reaction) and the reaction that uses up the electrons generated</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">(the cathodic reaction) causes the metal to sit in a specific narrow range of voltages. This voltage range</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">can be measured, and ma y be different for each metal in each type of water. When the voltages for each</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">metal in a specific type of water such as seawater are all collected into one place, this collection of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">voltages is called a galvanic series. A galvanic series can be as simple as a list of metals in order of their</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">voltages, or as complicated as a graph with voltage ranges.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The position of a metal in the galvanic series does not say how fast it will corrode, but it does say</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">something about what happens to it if it is electrically connected to another metal in water. Any time</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">metals with different voltages are electrically connected in seawater, a current will want to flow between</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">them until they have the same voltage. This is the way a battery works.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The metal that donates electrons to this current flow, the one that has a more negative voltage to begin</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">with, will have its corrosion rate increased and is called the anode. The other metal, which has a more</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">positive voltage to begin with, receives electrons and will have its corrosion rate reduced. It’s called the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">cathode. The more negative metal anode is said to undergo galvanic corrosion, while the more positive</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">metal cathode is said to experience cathodic protection. So, to prevent galvanic corrosion the metals</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">must either be at the same voltage before they are coupled, not be placed in electrical contact, or not be</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">immersed in an electrically conductive water like seawater.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Designers who want to prevent corrosion usually like to make structures and devices out of corrosion</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">resistant materials. However, they may not consider the interaction between the different materials that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">they choose. For example, some aluminum alloys do not corrode very fast in seawater, and are used for</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">boat hulls. Some bronze alloys also do not corrode ve ry fast in seawater, and are used for propellers. As</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">long as the propeller does not come in electrical contact with the hull, everything works well. But if the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">two come in contact through a bearing, gearing, or the boat engine itself, the galvanic series tells us what</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">will happen. The aluminum is very negative compared to the bronze, so the electrical contact will cause</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">the aluminum hull to be an anode and its corrosion rate to increase, causing heavy pitting and eventual</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">failure of the aluminum hull.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The galvanic series tells us that the more negative metal will corrode more quickly when electrically</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">coupled in seawater, but not how fast. Two metals far apart in the series will not necessarily experience</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">more corrosion than two metals close together. Finding the rate of corrosion in a galvanic couple</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">requires knowledge of polarization, the ability of a metal to change voltage while accepting or giving up</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">a certain amount of electrons. A metal that polarizes easily, that changes voltage quickly with a small</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">amount of current, will not cause much corrosion of metals coupled to it. It also will not have much</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">increase in corrosion when it is the anode in a couple. An example of a metal that polarizes easily in</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">seawater is titanium. Metals that are harder to polarize, such that it is hard to change their voltage when</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">current is applied, will cause or experience a lot of galvanic corrosion, depending on the other metal in</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">the couple. Examples of metals that are hard to polarize include copper alloys and some aluminum</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">alloys. So, a piece of aluminum will corrode faster if it is coupled to hard-to-polarize copper than it will</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">if coupled to easy-to-polarize titanium in seawater, even though the voltage of the titanium is farther</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">away from aluminum than the voltage for copper.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The larger the wetted surface area of the cathode, the worse will be the corrosion on the anode. For</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">example, steel corrosion will be increased by contact with copper, according to the galvanic series. A</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">steel fastener used to hold a copper plate will corrode quickly, because there is a large area of copper</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">and a small area of steel. However, a copper fastener will not cause much increase in corrosion of a steel</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">plate because its area is so small compared to the steel. This effect was first discovered by Sir Humphry</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Davy when he was exploring attaching copper plates to ship bottoms to prevent barnacle growth. This</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">leads to an interesting rule of thumb: always paint the cathode. To slow down galvanic corrosion on the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">anode, you can paint the cathode (which is not corroding) to decrease its wetted surface area. Painting</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">the anode will only increase its corrosion rate at defects in the paint.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Recognizing galvanic corrosion is not always easy. If a metal normally corrodes by pitting, it will just</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">pit faster when it’s the anode in a galvanic couple. If it normally corrodes uniformly, it will do so more</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">quickly when coupled. So galvanic corrosion can’t be recognized by the form the corrosion attack takes.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Sometimes galvanic corrosion can be recognized because it is usually worse close to the cathode that is</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">causing it. In the copper fastener case above, the steel will corrode more quickly close to the fastener</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">than far from it. Galvanic corrosion will usually be worse near joints between dissimilar metals. But the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">best way to recognize galvanic corrosion is to know the order of metals in the galvanic series and look</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">for the more positive metals in the vicinity of the corrosion failure. If they are there, they likely</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">contributed to the problem.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">Corrosion of Stainless Steels</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Aside from steel, stainless steels are the most common construction metals. There are many different</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">types of stainless steels, divided into five major categories by crystal structure type. The austenitic</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">stainless steel alloys, with AISI numbers from 200 to 399, are usually nonmagnetic. The alloys with</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">numbers of 300 or above contain more nickel than those with numbers below 300, and have better</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">seawater resistance. These 300-series alloys are very corrosion resistant, and are used for architectural</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">applications, boat topside fittings, and household goods such as sinks and silverware. The 300-series</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">alloys will usually show no appreciable corrosion in fresh water or sea atmosphere. The 400-series</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">ferritic and the martensitic alloys are usua lly magnetic, stronger, and less corrosion resistant than the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">austenitic alloys. They are used for knife blades and certain hand tools. These alloys will sometimes</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">suffer from mild surface rusting when exposed to fresh water or sea atmosphere. Duplex and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">precipitation hardenable stainless steels are specialty alloys. Some are very strong and not very</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">corrosion resistant, such as 17-4PH, and others have intermediate strength and corrosion resistance</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">between the austenitic and the ferritic or martensitic alloys. There are some specialty alloys that are very</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">corrosion resistant because they add more special elements to the alloy, and are consequently somewhat</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">more expensive than standard grades, such as the austenitic 6XN.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Stainless steels get their corrosion resistance by the formation of a very thin surface film, called the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">passive film, which forms on the surface in the presence of oxygen. Therefore, stainless steels usually</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">have poor corrosion resistance in low-oxygen environments, such as under deposits, in mud, or in tight</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">places, called crevices, where structures or hardware are attached. This is particularly true in seawater,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">where the chlorides from the salt will attack and destroy the passive film faster than it can reform in low</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">oxygen areas. All of the stainless steels except the best of the specialty alloys will suffer from pitting or</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">crevice corrosion when immersed in seawater. One of the best 300-series stainless steels is type 316.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Even this alloy will, if unprotected, start corroding under soft washers, in o-ring grooves, or any other</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">tight crevice area in as little as one day, and it is not unusual to have penetration of a tenth of an inch in</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">a crevice area after only 30 days in seawater. If water flows fast past a stainless steel, more oxygen is</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">delivered to the stainless steel and it corrodes less. For this reason, stainless steels have been</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">successfully used for impeller blades and propellers. These need to be protected from corrosion when</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">there is no flow.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Painting stainless steels usually does not stop the crevice corrosion; it will occur any place where there</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">is a scratch or nick in the paint. For this reason, I usually recommend against using any stainless steel</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">except certain specialty alloys in seawater for more than a few hours at a time. There is a strong</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">tendency to use in seawater the same materials that work well in fresh water or sea atmosphere, so that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">types 303, 304, and 316 stainless steel are often used for undersea applications. They will also usually</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">fail if the exposure is long enough, unless they are in continuous solid electrical contact with a material</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">that will provide them with cathodic protection such as steel or aluminum. As soon as the electrical</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">contact is broken, the steel will corrode.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Crevice corrosion of stainless steels happens irregularly, but when it occurs it is very destructive. For</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">example, if 10 stainless steel screws are put in a plate in seawater, it may be that all but one will be unattacked,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">as bright and shiny as the day they were made. That one screw, however, may well have attack</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">over one quarter inch deep in only a few months. The attack will occur in crevices where it can’t be</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">seen, and will destroy the screw from the inside out. This is because the corrosion starts inside the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">crevice between the screw and the metal, where it can’t be seen, then proceeds inside the metal where</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">there is no oxygen, sometimes hollowing out the part or giving it the appearance of Swiss cheese.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Even the best of stainless steels may have its corrosion resistance affected by the way it is made. For</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">example, 316 stainless steel is very corrosion resistant in fresh water, but when it is welded, the areas</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">next to the welds experience a thermal cycle that can cause that material to corrode. This is called</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">sensitization, and can lead to the appearance of knife- line attack next to welds. This is why certain heat</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">treatments should be avoided with this and similar alloys. On the other hand, a low-carbon version of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">316, called 316L, will not be sensitized, and can be welded with little effect on corrosion properties.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Austenitic stainless steels can suffer from stress corrosion cracking to various degrees when fully</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">immersed in seawater. Stress corrosion cracking is cracking without much metal loss in the presence of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">a continuous applied load in the environment. If a susceptible material fails by cracking and has</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">numerous side cracks besides the one causing the failure, stress corrosion cracking should be suspected.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The ferritic and duplex stainless steels usually do not have this problem.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><b><font face="Times New Roman">Questions and Answers</font></b></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">When buying stainless steels, some companies claim that they passivate them. What is passivation, why</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">is it done, and does it make the stainless steel corrode less?</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">When a stainless steel is passivated, it is put into a bath of an oxidizing acid, such as nitric acid.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Stainless steels get their corrosion resistance from the formation of a very thin corrosion product film of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">uncertain composition called the passive film. It was observed that when stainless steels were first</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">treated with an oxidizing acid, they would later appear to corrode less than if they had not been treated.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">It was thought that the oxidizing acid somehow thickened the passive film on the stainless steel to make</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">the steel more corrosion resistant. Therefore, the treatment was called passivation. We now know that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">this treatment doesn’t affect the passive film in a way that lasts very long in water. The film will</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">stabilize at the same thickness when exposed to the same water whether or not passiviation has been</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">done. Then why do stainless steels appear to corrode less after passivation? The oxidizing acid treatment</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">is essentially a cleaning process that removes small particles of iron and other impurities that have</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">gotten on the surface of the stainless steel during the rolling process, or are in the structure of the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">stainless steel itself and happen to be protruding from the surface. These particles corrode in waters that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">normally don’t corrode stainless steels, leaving behind rust or other corrosion products that are readily</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">visible. It looks like the stainless steel is corroding when, in fact, it is only the surface particles that</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">corrode. Cleaning these particles off with the acid treatment means that they will not later corrode and</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">leave behind ugly rust spots. It therefore seems that the stainless steel is corroding less. Some people</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">believe that surface particle corrosion can start pitting corrosion, but controlled tests show that pitting</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">will still happen even if all of these particles are removed.</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">The reason for the passivation treatment now becomes clear. It makes the stainless steel look prettier</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">after it has been exposed to the water for a while. It actually doesn’t affect the corrosion of the stainless</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">steel itself, however. The treatment is fairly cheap, and usually doesn’t hurt anything, so manufacturers</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">usually go ahead and do it, just to avoid later questions about "rust" spots forming on their stainless</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">steel. Passivation can be a problem for parts with tight crevices that can trap the acid used. Over time,</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">these acids can cause crevice corrosion. For parts without crevices, passivation does have a benefit if the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">stainless steel is to be given some later treatment for which a clean surface is necessary. For example, it</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">is prudent to use passivation before painting or plating over the stainless steel.</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Some divers meticulously rinse their equipment off with fresh water after diving in salt water, and others</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">don’t. I haven’t seen any problems with my equipment if I forget to rinse it off once in a while. Does</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">this rinsing really do any good?</font></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">Yes. The chlorides in salt water cause the stainless steel and aluminum alloys that your equipment is</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">made from to pit or to corrode in crevices where oxygen access is limited (and where, by the way, you</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">can’t see it happen until it’s too late). When you take your equipment out of the water, oxygen can</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">usually get to all of the crevice areas, which stops any crevice corrosion. However, if a crevice is very</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">deep, trapped saltwater might cause corrosion to continue. Corrosion in these deep crevices will be</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">stopped by a fresh water rinse. Because your equipment is made from a lot of different metals, galvanic</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">corrosion can also be a problem as long as the different metals are covered with salt water. The lower</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">conductivity of fresh water reduces the amount of galvanic corrosion that can occur. Finally, the salt</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">deposits that form when seawater evaporates are not only ugly, but also hygroscopic, that is, they absorb</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">moisture from the air. Salt deposits absorb enough moisture for the surface to become wet when the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">relative humidity exceeds 50-75 percent. Your equipment will start to corrode when it is sitting in the</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">shed and you think it is dry. This is the same reason why cars in the northeast corrode more than they do</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">in the south. Road salts form a layer on the car that causes the car to corrode every time the relative</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">humidity goes over 50 percent, even sitting in the garage. So, rinse your equipment. Take good care of</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">it, your life depends on it. And while you’re at it, take your car to the car wash after you’ve driven it on</font></p>
<p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman">salty roads and it will last longer too.</font> <b><font face="Times New Roman">UW</font></b></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"><i><font face="Times New Roman">Dr. Harvey P. Hack, Northrop Grumman Corp., hosts a column on corrosion in each issue of</font></i></p>
<p align="left"><i><font face="Times New Roman">UnderWater. If you have questions, tips, or comments, write to The Corrosion Column, Underwater</font></i></p>
<p align="left"><i><font face="Times New Roman">Magazine, 5222 FM 1960 W, Suite 112, Houston, TX 77069 or email</font></i></p>
<p align="left"><i><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="mailto:harvey_p_hack@mail.northgrum.com">harvey_p_hack@mail.northgrum.com</a>.</font></i></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left"></p>
OLD SCHOOL
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-02-17:2371245:BlogPost:62565
2010-02-17T17:00:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p><font size="2">The following article was written by Stephen Harrigan and appeared in the May 1981 issue of Texas Monthly Magazine. It gives a the newbie dive school grads a peek at what Ace, Flynn, Chuck, Bill, etc. are talking about when they refer to "old school." I especially like the comment about a "good tender." Enjoy ~ Diva.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">DIVING FOR DOLLARS</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Just off the Loop in Southwest Houston stands an…</font></p>
<p><font size="2">The following article was written by Stephen Harrigan and appeared in the May 1981 issue of Texas Monthly Magazine. It gives a the newbie dive school grads a peek at what Ace, Flynn, Chuck, Bill, etc. are talking about when they refer to "old school." I especially like the comment about a "good tender." Enjoy ~ Diva.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">DIVING FOR DOLLARS</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Just off the Loop in Southwest Houston stands an immense steel water tank, forth feet high, crowned with a narrow catwalk where human forms hunch in constrictive suits and teethered helmets. This is where the education of a deep-sea diver begins.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">The place is called the Ocean Corporation. Of the twelve commercial diving schools in the country, it is the only one located on the Gulf Coast, where most divers are hired and where most of the offshore rigs that need their services are located. In Houston alone, there are eleven commercial diving companies in which the graduates of the school may reasonably expect to find jobs.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">The offshore technology boom of the last twenty years has completely changed the role of the commercial diver. He no longer spends his entire career trudging about the bottom of a muddy harbor in a canvas suit, scraping hulls or blowing up obstructions. Most of the business is now offshore, helping to build or maintain drilling rigs and other oil production equipment. In the Gulf alone there are 248 rigs requiring constant inspection and frequent repair of stressed or corroded parts.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">When a graduate of the Ocean Corporation gets a job with a diving company, he usually works for two years maintaining equipment in the company shop or serving as a tender to other divers. Once he has "broken out" as a diver, though, he is on his way to accumulating his own little stash of petro-dollars. The pay scale for commercial divers is complex and variable, taking into account the depth at which work is performed and the amount of time spent in various pressure chambers. The average diver plying his trade on an offshore rig makes $30,000 to $40,000 a year (given the rate of inflation that would be $70K to $94K today). The real money, though, is in saturation diving, a technique in which divers in order to avoid the pressure differentials that can give rise to such maladies as the bends, live for up to thirty days in a pressurized habitat about the size of a pickup camper that has the same atmospheric pressure as their working depth. For this they earn as much as $22 ($52 today given the rate of inflation) an hour in "sat" pay (that's $528 a day) above their base salary.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">The admission director of the Ocean Corporation is Fred Tourtel, a stocky man wiht a trim gray beard and a gold chain around his neck, When I stopped by his office Tourtel was interviewing a prospective student, a scholarly-looking roofer from Prairieview, Illinois, named Glen Wedding.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Wedding is 34, a year younger than the school's cutoff age. He is single, with a useless graduate degree and some experience as a welder. It was while taking the welding course at a local technical college that he had noticed some literature from the Ocean Corporation. He was here now, he said, because of "monetary logistics." It had occurred to him that he could make a lot more money performing saturation dives on a North Sea wellhead than he could trying to affix cedar shakes to a roof during an Illinois winter.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"He'll do all right," Tourtel told me later, as we were taking a tour of the school's facilities. "He's overqualified in a couple of areas, He's got a college education, and he's ten years older than most of the guys here. But he's made up of things that commercial divers are made of. His head's in the right place. He's mature. He likes to work with his hands. He's a big guy."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Behind the single-corridor classroom building, we climbed a little stairway to the top of one of the school's four small tanks, which sat beside the forty-foot monster. It was set into a wooden frame like one of those old Esther Williams swimming pools. The water was the color of chocolate milk. In this tank divers learn the principles of NDT, or nondestructive testing, which is a way of determining the thickness and condition of a piece of metal using a tool known as an ultrasonic flaw detector. The student is wearing an air hat, a rigid helmet with a full faceplate that was held in place by a collar ring and a crotch strap. The hat was connected to an air hose and a communication line, as well as a safety line, and the whole thing was managed by a tender.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"A good tender," Tourtel said, "can tell what the diver's doing down there. If a guy takes a step forward, a good tender can tell if he led off with his left foot or his right foot."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">When the diver climbed down into the tank and disappeared, we turned our attention to the nearby diving bell in which Ocean Corporation divers take simulated trips into the gloom. Diving bells these days are a standard tool of the industry. They are a kind of portable womb that maintains the atmospheric pressure of the surface. The divers ride down to the job site in the bell, exit through an air lock, do their work, and then swim back inside. The object is to keep their exposure to the increased pressures - which determines the amount of time they will have to spend in a decompression chamber - to a minimum.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">The use of diving bells had made the profession safer, but a diver can still get the bends, and the long-term effects of living for prolonged periods under pressures greater than one atmosphere have not yet been determined. Along with these specialized dangers, divers are prone to the same sorts of accidents as other industrial workers who work with heavy machinery and volatile elements.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">We walked up a winding, slippery stairway to the top of the forty-foot tank and looked down into the water. It was clearer than the other tank, but it was impossible to make out what the students were doing down there. Their assignment today, said their instructor, a former Navy diver named Dee Clark, was to "flange up," or connect, two huge pieces of pipe that were lying in the tank at unweilding angles.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"Doing this in water is a lot different from doing it on land," Clark said. "On land you have gravity. In the water it's just pure muscle power. They do have the pleasure of visibility, which in uncommon. Later on I'll have them do it with masking tape over their faceplates."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"If you pay attention to any part of the program," I heard Larry Cushman, the president of the Ocean Corporation, explain to an introductory class later that day, "pay attention to rigging. Rigging is a diver's primary skill. Everything is bigger than you are. Everything needs to be pushed or slid."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">From time to time Cushman would draw a diagram on a jack-up rig or a lockout sub on the blackboard. He had the cultivated, man-to-man demeanor of a high school football coach, and his students were hulking, sleepy types who reminded me of players lazing about in the skull-session interval of a two-a-day practice.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">As Cushman showed them the slides of JIM suits and semisubmersible rigs, of SDVs and ROVs, he kept returning to the subject of money, talking about guys who were making ninety and a hundred K a year doing saturation dives, welders who did hot taps on pipelines and were the "highest-paid craftsmen in the world. These guys warm up at eight hundred dollares a day."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">No one in the class took notes, but they asked intelligent questions and seemed to regard everything Cushman said with great sobriety. This was, after all, their career. They were investing a minimum of five months and $3395 into an ambition to become a deep-sea diver, to roam all over the world, performing intricate, dangerous, and mysterious tasks,</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"You can see how all the money is related," Cushman told them. "Here's this diver underwater, watching an eighty million dollar platform being lowered and he's saying to the crane operator, "Move it over to the left about three inches."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"And then," Cushman went on, "the diver goes into the decompression chamber for some sat time. He's in there doing nothing but reading <em>Playboy</em> and adding up his money."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
Convicts are given a new lease on life - as deep-sea divers
tag:community.cdiver.net,2010-02-17:2371245:BlogPost:62468
2010-02-17T01:30:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p>WEEKLY WORLD NEWS</p>
<p><font size="2">February 24, 1981</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Convicts are being taken out of their barred cells and given a chance at a better life - as deep-sea divers.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">And the elite few who survive the grueling 10 - month training reenter society as highly skilled underwater experts who can earn as much as $100,000 a year.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"It's a great profession and they are making…</font></p>
<p>WEEKLY WORLD NEWS</p>
<p><font size="2">February 24, 1981</font></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Convicts are being taken out of their barred cells and given a chance at a better life - as deep-sea divers.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">And the elite few who survive the grueling 10 - month training reenter society as highly skilled underwater experts who can earn as much as $100,000 a year.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"It's a great profession and they are making far more money than they did when they were pulling stickups or bank robberies," Chief Diving Instructor Bob Schelke told The NEWS.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Schelke has spearheaded the amazing program since its beginning 10 years ago at the California Institution for Men at Chino. He proudly boasts that it has the lowest re-arrest rate of any other program in the nation.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"The average rate of re-arrests is 50 to 60 percent for second-timers in California," Schelke added. "we have a rate of only 5 percent."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Schelke said that only the "cream" of the prison crop - convicts with no more than two years remaining on the sentences - are selected for training. The average number starting the first week is about 80.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"During that first week, we put the men through the basic requirements," he explained.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"They must do 50 push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups, run a mile in under nine minutes, swim 50 yards underwater and swim four laps with a 10 - pound weight.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"That's when we get our first dropouts. If we end up with 30 candidates, we're very happy."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Convicts with "attitude problems" are weeded out early.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Fighting among themselves, arguing with the staff or the slightest dalliance with drugs are grounds for dismissal.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">By the end of the rigorous demanding course, only half the original 50 will "graduate."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">The course begins in May with top-grade instruction in diving technique, underwater welding, carpentry, photography, pipe fitting, rigging and salvage. The men also learn about electronics, explosives safety and oil technology.</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">"All the graduates have job interviews before they leave prison," Schelke told The NEWS. "Every year I have more job offers than I can fill."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">And once they complete the course, the ex-cons prove to be top-notch divers and highly regarded employees,</font></p>
<p><font size="2">"They've never been a problem," declared Bud Mills, diving chief for Sante Fe Diving Co., in Homer, La. "The ones I've hired show a lot of initiative. They really want to do it."</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="2">Tom Conner, operations director for Oceaneering International in Morgan City, La., has even higher praise:</font></p>
<p><font size="2">"The people from Chino are some of the hardest workers you'll find." he declared. "We've hired 15 and we have no qualms about hiring more."</font></p>
The Day the Sea Caught Fire: 20 years after the Piper Alpha explosion, the survivors get to tell their story
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-12-20:2371245:BlogPost:54241
2009-12-20T02:21:33.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560156629?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
The Piper Alpha explosion was the world's worst off-shore oil disaster. The disaster killed 167 men, only 59 men of the crew survived. The death toll includes 2 men from a rescue vessel. Insurance claims totaled $3.4 billion USD.<br />
<br />
The fire was visible 70 miles away as a distant, flickering flame on the horizon.<br />
<br />
The heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile, the tongues of flame extending hundreds of…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1560156629?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
The Piper Alpha explosion was the world's worst off-shore oil disaster. The disaster killed 167 men, only 59 men of the crew survived. The death toll includes 2 men from a rescue vessel. Insurance claims totaled $3.4 billion USD.<br />
<br />
The fire was visible 70 miles away as a distant, flickering flame on the horizon.<br />
<br />
The heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile, the tongues of flame extending hundreds of feet above the rotor blades.<br />
<br />
On the sea surface, a converted fishing trawler inched as close as possible. But the paint on the vessel's hull blistered and the rope handrails began to smoke. In the water, men's heads could be seen bobbing like apples as their scalps roasted in the heat.<br />
<br />
Still just about standing at the centre of the inferno was the Piper Alpha oil platform. It had exploded in a massive ball of flames with 226 men on board as a result of a gas leak. Only 59 of them would survive.<br />
<br />
Within two hours of the initial explosion on that fateful night 20 years ago, the rig had collapsed from its position 300ft above the surface of the sea and become a flaming pyre of twisted metal.<br />
This is the story of the worst off-shore oil disaster the world has ever seen, told as never before, by those who survived it.<br />
<br />
By 1988, the oil platform that had once been the world's single largest oil producer, was starting to show its age.<br />
<br />
The time when it produced 317,000 barrels of oil a day was long gone.<br />
<br />
The price of oil had slumped and oil companies were slashing their budgets. In a hint of growing frailty, Piper Alpha had suffered a small explosion in 1984, triggered by a gas escape, and dozens of men had been evacuated by helicopter.<br />
<br />
But there was far worse to come - and on that July afternoon ten years ago, the danger lay unseen for hours before disaster struck.<br />
<br />
It was down to one small safety valve, one of more than 100 identical devices that were essential to prevent a dangerous build-up of liquid gas in an area of the oil rig known as C module.<br />
<br />
As part of routine maintenance and safety procedure, technicians had removed, checked and replaced all these valves - all except for this one, which had been taken off earlier that day and checked, but never put back.<br />
<br />
At 10pm, unaware that the safety valve had not been replaced, a technician pressed a start button for the liquid gas pumps - and the gas began to leak out of it.<br />
<br />
Piper Alpha was now primed, like a bomb, to blow. No one was aware of it, but for each man on board, a clock had begun to tick.<br />
<br />
Within two hours, the mere length of a Hollywood movie, the platform would become a blackened skeleton, and its accommodation blocks sunken coffins on the ocean bed.<br />
<br />
The horror began as the 226 men on board were settling down for the evening. Ian Fowler, a joiner, was waiting for the racing results on the radio.<br />
<br />
Mark Reid, a lead foreman with a drilling company, had arrived on-board that morning and was taking a break in the tea shack. Bob Ballantyne, an electrician, had just come off the phone to his wife.<br />
<br />
Within seconds of the gas pumps being turned on, the first explosion happened, ignited probably by a tiny spark. It could have come from the electrics, from anywhere - no one knows.<br />
<br />
In the cinema, where many were watching the golf movie Caddyshack, light fittings fell from the ceiling and the screen collapsed. Workers recalled a flash of white light and a noise described as a banshee's wail.<br />
<br />
The radio room on top of the rig overlooking on one side the green of the helideck was partly destroyed.<br />
<br />
On the other side of the room was the mechanical clutter of the pipedeck, but smoke and flame now obscured and rose above it.<br />
<br />
'Mayday, mayday. . . explosion and fire on the oil rig on the platform and we'll (sic) abandoning abandoning the rig.'<br />
<br />
That garbled first message from the radio operator was broadcast on the emergency distress frequency at four-and-a-half minutes past ten.<br />
<br />
It was followed two minutes later by another, which conveyed the state of panic: 'Mayday Mayday . . . we require any assistance available. Any assistance available. We've had an explosion and, er, a very bad explosion and fire. Er, the radio room is badly damaged.'<br />
<br />
At 10.08pm: 'Mayday Mayday... we're abandoning the radio room, we're abandoning the radio room. We can't talk any more, we're on fire.'<br />
<br />
As the disaster unfolded, most people gathered in the galley below where, within 30 minutes, the smoke was thick and men lay on the floor, clutching to their faces torn strips of towel that had been dunked in the galley's ornamental fish tanks.<br />
<br />
Among those in the galley was the man in charge of the oil rig, installation manager Colin Seaton. He struggled to exert authority and confidence in the face of growing fear. He was the man everyone was turning to for orders and guidance, but he was crumbling under the pressure.<br />
<br />
At first, he tried to tell everyone to calm down, that a Mayday had been sent, and that the whole world knew they were in trouble.<br />
<br />
As the smoke became denser and the clamour for information grew, Seaton climbed up on to a table in an attempt to exert his faltering command, but his words were drowned out by the din of his panicking crew.<br />
<br />
They were trapped, surrounded by flame and smoke. All Seaton could do was to tell them to calm down, that as part of the emergency procedure, four men with breathing apparatus were at that very moment outside the galley trying to find a safe passage for everyone to escape.<br />
<br />
Using a hand-held radio, he attempted to reach the men for an update. Four times he tried, to be greeted only with silence.<br />
<br />
As one witness recalled: 'The flames were right along the north face and the east face of the galley, and they were actually breaking the windows, and the flames just started to come in the windows, and the door in the galley was on fire.'<br />
<br />
At 10.33pm, an unknown voice relayed on Channel 9 of the VHF radio what would be the final transmission from Piper Alpha: 'People majority in galley area. Tharos come. Gangway/hoses. Getting bad.'<br />
<br />
Tharos was a 30,000-ton multi-support vessel for the rig, providing hospital accommodation and technical back-up. Its crew needed no radio message to understand how bad things were - they could see the apocalypse developing before their eyes.<br />
<br />
David Olley, the medic on Tharos, went up the boat's helideck where he expected to see a few wisps of smoke coming from the rig. What he saw convinced him no one could survive.<br />
<br />
Then he overheard the helicopter landing officer, a meticulous professional, swear over the VHF radio when describing the situation to a neighbouring platform.<br />
<br />
He said: ' "A" module is on fire, "B" module is on fire, "C" module is on fire. We have fire from water level to the helideck, in fact the whole f***ing thing is on fire.'<br />
<br />
On the oil platform a handful of men had managed to get off the rig, after climbing down a rope and jumping into the water. Others were trying to escape from the galley, but most of the staircases were choked with thick black smoke.<br />
<br />
Several workers were shielding themselves from the intense heat in a fabrication shop where tools and machinery were fixed.<br />
<br />
Here, joiner Ian Fowler and others, their cheeks pressed to the floor, kept themselves conscious by constant talking. Hope was quickly diminishing - along with the breathable air and, this far north, the last of the summer light. Creaking groans and collapsing walkways sounded all around them.<br />
Instrument technician Roy Carey was struggling down some stairs with breathing apparatus to a point some 70ft above the water when a second, more terrible, explosion struck.<br />
<br />
A major pipeline filled with high-pressure gas ruptured.<br />
<br />
As more than 450 cubic tonnes of gas escaped, a fireball enveloped the platform and rose to a height of 700ft.<br />
<br />
Carey dived overboard through the wall of flame. 'I had hoped that the flame would pass, but then I was enveloped in it and I realised I was just being burned up. So I launched myself off. I hoped that I would not hit anything on my way down.'<br />
<br />
Conscious of the height from which he dropped, he tried to minimise his resistance to the water. 'I tried to make as clean a dive as I could. So I kept my hands very straight and as a result I went very, very deep.'<br />
<br />
So deep did Carey sink that he feared he would never reach the surface before the pressure on his lungs forced him to take a breath.<br />
<br />
When he did surface it was to an inferno that appeared to hover just a few feet above the surface of the sea, cooking the air underneath.<br />
<br />
It was like being under a grill. He struggled and tried to keep his head underwater as his face began to burn. He thought he was going to die. 'It was a low time . . . I was being cooked alive.'<br />
<br />
Flames were igniting his hair and burning layers of skin off his face, and every time he tried to scream, it was like swallowing fire. Convinced death was imminent, Carey preferred to drown than roast.<br />
<br />
He deliberately sank six feet down where he could see the flaming orange above; then it turned to white and he thought of his eldest daughter's wedding dress and remembered his promise to give his youngest child the wedding of her dreams.<br />
<br />
He decided he could not die, swam to the surface, away from the platform and finally wedged himself into the side of a wrecked lifeboat.<br />
<br />
Back in the galley, many were still trapped and the situation was becoming more desperate by the minute.<br />
<br />
Rigger Jim McDonald, a large man with a bald head and mutton chop whiskers, thought to himself: 'Get yourself off', and then went to collect his friend and cabin-mate Francis McPake, who was reluctant to follow.<br />
<br />
McDonald managed to cajole him as far as the reception area next to one of the platform's small shops, where the smoke drifted around the boxes of Marathon bars, packets of Fisherman's Friends and Murray Mints.<br />
<br />
McPake would go no further and instead slumped down on to the floor, where McDonald, left him with regret and remorse.<br />
<br />
He then found his way to the stairway and began to crawl down level after level. The smoke was so thick he could hardly breathe, so he put his jumper over his head to strain the smoke through the wool.<br />
<br />
And then there were the bodies. Some men had passed out after 15 to 20 minutes of breathing in smoke, and parts of the staircase were blanketed with their bodies.<br />
<br />
McDonald, in deep distress, was forced to crawl over them.<br />
<br />
Some had decided to go up, rather than down, and the helidecks had become home to a huddled community of the trapped, waiting for salvation to come from the sky.<br />
<br />
There were small groups dotted across the two helidecks as well as the roofs of the accommodation wing and the damaged radio room.<br />
<br />
One man was scaling the drilling derrick in the hope of rising above the smoke and somehow being winched off by a helicopter.<br />
<br />
The din of the escaping gas, roaring all around, and the sharp crackle of fire was deafening. At times, they were entirely ringed in smoke, but sometimes the high winds would clear their view and they could see the Tharos, just a few hundred metres away, a distance that might as well have been miles for all the assistance the vessel could offer.<br />
<br />
On the roof of the radio room a group of men, convinced the end was near, began to talk of how much they loved their wives, the fear of never seeing their children grow up. They began asking where, in their darkest hour, was God?<br />
<br />
Scaffolder Joe Meanen stood and listened. He had no wife, no children, but was determined to have the option of them and somehow survive the night.<br />
<br />
He walked across the roof and on to the helideck where no helicopter could possibly land because of the heat and smoke.<br />
<br />
He was looking down towards the Tharos - which was now dousing the helidecks with its water cannon - when another gas pipe, weakened by the intense heat, gave out.<br />
<br />
This flooded the fire with enough gas to power millions of homes, enveloping the helideck with sheer walls of fire that rose 500 feet above their heads, curving over to form a basilica of flame.<br />
<br />
Men on the immediate edge of the helideck were engulfed instantly by the flames, while those nearer the middle had time to turn and run. Impulsively, Meanen ran across the helideck and jumped down into the water 170ft below.<br />
<br />
It was only when his back foot took off that he thought: 'What the f*** have I done?' He fell for six seconds, and as he fell, he burned. But he lived.<br />
<br />
Mark Reid, the drilling foreman, also threw himself from the helideck into the water 170ft below.<br />
<br />
His body reached terminal velocity, at 120 miles per hour, and he could easily have been killed by the force of hitting the water. Somehow, he survived and drifted out into the night.<br />
<br />
In the water, the electrician Bob Ballantyne, who had jumped from the 70ft level, had no time to regret the friends he had seen devoured by the fireball.<br />
<br />
He was under the rig, still fighting for his life, with chunks of steel dropping down around him every few seconds, and the sea in front of him was coated in oil or already alight.<br />
<br />
He watched as a giant crane, hundreds of tons of iron and steel, collapsed into the water, sending salt water spray into his face.<br />
<br />
Ballantyne faced an agonising choice: to stay under and die as the rig collapsed, or to swim out in oil-coated water which could swallow him in flames at any moment.<br />
<br />
He made his decision and kicked out from the platform between islands of floating fire. He was conscious of three reasons for living: his wife, the three-week holiday in France they had booked, and the faint, glorious prospect of Clyde Football Club lifting the European Cup.<br />
<br />
Rescue vessels were by now picking up survivors. By the light of an Aldis lamp, crew on the Silver Pit, a converted trawler which acted as a 24-hour stand-by vessel for the rig in case of emergency, could see a shattered lifeboat from the platform in the water.<br />
<br />
On this broken, twisted hunk of wood, Roy Carey painfully lifted his head, burned down to the bone, and wondered if his prayers had been answered. The Silver Pit sent its fast rescue craft and Carey was picked up just before 11pm.<br />
<br />
Another rescue craft heard a cry in the night and ventured towards the rig until the crew's faces were burning. In the oily blackness which glowed from the fire, they finally saw two white points appear on the surface. Mark Reid, one of the men who had jumped from 170ft, had opened his eyes.<br />
<br />
Around 11.15pm, the message came through to Tharos to move back from Piper Alpha for fear of an underwater explosion. Tharos requested that all survivors be brought to her.<br />
<br />
Around 11.20pm the last and biggest explosion of the night, as the third of the three main gas pipes blew up, signalled the end for anybody left in the accommodation modules and for almost all the hundred or more workers who still waited in the galley in the futile hope of rescue.<br />
<br />
As modules crashed down and decks collapsed, the seabed became a junkyard of debris. Anybody who now survived did so by a miracle.<br />
<br />
The fabrication shed where Ian Fowler had prepared himself for death, collapsed in such a way as to give him access to the ruins of the derrick which he used as a climbing frame, burning his hands and melting the soles of his shoes as he managed to find a stage from which to jump into the fiery sea.<br />
<br />
The Silver Pit's fast rescue craft, battered and blackened with smoke was by now dodging debris and dead bodies to pick up desperate men.<br />
<br />
It was losing power and taking on water, but as it turned back to the Silver Pit, the crew spotted a hand waving.<br />
It was 100ft under the collapsing platform, and rescue was a daunting task for any craft, let alone one beginning to sink, but the crew went for it. There could be just one pass, and they gunned the engine.<br />
The heat intensified and the boat rocked as it dodged debris, but three sets of arms stretched out and snatched the man up as they passed.<br />
<br />
The survivor was grey and coughing with smoke residue, but he was alive, one of around 30 men that the craft rescued.<br />
<br />
Electrician Bob Ballantyne had drifted far from the platform. His face and hair were black with oil when he saw a Norwegian boat and waved with the last of his strength. He was hauled aboard and treated for his burning face with a packet of frozen peas.<br />
<br />
Some hours later Ballantyne was taken to a helicopter. He looked down on the wreckage - his workplace, his quarters, the friends he had known. Then he rested his head against the window and began to sob.<br />
<br />
<br />
Adapted from FIRE IN THE NIGHT: THE PIPER ALPHA DISASTER by Stephen McGinty, published by Macmillan
What is a Commercial Oilfield Diver?
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-12-18:2371245:BlogPost:54026
2009-12-18T14:00:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
A friend sent me this poem, its an oldie but still a goodie....<br />
<br />
<br />
What is a Commercial Oilfield Diver?<br />
<br />
They come in assorted sizes, in trucks, in helicopters, in supply boats, in "cut-off" jeans, in love, in debt, and indiscriminately. Girls love them, whores take them, St. John's tolerate them and governments support them.<br />
<br />
They are laziness with a pack of cards, bravery with a bottle of rum, and the saviours of humanity on empty pockets. They have the enthusiasm of a turtle, the stories of a…
A friend sent me this poem, its an oldie but still a goodie....<br />
<br />
<br />
What is a Commercial Oilfield Diver?<br />
<br />
They come in assorted sizes, in trucks, in helicopters, in supply boats, in "cut-off" jeans, in love, in debt, and indiscriminately. Girls love them, whores take them, St. John's tolerate them and governments support them.<br />
<br />
They are laziness with a pack of cards, bravery with a bottle of rum, and the saviours of humanity on empty pockets. They have the enthusiasm of a turtle, the stories of a sea captain, the inspiration of a born liar, and the charm of Casanova.<br />
<br />
No other breed of men can cram into one pocket: a calculator, a packet of condoms, a copy of playboy, a can of beer, a bottle opener, deportation papers, a return airline ticket, and half a case of chewing tobacco.<br />
<br />
Their likes are: girls, women, dames, chicks, females, skirts. Their dislikes are: answering letters, alimony, long flights, dry hotels, and faxes from Houston. They like to spend their money on girls, beer, gambling and fast cars. What's left, they squander.<br />
<br />
So what is a diver?<br />
He's that magical creature that's here today and gone tomorrow; that's equally at home on land or water; that's never around when you need him, that's always around when you don't and seems to spend his life drifting unconcerned between childhood and adultery.
Saving Baton Rouge
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-11-20:2371245:BlogPost:50251
2009-11-20T21:00:39.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
In Sept. 1965 Hurricane Betsy ravaged southern Louisiana, leaving in its wake an inland shipping disaster with 200+ vessels sunk or stranded along the Mississippi. But the nightmare had only begun for during the storm MTC 602 with a cargo of 600 tons of liquid chlorine had been ripped loose from its moorings in Baton Rouge and swamped by a wave, the barge and it's lethal cargo lay on the bottom somewhere, location unknown, a ticking time bomb. If the liquid chlorine in the barge's tanks…
In Sept. 1965 Hurricane Betsy ravaged southern Louisiana, leaving in its wake an inland shipping disaster with 200+ vessels sunk or stranded along the Mississippi. But the nightmare had only begun for during the storm MTC 602 with a cargo of 600 tons of liquid chlorine had been ripped loose from its moorings in Baton Rouge and swamped by a wave, the barge and it's lethal cargo lay on the bottom somewhere, location unknown, a ticking time bomb. If the liquid chlorine in the barge's tanks escaped, the resulting gas cloud could kill tens of thousands of people.<br />
<br />
For nine long weeks the nation held its breath. A 38 mile stretch of the Mississippi River was closed to shipping for fear that a ship could ram the wrecked barge or an anchor smash a chlorine tank. Using antisubmarine sonar sets to scan the bottom, the missing barge was finally found a week after Betsy hit. MTC 602 was in 60 feet of water, just off the Louisiana State University campus.<br />
<br />
Experts converged on the site from across the nation. Every angle, every contingency was carefully studied. They couldn't lift the barge; its skin plate was only 5/16 of an inch thick. The tanks couldn't be lifted separately; they were welded to the barge. It was decided that the tanks would all be lifted at once.<br />
<br />
Thirty-two teams of divers hired by J. Ray McDermott Co., worked 24/7 in almost zero vis. The currents were tricky, at times moving at three feet a second. The equipment was heavy weighing anywhere from 75-200 lbs. everything but hand tools was controlled by power air lines. Generally a diver could only work 90 minutes a day, at times it took three men to pull the exhausted diver up out of the water. Diver injuries were frequent, one diver cut his hand requiring 9 stitches, and another lost the tip of his thumb. Diver Joe Savoie got his hose hooked on a tree that had fallen across the sunken barge, "I couldn't pull any slack or let go to try to move-I'd risk the bends. So I stayed put for 15 minutes, until another diver pulled me free."<br />
<br />
The underwater job took 20 days and nights. Everything had to be tied up into one rigid package. Finally on Friday, Nov. 12, everything was ready. The skies were overcast and mist hung above the river. Army and CG helicopters hovered overhead, ready to alert the public to evacuate and to track the deadly cloud if things should go wrong. Gas masks with issued to those on duty in the danger zone. Standing by were huge wind machines, the kind used in movies to create gales. If the chlorine escaped, engineers would attempt to roll back the poison gas cloud behind a windwall, to give crewmen a chance to escape from the salvage vessels.<br />
<br />
Though it seemed like a lifetime, the lifting operation was completed in two hours and fifteen minutes. The next day the barge was refloated and its lethal cargo unloaded. Salvage Project 602 was completed, at a cost of $1 million dollars - but without a single fatality.<br />
<br />
(So the next time someone says commercial divers are nothing more than underwater construction workers or subsea janitors...ask them if they'd want a janitor handling a job like this one.) ~ lol Diva
You Know You're Having a Bad Day When...
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-11-20:2371245:BlogPost:50143
2009-11-20T00:00:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
Tom is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out of Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.<br />
<br />
Below is an email he sent to his sister. She sent it to Laugh line and won the contest (he wasn't thrilled with her for that one). Anyway...anytime you think you have had a bad day at the office, remember this guy.<br />
<br />
April 1998<br />
<br />
Hi Sue,<br />
<br />
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down…
Tom is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out of Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.<br />
<br />
Below is an email he sent to his sister. She sent it to Laugh line and won the contest (he wasn't thrilled with her for that one). Anyway...anytime you think you have had a bad day at the office, remember this guy.<br />
<br />
April 1998<br />
<br />
Hi Sue,<br />
<br />
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.<br />
<br />
As you know my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool.<br />
<br />
So what we do to keep warm is this:<br />
<br />
We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of junk sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temp. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a damn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my neck. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.<br />
<br />
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my ass started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my ass started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened.<br />
<br />
The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. This is even worse than the poison ivy you once had under a cast. Now I had that hose down my back. I don't have any hair on my back so the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to my back.<br />
<br />
My ass crack was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my ass. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.<br />
<br />
His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he along with 5 other divers were laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface for my dry chamber decompression.<br />
<br />
I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit and gear were tied to the bell. When I got on board the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to shove it "up my ass" when I get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't sit for two days because my butt was so tender. I later found out that this could easily have been prevented if the suction hose was placed on the leeward side of the ship.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office, think of me. Think about how much worse your day would be if you were to shove a jellyfish up your ass. I hope you have no bad days at the office.<br />
<br />
But if you do, I hope this will make them more tolerable.<br />
<br />
Take care, and I hope to hear from you soon.<br />
<br />
Love you,<br />
<br />
Tom
The Capsizing of Progress Marine II, Part II
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-11-08:2371245:BlogPost:48868
2009-11-08T18:30:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
It was decided that the divers would attempt entry via a hatch near the bow by the galley where there wasn't as much debris in the water. Arriving at the hatch, the divers were unable to open the submerged hatch due to the pressure. The call was put out for underwater burning equipment. Using the burning gear, the divers were able to cut the hatch hinges and pry the hatch loose, allowing the divers entry to the flooded galley.<br />
<br />
Each diver carried a light, holding their lights before them, they…
It was decided that the divers would attempt entry via a hatch near the bow by the galley where there wasn't as much debris in the water. Arriving at the hatch, the divers were unable to open the submerged hatch due to the pressure. The call was put out for underwater burning equipment. Using the burning gear, the divers were able to cut the hatch hinges and pry the hatch loose, allowing the divers entry to the flooded galley.<br />
<br />
Each diver carried a light, holding their lights before them, they felt their way through the dark water. As they moved down the companionway toward the living quarters they encountered litter of bobbing furniture, clothing, boxes, and other debris. Entering the living quarters where the crew members had reportedly been sleeping at the time of the accident, they found nothing.<br />
<br />
The divers retraced their way back to the galley looking for any air pockets where survivors may be able to gasp breathes of air. As one diver's light pierced the darkness, a hand reached out and locked around the diver's wrist. The startled diver jerked his hand back. Shining his light toward where the grasping hand was, the diver spied Darrell Jonn Dore, perched on a large pipe with his head in an 18-inch air space.<br />
<br />
The divers had brought along an extra helmet, which they slipped over Dore's head and secured with a jock strap, just in case Dore panicked and tried to remove the helmet on the way to the surface. The trip went smoothly and Dore was transferred to the <i>Jean G</i> and put in the decompression chamber. Encouraged that more of the missing crew would be found alive, the rescuers plotted their next dives. Only the engine room located in the stern of the hull remained to be searched.<br />
<br />
Exterior survey dives located the engine room hatch, where cables and thick floating debris covered the stern deck. The danger of fouling divers hoses was too great, it was decided to continue using the bow hatch. Though less dangerous, the divers would still have to travel nearly 100 feet through the dark water and debris filled bowels of the rig. The rescuers knew that there was no guarantee that the rig wouldn't continue to shift and sink to the sea floor, carrying the divers with it.<br />
<br />
The first diver to make the long dive threading his way through the hull was Mike Mason. On the down side of the stern, 20 feet below the surface, his hemet broke water. As he look up, Mason peered into the faces of four exhausted, sick survivors. A thick layer of diesel fuel on the water surface filled the air pocket with nauseating fumes. The trapped men had given up all hope of rescue during their 26-hour ordeal and resigned themselves to their fate.<br />
<br />
The news that the survivors had been found was relayed back to his tender, Bryon Gray, who had remained at the galley hatch. Gray, surfaced to collect an extra helmet while Mason stayed with the men. Gray carried the helmet below to the engine room, where both men helped Joseph Bellard, the sickest of the four survivors, put it on.<br />
<br />
Gray then guided Bellard through the dark water of the 100 foot length of the hull and up to the topside crew. While Mason remained with the trapped men in the engine room throughout the five hours it took to guide them out, one by one.<br />
<br />
Jeff Terai, the next diver to descend, lost communications when his phone cable malfunctioned, making an already dangerous situation, even more dangerous. Reduced to using hand signals to communicate in the murky engine room, Terai managed to dress out a survivor and take him safely back topside. It was nearly dusk on Monday June 2, when the last survivor Delvan Irby, was escorted to the surface and into a decompression chamber.<br />
<br />
Only one man remained missing, having escaped the rig, he was last seen clinging to an oil drum on the surface soon after the rig capsized. Divers continued to comb the waters surrounding the rig and under it, searching for the remaining crewman. Diving operations were finally halted shortly after midnight on June 3. Several days later the missing crewman's body was found by the Coast Guard floating about five miles north of the rig.<br />
<br />
<br />
Real heroes are men and women who are flawed, who fall and who fail; but in the end they win the day because they remained true to their beliefs, ideals and commitments. This story is dedeicated to the memory of Mike Mason ~ Diva
The Capsizing of The Progress Marine II, Part I
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-11-07:2371245:BlogPost:48762
2009-11-07T17:00:00.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
In the early afternoon hours of Sunday June 1, 1975 the jack-up rig <i>Progress Marine II</i> was being towed by the tug <i>Admiral Lee</i> to a new worksite in the GOM. At the time there was a 12 man crew aboard the rig. Some crewmen were resting in their bunks in the living quarters below deck. Others were topside, enjoying the sun.<br />
<br />
The rig was approximately 18 miles southwest of Grand Isle, LA when disaster struck. Without warning the rig began to list to the starboard. Instantly it became…
In the early afternoon hours of Sunday June 1, 1975 the jack-up rig <i>Progress Marine II</i> was being towed by the tug <i>Admiral Lee</i> to a new worksite in the GOM. At the time there was a 12 man crew aboard the rig. Some crewmen were resting in their bunks in the living quarters below deck. Others were topside, enjoying the sun.<br />
<br />
The rig was approximately 18 miles southwest of Grand Isle, LA when disaster struck. Without warning the rig began to list to the starboard. Instantly it became evident that the top-heavy structure would not recover and was about to capsize.<br />
<br />
As the crewmen below decks scrambled to reach the topdeck running on walls - struggling to get out as the room tilted -they were forced back as a wall of water rushed through the deck hatch. While topside the men on deck were tossed into the sea...<br />
<br />
A jack-up rig is a barge with adjustable legs. Once on site the legs are lowered to the sea floor and firmly planted, then the hull is "jacked up" about 30 feet above the water providing a stable work platform. The <i>Progress Marine II</i> measured 96 feet long, 50 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Each of its four adjustable legs measured 122 feet in length, permitting the rig to work in water up to 70 feet deep.<br />
<br />
The <i>Progress Marine II</i> was also equipt with a mat - a large pontoon connected to legs- that can be ballasted. The mat increases the rig's stability. When the rig is to be moved the legs are raised and the mat is pulled in close to the rig's hull. The raised legs and tall derrick make the rig top heavy when under tow.<br />
<br />
At the time of the incident, the <i>Progress Marine II</i> was in roughly 40 feet of water when it capsized, coming to rest at a 110 degree angle. The tops of the rig's two jacked up legs hitting bottom and becoming embedded. It's estimated that the rig capsized in 60 seconds.<br />
<br />
On a Shell Oil Co. platform about 600 yards away, crewmen watched as a large plume of black smoke rose into the air as the <i>Progress Marine II's</i> engines went under. Quickly, the Shell rig's dispatcher sent a Mayday to the Coast Guard station in Grand Isle, LA and alerted the Progress Marine home office in Morgan City. LA. where immediately the platform utility boat cast off and a helicopter, sitting on the pad, took to the air.<br />
<br />
Six of the rig's twelve crewmen were found floating in life preservers near the wreck. With the helicopter acting as spotter the utility boat rescued four of the crew. The other two were pulled to safety by the <i>Admiral Lee's</i> skipper. But six other crewmen remained missing presumed trapped in the hull of the capsized rig.<br />
<br />
The chief of the Coast Guard Search and Rescue Center in New Orleans, ordered several cutters to the scene. A Coast Guard helicopter was dispatched soon after the inital distress call with a team of divers from Global Divers and Contracting, Inc. out of Harvey, LA.<br />
<br />
A Continental Oil Co. dispatcher that was on duty in Grand Isle, knew that the tugboat <i>Jean G</i> had a diving crew aboard and was in the vicininty of the wreck. He called the tug which proceeded to the capsized rig. The dispatcher would remain on duty night and day coordinating communications, and requests for equipment and men.<br />
<br />
Officials at Progress Marine, Inc. sent the barge <i>Sal Duey</i> to the site and requested additional divers from Ocean Systems, Inc. and Continental Diving. Chuck Mowry, would be the designated diving supervisor and coordinator tasked with rescuing the trapped crewmen.<br />
<br />
Meeting with company officials and the rescued crewmen, Mowry obtained sketches of the interior layout and probable location of submerged rig eqiupment. The water around and under the rig was littered with jumbled pipes, broken catwalks and steel walkways, tangled lines, hanging crane rigging and other loose materials. The debris would hamper rescue efforts and present a serious hazard for the divers who were dependent on surface supplied air. To be continued ...
The Last WWII U.S. Army Deep Sea Diver
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-10-31:2371245:BlogPost:47850
2009-10-31T04:06:18.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
Article by Patrick Wilson<br />
The Virginian-Pilot<br />
May 1, 2009<br />
<br />
Jim Kennedy slogged onto Utah Beach in 1944 and saw the bloated bodies of American servicemen in the water. The tide washed them out. The tide washed them back in. It was three weeks after D-Day, June 6, 1944. The drama of the landing had passed, and the grim work of cleaning up the beach had begun. The Allies were pushing inward. And Kennedy's own story was just about to start.<br />
<br />
He belonged to a unit of U.S. Army deep sea divers who…
Article by Patrick Wilson<br />
The Virginian-Pilot<br />
May 1, 2009<br />
<br />
Jim Kennedy slogged onto Utah Beach in 1944 and saw the bloated bodies of American servicemen in the water. The tide washed them out. The tide washed them back in. It was three weeks after D-Day, June 6, 1944. The drama of the landing had passed, and the grim work of cleaning up the beach had begun. The Allies were pushing inward. And Kennedy's own story was just about to start.<br />
<br />
He belonged to a unit of U.S. Army deep sea divers who were dispatched to the port city of Cherbourg. The Allies had captured it after a bitter fight, and the Germans had done their best to make it unusable as a supply point. Whatever could be sunk in the harbor was sunk. Among the debris were 24 rail cars crammed full of sea mines. The job of Kennedy and his crew; clear the damn harbor. He and fellow divers worked around the clock in two-man teams. They lifted out mines one by one. They strapped cables around chunks of wire-reinforced concrete — chunks as big as Buicks — and waited for a steam-operated crane to do the heavy lifting. "They would bring it up," he recalled, "and at the very beginning, the minute it broke the surface, the cable would snap." Lovely. "Yeah, lovely is right," he said with a laugh. He can smile about it today, at least once in a while.<br />
<br />
Now 85 years old, Kennedy holds a special place in the rapidly disappearing World War II generation. He is the last known surviving U.S. Army deep sea diver, and he is being honored in Williamsburg, next week where the U.S. Army Divers Association is holding its reunion. As America prepares to mark the 65th anniversary of the landing at D-Day, Kennedy's sharp recollections provide a different view of that pivotal point in history, a view that is literally beneath the surface. "You had a job to do, and you concentrated on that job," he said. "If you're getting that cable strung, you don't have time to screw around." And the qualities for a good diver in WWII? "The first thing," he said, "is don't be claustrophobic." On Thursday, some divers from the association came to Fort Eustis, where they donned a classic WWII suit and took it for a spin in a diving tank used to train today's Army divers. Capt. Jesse Greene, a diver in the mid-1990s, came away impressed with the moxie of his predecessors who slogged around in 198 pounds of equipment. "I have a new respect for guys like him who dove in that," Greene said. "I don't know how anybody could get anything done in that suit. It's difficult to see. It's difficult to move around."<br />
<br />
He spent much of his time in the water trying to peer through a fogged-up window. The trick to clearing it: Turn off the air in the helmet, reduce the pressure, open the spitcock valve, get some water in your mouth, and spit at the window. Simple. Maybe that old suit isn't up to today's standards, but it marked a grand improvement over Kennedy's first diving "apparatus," which goes back to when he was a kid.<br />
<br />
"My cousin and I, we made a diving helmet out of a thirty-gallon water tank," he said. "We thought we were real good stuff. We had air running into it. You had to hold it down." They tried it out at a local swimming hole and darned near drowned. Born in Wyoming and growing up in Colorado, he doesn't know why he was always fascinated by the water, but he was. His January birthday makes him an Aquarius, so maybe that's it, he says. His one wish would be to celebrate more birthdays with his comrades, but they're all gone now. He had a buddy from Philadelphia, a fellow diver, and they last spoke in August 2007. "The next thing I hear from his daughter, it was January, he died of pneumonia, so that just left me," he said. How does it feel to the last surviving Army diver? He returns the question: How do you think it feels? "I just see that sand-clock going," he said, twirling his fingers, "and the calendars are turning like this.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Post Script - From the Denver Post Obituaries 10/22/2009<br />
<br />
James Kennedy, a World War II veteran,...died Sunday in the Littleton home he shared with his wife, Helen, for 47 years. Kennedy was 85... He was the last surviving WWII Army diver and among the few veterans of the Navy, the Army, the Merchant Marine and the Army Air Forces, as it was then known.
SO...YOU WANT TO BE A COMMERCIAL DIVER?
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-10-30:2371245:BlogPost:47810
2009-10-30T20:32:59.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
The following article is from the old National Association of Commercial Divers (NAOCD) website. Author unknown. Some of the information is outdated but all and all its a good read for those thinking about becoming a commercial diver.<br />
<br />
<br />
So...You Want to be a Commercial Diver?*<br />
Revised, April 2001<br />
So...you're thinking about being a commercial diver?<br />
Did you see suggestive pictures, or catchy captions in one of the scuba magazines? "Excitement, Adventure, and Money" ring a bell? Have you assumed…
The following article is from the old National Association of Commercial Divers (NAOCD) website. Author unknown. Some of the information is outdated but all and all its a good read for those thinking about becoming a commercial diver.<br />
<br />
<br />
So...You Want to be a Commercial Diver?*<br />
Revised, April 2001<br />
So...you're thinking about being a commercial diver?<br />
Did you see suggestive pictures, or catchy captions in one of the scuba magazines? "Excitement, Adventure, and Money" ring a bell? Have you assumed that because of the inherit risk commercial divers work with, that they must earn great salaries? Perhaps you like scuba diving and thinking about taking it a step further and making it a profession of some sort? A lot of commercial divers started out with those same thoughts. But before you shell out your money or make a major career change, here are some in-depth facts, without the hype, that you need to consider.<br />
WHAT IS COMMERCIAL DIVING?<br />
<br />
You often hear in the commercial diving industry, things like "a commercial diver is really only a construction worker that is also a diver", or "diving is just a mode of transportation to get down to the job site". This is very true. Essentially, everything that is done on a land based construction site is done underwater, from welding, to pile driving, and everything with patching, maintaining and replacing. The key for anyone that is thinking about becoming a commercial diver to remember is that it doesn't matter how good a diver you are as a main concern, but how good you are on the construction site. Employers are looking for divers that can put it together, build it, fix it, better, faster, and with less problems, and not that you necessarily swim 4 miles a day. This means you will be doing labor intensive work, just like your counterpart on the surface. Except you will have the added bonus of doing it in cold water, with little to no viability, often in layers of mud and sludge, and under the pressure of an already hostile underwater environment.<br />
<br />
Commercial divers are apart from the mainstream and most take great pride and satisfaction on being able to do a job that few other individuals can. Often having to do more with less than their counterpart on dry land, because at 140ft, you can't run down the hardware store and get a different wrench without a major break and time loss on the job. They are resourceful, good at working alone and making decisions and developing solutions. Most commercial divers truly love what they do and look at the rough conditions that they have to work in as just another challenge to their abilities.<br />
<br />
Commercial diving is also a very hazardous occupation. The CDC reported in 1998 that commercial diving fatalities are 40 times higher than any other industry.<br />
<br />
THE COMMERCIAL DIVING INDUSTRY.<br />
Most commercial diving work is usually defined in two different areas, Off-shore and Inland. Off-shore commercial diving consists of diving in the oceans and usually the work is in support of the oil and gas industry, working on wells and pipelines. In the United States, the majority of off-shore work is in the Gulf of Mexico with most companies located in the Louisiana and Texas coastal areas. Inland commercial diving consists of diving in lakes, rivers, and other inland waterways in support of industries like power plants, bridge maintenance, and ship building. Inland diving companies are small and are located across the united states.<br />
Commercial diving work, like most construction type work, is seasonal, weather dependent, and, off-shore, it is also dependent on the oil and gas market. Lay-offs are common in the bigger commercial diving companies. You can be going on all cylinders during the summer months and twiddling your thumbs during the winter months. When your not working, you do not get paid. If weather is bad, same thing. If you are sick, with the exception of some of the larger companies that will pay sick days at shop pay level, you don't get paid.<br />
Working off-shore in the Gulf of Mexico (60% of divers), you can expect to start out as a tender making about $8.00/hour shop pay, and $9.00/hour when working off-shore. You will start your career as a tender for the first 18-36 months, no matter what your experience, training, or educational level is. Working conditions in the Gulf can truly be deplorable, especially for a tender. Consequently, the industry has a 70% attrition rate of tenders before the end of their first year in the industry. To cover this problem, most of the larger commercial diving companies over hire new tenders. This means that in most cases, newly hired tenders get less of the off-shore jobs where they can make more money.<br />
How quickly you break-out as a diver, will be dependent on how well you do your job as a tender and not how long or how fancy your diving training has been. Divers can start around $11.00/hr, off-shore. Experienced divers with 5+ years experience with backgrounds in different areas of diving and construction can make a relatively decent salary of between $35-70k a year. Saturation diving pays more, at about $850 per 24-day. Saturation work is about 5-10% of the industry work so if you do it, it will be infrequent.<br />
Inland work can be better paying to start and it takes less time to break-out. Many inland companies will have you in the water within a month or two, depending on the work they do. Diving in the inland environment can be more difficult and more dangerous because those jobs are usually done in extreme cold waters, no viability, and confined areas, not to mention the unknown debris that might be around. Despite those conditions, many divers prefer inland work, as opposed to working off-shore, because the companies are smaller with less politics, conditions are less demoralizing, they can earn more an hour, and they get to know the abilities of other divers they work with much better.<br />
Union scale wages for commercial divers are far more realistic in respect that it takes into consideration the risk divers take and the technical knowledge they have to have. Unions start divers at about $34/hour. There are no union jobs in the Gulf of Mexico and few in the inland industry making these jobs few and hard to get into.<br />
Getting a job after graduating from diving school is not usually a problem. Most schools have good relationships with company recruiters and can place most of their graduates. Getting a job initially will not be the problem. Getting and keeping steady work will be. The industry as a whole looses about 7 out of 10 divers their first year working after graduation, and only 1 out of 20 are still working as divers after five years. Don't let high statistics on job placement blind you to the problems of finding enough work year around and the actual retention rate.<br />
$Thirty-five thousand dollars your first year seems to be the magic number that the diving schools like to use while recruiting. This is the extreme end, however. You have to figure that you need to make about $17 @ hour full time to make that money. Chances are that you will not work more than half the year and most companies hire divers at around 11-14 an hour. some even pay as little as 9@hour. Making 35k your first year isn't impossible, but it is unrealistic on the average. If you start working offshore, tenders make even less. What increases salaries for divers is the overtime. Most divers don't mind doing the overtime because it gives them the extra money and gets the job done quicker. So it isn't a bad thing, however, it still takes a lot of work hours to make that $35k. Also keep in mind that most diving companies are small and privately owned and can't afford benefits to their employees. Consequently, they rarely pay for things like employee medical, life, or pensions. Which means the real value of your total salary is even less.<br />
Commercial diving is an excellent career if you keep in mind that you will probably not be making more than a laborer your first 2-4 years, and once you start making a decent salary, you will have to be a good money manager to know when to put some away during times of plenty for those times when there may not be much work.<br />
<br />
COMMERCIAL DIVING, INTERNATIONALLY.<br />
This is probably the most misunderstood - and most often, inaccurately discussed by dive school recruiters - areas of commercial diving. "Can I work anywhere around the world with my American commercial diving training?" The answer is absolutely....NO! No one in the developed world, such as Europe or Australia, recognize commercial diving training received through any school within the United States. The international standard that is followed in the global marked, with the exception of the United States, is the UK's HSE standard. Most international markets will ask that divers be "HSE" or "North Sea" qualified before they hire them. The HSE does not recognize American training because the United States has no national commercial diving standard. That is, here in the United States we do not have a governing body that has set down minimal hours of training in different areas or levels of training and consequently, no regulatory control over them. The closest standard we have in the United States is the ANSI standard. That standard is a private accreditation based on standard submitted by the private sector. There is no governing agency in the united states that mandates those standards as law, such as the FAA does for commercial pilots.<br />
Where the disinformation comes from in working internationally, is the work done in undeveloped countries. Most of the big off-shore diving companies do jobs around the world. In underdeveloped countries, such as in West Africa, there are no diving regulations or standards. Consequently, American companies can send in American trained divers in those areas to do work.<br />
The diving schools will tell you that they are recognized by IMCA (International Marine Contractor Association), and that is certainly true. But that recognition is really baseless on a job site. What happens when big oil companies are writing a contract to do certain work with a commercial diving company, the contract will read that divers must be "HSE" qualified. Whether or not IMCA recognizes the US schools or not is immaterial. There are efforts to change this problem, but so far there is nothing in place.<br />
The only thing American divers have that works internationally within the developed world, is they can work in Canada with a 100ft maximum depth.<br />
<br />
AGE.<br />
Age should be a major factor in any decision you make on a diving career. It often never comes to mind, and the schools will certainly never mention it. In a era when it is common to find individuals in their 40s embarking on a second career, it is rare to find anyone that age still working as a diver in this industry. The major reason is the stress of working in an underwater environment has on the body while doing hard, laborious work. Studies have indicated that there is a significant relationship between one's age and how quickly their bodies can expel nitrogen which can pose a greater risk for the bends. Insurers of major diving and oil companies take this seriously and they are often the ones that will pose age restrictions on some of the more strenuous field of diving, such as saturation diving. Lloyds, one of the major insurers, has an age limit of 45 years old.<br />
Keep a few facts in mind when you are thinking about commercial diving. Commercial diving is a relatively small profession where everyone knows everyone, and reputation means everything. It usually takes five to seven years to establish a reputation as a diver (some even say ten years). The rule of thumb in saturation diving (the area that pays the highest salaries), is that you have to be younger than 40. Off-shore work can be a bit higher, mid and even in some occasions later 40s. Inland work is the more forgiving to age, because the work is much shallower and at the same time tends to demand a higher level of expertise in the construction and mechanical areas, i.e. experience. Inland, you can probably work into your early 50s. Of course, there are exceptions to all these rules, and the critical shortage of divers in the industry can cause the age curve to move a bit upward.<br />
<br />
TRAINING. The first thing you need to consider is how to attain the right training to become an entry level diver, or tender, in the industry. A tender, essentially handles all the topside aspects of a dive operation and diver support. They maintain communications with the diver, watching his depth, time, air consumption, passes tools, keeps the logs, and run the compressors and other equipment that may be in use. The most acceptable way to receive training, is through one of the commercial diving training programs offered by vocational schools, diving schools, and the US Navy. It is also common that some inland companies will train you directly on the job (OJT - On the Job Training), but that will soon be less and less if the industry passes some of the regulations it wants. You will have to be school trained to work off-shore, unless you have been diving for many years and your reputation and log books precede your request for employment (don't hold your breath).<br />
<br />
WHAT IS AN ADC MEMBER SCHOOL? All ACDE schools are members of the Association of Diving Contractors (ADC). The ADC maintains a minimal training standard for commercial diving that is exceedingly low and has no real basis on the number of hours that need to be maintained by ANSI or HSE standards. However, fly-by-night commerical diving schools come and go, and when they cannot meet the ACDE commercial diving standard or just want to chug out divers like a puppy mill, they will advertise that they are "ADC member" schools and maintain "ADC standard". ADC membership is as easy to obtain and making an application and writing the check, so anyone can open a school in their garage and give them basic scuba diving lessons and make them commercial divers by the "ADC standard". So be careful when choosing a school that has that label.<br />
<br />
WHAT IS THE ACDE? The Association of Commercial Diver Educators (ACDE) is a small organization who's membership consists of the owners of each of the major diving schools that have dominated the industry for many years. Presidential tasks of the organization are rotated around each of the 5 individual owner/managers of the member schools on a periodic basis. Their purpose is to establish uniform and minimal standards of training and education for its member schools, through consultations with the diving companies, and other experts in the industry.<br />
<br />
WHAT IS ACDE ACCREDITATION? The ACDE registers its educational standards with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is accredited by that agency. While that standard is an excellent gage of knowing that you are receiving the right training demanded by the diving companies and the basics you will need when you start working, it is only an 'accreditation' and not a national standard. All ACDE member schools abide by the ANSI training standard.<br />
<br />
THE ACDE MEMBER SCHOOLS.<br />
Even though the ACDE members work together for uniform standards, they are still in major competition with each other for students. Consequently, when you make inquires to them, you will hear things like "the biggest school", "the oldest", "best instructors" "state-of-the-art equipment", etc. All vocational schools and colleges bring out all their brag when they are trying to sell themselves to students. That's just good business. All of it sounds good, but is really meaningless. In reality, all of the ACDE schools are essentially equal in their training and reputation within the industry. What considerations you make should be dependent on which school meets your particular needs best, in things such as cost, location, method of training, accessibility, etc.<br />
Each of the ACDE schools have at least 25 years experience in training commercial divers. They are solid and you will find their graduates working throughout industry. Their student services programs are top notch. All the schools have good relationships with the communities around them and have access to affordable, decent places for lodging and part-time jobs to help out during the time your training. They will work with students directly to meet individual needs. They have good contacts within the industry and some give lifetime job placement for their alumni.<br />
<b>Most of these schools are also privately owned and in the business of making a profit.</b> Consequently, they tend to be very expensive, packed full of a lot of fluff courses and training that may not really necessary for an entry level diver, and lots of peripheral money-making ventures such as offering credit cards, and having shops to sell everything from paper and pencils to diving gear. <u>They have heavy marketing programs and are experts at sweet-talking prospective students. All schools can be misleading with information on diving and the diving industry. So be alert when you talk with them and make sure you ask direct questions and get exacting answers. Don't settle for a good tap dance.</u><br />
<br />
COLLEGE OF OCEANEERING (COO)<br />
272 South Fries Avenue<br />
Wilmington, CA 90744 Schd: M,W or T.TH/8:00-4:00<br />
800-432-3483<br />
FAX: 301-834-7132<br />
Email: jimsparks@diveco.com<br />
<br />
COO is an accredited college but its curriculum focuses on commercial diving training. You can receive enough college credits during your training to receive an associates degree (2-year degree) if you already have at least 20 college hours from another school, or if you receive those 20 hours after your COO graduation. COO is also fashioned like a college with everything from cap and gown graduations, to a student supply store. They even have a small school newsletter (kind of a pseudo school newspaper), with all the latest news. Their program is 50 weeks long, but they only meet two days a week. They say that they gear their programs that way to help facilitate their students ability to work part time for living expenses, and that may be a major consideration for some students that do not want to have to cram 40 hours of training along with another 20-30 hours of part-time work into the same week. Admission folks are not paid by commission (% for each body they admit) as with some of the other diving schools, but that does not mean that they are any less likely to recruit any differently. AT $16,000 for training, it is the most expensive diving training available, as well as the longest training duration, but in hours, is not much different from other ACDE schools. COO's consists of programs that are geared to teaching on one of three specialties that off-shore entry level divers may not use until they break-out, some 2-3 years after graduating. Those speciality courses consist of 20 weeks of the total 50 weeks. By making the speciality training part of the total commercial diving training, it forces the student to study areas that they may not need right away, and/or could recieve in other ways for a fraction of what is costs at COO. However, if you are planning other career directions, such as diver support, hyperbarics, or public safety, then having the speciality training as well as the diver training may be very beneficial.<br />
<br />
<br />
DIVERS ACADEMY OF EASTERN SEABOARD<br />
2500 S. Broadway<br />
Camden, New Jersey 08104 Schd: M-F/8:00-4:00<br />
800-238-3483<br />
FAX: 609-541-4355<br />
Email: cdiver1@aol.com<br />
<br />
Divers Academy is the least expensive of the ACDE schools. Their underwater training facility is in a controlled environment of the Delaware River and they boast that it teaches their students under "real" diving conditions. This could be considered a major plus, because the closer you can get to the actual environment that you will be working in, with all its inherit problems, the better prepared you will be for the real thing, as well and learning how to adapt to them sooner. Training in the middle of January in the Delaware River might not be as appealing as working on your tan in a more southern state, and I'm sure you can tell that to your first dive supervisor when he tells you to put on a cold and clammy wet suit to get to work. Getting use to it now, can only be a benefit. Their admission folks are very knowledgeable, easily accessible, and willing to answer all questions and help with specific individual needs.<br />
<br />
<br />
DIVERS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (DIT)<br />
4315 11th Avenue, NW<br />
Seattle, WA 90107 Schd: M-F/8:00-15:00<br />
800-634-8377<br />
EMAIL: ebhasson@diversinstitute.com<br />
<br />
DIT has come a long way in the last 18 months. Under new management, they have, by far, become the most progressive of the diving schools. They are trying to do what other schools have been complacant in for too long, and that is to build a training standard in the United States that can be accepted internationally. Since the US does not have a national standard, they have been working with the Canadian commercial diving standard, and have received standards recognition from British Columbia. They are putting much energy in building programs that will facilitate divers to not only be more internationally competetive but also to dive safer. DIT can be a benefit if your looking to learn cold water diving. Just recently they had a visit from Mike Cocks, the British commercial diving trade union representative and he had very good things to say about DIT in a recently international magazine.<br />
<br />
<br />
he Ocean Corporation (TOC)<br />
10840 Rockley Road<br />
Houston, Texas 77272 Schedule: M-Th/8:00-16:00<br />
800-321-0298<br />
FAX: 713-530-9143<br />
EMAIL: admissions@ocorp.com<br />
<br />
Ocean Corp is also under new management and they are focusing on correcting some of the past problems. Management is far easier to access. They have replaced their admissions folks that were in the past, difficult to access and trying to help their poor overworked, but dedicated receptionist. TOC tell me that all their registration fees, while they are expensive, will be refunded if you choose not to attend their school and give them reasonable notice. They have reviewed their marketing and working in a more professional direction. They assure me that they are addressing some of the problems that were brought to our attention by past students and follow-ups seem to support that. They have received, over the past few years, quite a nice batch of new equipment. Giving them a little more up-to-date training facility.<br />
<br />
<br />
Santa Barbara City College<br />
Marine Technology Department<br />
721 Cliff Drive Schd: various<br />
Santa Barbara, CA 93109<br />
(805) 965-0581 ex 2427<br />
FAX (805) 963-7222<br />
EMAIL: barthelm@sncc.net<br />
<br />
SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE (SBCC). SBCC is a state college that teaches commercial diving as part of the Marine Technology curriculum. You can be trained as a commercial diver with the minimal course load of two semesters, at which time you can simply go out and work. Or you can stay for two more semesters and also receive a AS degree when completed. Cost for two semesters for California students is 1,820 ($5,810 for out of state students). The AS degree program of four semesters costs $2,405 for California students, $11,525 for out of state students. Although taking the two year program maybe longer in duration than some may want to participate in, there is the advantage of having several areas of knowledge under your belt to help you in job placement in other diving areas, when there may not be a lot of underwater work to be done.<br />
<br />
NON-ACCREDIATED SCHOOLS.<br />
In the last few years, the diving companies have been working to find solutions to the high cost of commercial diving training, the length of time it takes to train them. One of the solutions is to cut out all the 'fluff' from most diving training programs and teach students just what they will need as an entry level commercial diver. The diving companies explained that graduates with specialty training such in DMT, NDT, welding and others, don't use the the knowledge the first 2-4 years while they are tenders and forget most of what they learned before they start working it. It is their reasoning, that it is better to cut these things out, and train the divers with the basics, first, and then train them in special areas when they break-out as divers. This makes sense as lots of diving companies usually offer these extra courses periodically to their employees (divers) which is usually free, and you end up taking them on company time. This also gives you an opportunity to become familiar with the different fields of commercial diving first hand before you have to make a decision on which one is best for you. But this is only true in the off-shore industry. Inland divers may use their new skills right away. And not all offshore companies abide by this philosophy but rather the idea that if they spend the money to do in-house training, employees will leave and go somewhere else.<br />
The concern here should not be that some schools cut out the fluff, but that in return, they are not offering a substitute for more indepth training or concentrating more hours in the basic diving training itself as a trade off. Thier training hours are rediculously small when compared to the international market and in the quality of diver that they churn out. Even with the minmum 660 hours required for ACDE accreditation, American commercial diving schools still don't meet the level of hours that most other western-developed countries train at. Consequently, reducing those hours even more, only makes our commercial diving programs here in the United States look worse, to the international market. Be watchful for non-accrediated schools that cut training hours for the sake of getting as many warm bodies out to the industry as possible without the benefit of being properly trained.<br />
Be extremely watchful to those schools that say they are members of the ADC when you ask them if they are accredited. All the schools are members of the ADC and it really is meaningless as far as understanding a standard of training. The ADC sets down a list of training hours that is almost rediculas in its development and numbers. Those that would have you believe they follow those numbers instead of the ACDE's ANSI standard for some higher purpose should be looked at cautiously. The ADC is a trade organization for diving companies and not a training or education organization.<br />
.<br />
Lousiana Technical College<br />
Young Memorial Campus<br />
900 Youngs Road Schedule<br />
Morgan City, LA 70380<br />
504-380-2436<br />
FAX 504-380-2440<br />
<br />
Young Memorial is, hands down, the best training program currently in the industry in almost all categories, and gives far more bang for the buck. I cannot say enough good things here. This program is relatively new, and was developed by the major diving companies in the industry in cooperation with the technical school. The training is a no frills, and gets down to business. The school is located in center of commercial diving activity and is perfect place to get hands-on experience. Students can work part time at one of the major diving companies that are all located in this area. This means that you get experience in exactly what you will be doing when you complete your training. You can see first hand how the industry works and have a golden opportunity to talk with working divers and dive supervisors about what it means to be in this career. The companies monitor your training and if you do well, you can be almost certain of continued work with the same company, only on a full time basis. If you decide that Young Memorial is not the school for you, I suggest that you at least talk with one of the instructors there (they are available in the afternoons to talk with prospective students by phone). They will give you a 'real' insight on the industry and what you need for training. The cost is excessively low, and even the school admits that they could not actually teach students for $250. You will have to also have your own wetsuit/drysuit upon admission which will add a little to the cost. The hours are lower than the ACDE standard, but there are two reasons for that. 1) they do not offer basic scuba diving training (you have to have your scuba card upon admission), which reduces the need for some of the training hours. 2) If you manage to be able to work part-time with one of the local area diving companies at the same time as you are a student, you can gain a tremendous amount of experience and insight that could be a trade-off for training hours.<br />
<br />
<br />
GULF COAST COMMERCIAL DIVING ACADEMY<br />
P.O. Box 5492 D<br />
Gulf shores, AL 36547 Schd: M-Th/10 hrs days<br />
888-974-2232<br />
FAX: 334-974-5283<br />
<br />
Gulf Coast has most of the regular speciality courses as the other schools, but not included as a basic dive training course. This gives you the choice in what you want to do, either the basic course, or one with all the 'extras'. There training is in a 4-day period instead of, say, six, so that students can also work part-time if they need to. Gulf Coast has a preference for a more minimum training standard to please the companies and does not meet ACDE standards. You should keep this in mind when selecting a school if you are looking for good standards of training and good safety considerations. Training facilities are questionable, by reports that have been received from past students, and student services is very limited. Gulf Coast was unavailable for follow-up questions on the status of the school for our revised report. Management and admissions were impossible to get a hold of.<br />
<br />
INLAND COMMERCIAL DIVER TRAINING CTR<br />
712 Washington Street D<br />
Brainerd, MN 56401 Schd: 6 days/10-hr days<br />
800-657-2822<br />
Email: mnscldiv@uslink.net<br />
<br />
If you looking to do work in the inland field of diving, this is a good start. This is a no frills, fast paced course geared to the specific needs of the inland industry, with all the deep-sea 'stuff' left out. Their course is listed with Central Lakes College even though you do the training at the dive training center. So you have an education institution backing it directly. You could take college courses hand-in-hand with the level of dive training you decide on. Most inland work is in relatively shallow water but have their own specific problems with things like sever cold, confined spaces, and lack of visibility. These folks have all those environments to train you in. The draw back is that your certification will limit you to working in 80 feet of water. But if that's where you are looking to work, then you won't need anything else. There are many inland divers that have never been deeper than 50 feet or have never dove in sea water. They will work with you to try and gear further training to specific needs that you plan to work, such as inspections and welding. That will, of course, extend the course time and costs (burning course is an extra $975 and one week longer).<br />
<br />
DIVING SCHOOLS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES. The choice of a diving school does not have to be limited to the United States. There are many fine diving schools in other western countries that offer far more extensive training, certify you to work world-wide, include room and board and are still often cheaper in cost than the US diving schools. Schools outside the US usually get a lot of foreign students and are geared to assist them with travel, immigration, and other special arrangements that may need to be made. Most of the English speaking countries such as Canada and the UK are usually no problem to enter in as a student. But each country has its own immigration laws and you should double check any restrictions or special needs when you inquire to any school outside the US. None of the US diving schools are qualified to offer HSE (UK) diving certifications which will allow you to work world-wide. So if you are looking to work in that capacity, you will have to attend a school outside the US. Financial aid may be a consideration as well, since countries that have grant or loan programs generally reserve them for their own citizens. Schools that admit a lot of foreign students may have arrangements with local financial institutions to assist their students, and some US financial institutions and federal programs will allow you to use the money to pay for education in another country. Talk to the institution you are interested in attending, they generally have all the details on this subject because they deal with it on a daily basis.<br />
<br />
CANADA:<br />
CANADIAN WORKING DIVERS INSTITUTE<br />
Box 125, RR #1<br />
Buckhorn, Ontario K0L 1J0 Schd: 6 days/wk/12 hrs per day<br />
800-924-1124<br />
FAX: (705) 657-2766 HSE Certification<br />
email: cwdi@oncomdis.on.ca<br />
<br />
CWDI offers a wonderful alternative to US diving schools. The school is on an island which gives you the opportunity to concentrate on training with no outside interferences. Room and board are furnished and included in the cost of tuition. Accommodations are 2 per room and three meals a day, seven days a week. I find having room and board included can be a plus for students in many ways. It eliminates the need to hunt down places to live and part-time jobs in order to pay for living expenses while your trying to train. Having everything furnished for you on site, allows you to concentrate on nothing but your studies. I had very productive conversations with two of CWDI's instructors who were very informative, knowledgeable and accessible. You will need a basic SCUBA certificate and CPR card to enroll. Canada has a Free Trade Agreement with the US, but I'm not sure how this will work for financial aid from either country. I'm sure the school will be able to get you that information and assist you in that area if you are interested. The course is entensive, with 12-hour days, so be prepared to buckle down hard if you decide to attend CWDI.<br />
<br />
NAVY DIVERS. If you have training and experience as a "hard-hat" diver in the Navy, grab your log books and your certifications and go directly the the dive companies. Off-shore companies will start you out as a tender like everyone else, no matter your experience, but you do not have to attend a commercial diving school, even though the ACDE schools will tell you that. A nice resume' will help make you look good.<br />
<br />
SCHOOL TOURS. All the schools offer tours to the prospective student. If you live near the area of one, then by all means take them up on it. However, don't waste your money on a major trip to see the training facility. A diving tank, is a diving tank. Facilities are all more or less the same and knowing what they look like before hand is of little significance unless you want to know something about the area for working or living conditions. School visits are usually great pressure sessions to get you signed up and your paperwork started. If you want to see what your getting into before you make a decision, spend your money on a trip to one of the larger dive companies. They will give you a tour just as readily if you call them in advance, and you can get a far, far better picture of what you will be getting into.<br />
<br />
STUDENT CANDIDATE REQUIREMENTS. To apply for one of the commercial diving schools you need to be at least 18 years of age at the time of enrollment, and have a High School Diploma or GED equivalent. Most schools start training from the ground, so you do not have to have any previous diving experience. Only, Young Memorial require you to have a basic scuba certification before starting their diving training. This is required so that they can keep the their courses short and training costs down. Assistance is available to obtain your c-card in the local area, if you need that, for an extra fee. As a commercial diver, it will be rare that you have to swim in water unattended so you don't have to swim like Mark Spitz. Most divers simple drop down to the job site and usually don't even wear fins unless they are doing inspection work or rolling video that requires them to move around. You at least feel 'comfortable' in and around water. Any added abilities is just gravy. If you apply and meet these simple requirements, you will get admitted to any of the schools. Some of the ACDE schools have some sort of selection board to approve admission, but it is rare that anyone is refused unless they do not meet the minimal standards mentioned above.<br />
<br />
BASIC SCUBA DIVING. Most of the diving schools will start your training from the bottom as if you have no diving experience at all. The training usually starts with SCUBA basics, and you will get a recreational scuba diving certification along with your commercial certification upon graduating as an added bonus. If you already have some level of SCUBA certification from one of the recognized recreational associations, then you are ahead of the game and have a good background on the two more difficult areas most students have the hardest time in, physics and physiology. If you plan on going to Young Memorial, who require you to have a scuba certification first, my advice would be to try and get it locally rather than at the location of the commercial diving school. Any local dive shop can instruct you in basic scuba and it will more than likely be much cheaper and easier for them to work around your present work schedule. Certification from any of the major recreational diving associations will be acceptable.<br />
<br />
COLLEGE CREDIT. Most of the diving schools have agreements with secondary education institutions or are accreditated colleges themselves, and give college credits for a lot of their course work. Ask the training facility what kind of college credits they offer for their courses.<br />
<br />
DIVING EQUIPMENT. If you are already a certified scuba diver, you probably already own most of the diving gear you will need. If you have not been diving, you will need the basics-mask, snorkel, and Fins. You will also need a wet suit. If your going to Young Memorial, all you will need is the wet suit because they do no scuba diving, you start right off in a hard-hat. Get a 6mil wet suit for the colder states. You can get by with a 3 mil in CA and TX schools. The schools will love to sell you everything you need at much inflated prices, so get your diving gear before you leave for dive school. You can go to your local dive shop and probably get a much better price and not be in a rush to make a selection. You don't need a c-card to purchase things like fins and masks. Even better prices can be found in mail order catalogs. They often advertise in a lot of the scuba magazines, and on the internet. Don't spend great gobs of money on this stuff either. You don't need anything fancy to train in. Once your certified and working, you will have a chance to talk with experienced divers, and test other types of gear to make a more informed decision on what you like best. $100 should more than enough for a mask, snorkel, fins. The same goes for a wet suit. Get a used one, because they are only going to get messed up during training. Lots of shops sell off their rentals after a while, and you can get some good deals. If your an experienced scuba diver and have lots of gadgets and gizmos, leave 'em at home. You won't need them unless you plan on diving during your time off. But that will be limited and you have to fit in studies and sleeping and probably working. So think practically.<br />
<br />
MEDICAL. Once you decide on a commercial diving school, you will have to have a major physical. If you're still on your parents insurance, or have your own work medical insurance, have it done by a local physician that you know before you leave. The schools will send you the physical forms when you register. If you don't have insurance, you might wait till you go to the dive school. All the dive schools have a local physician they use regularly for dive physicals and they can get it done for you at a decent rate, usually between $200-$300. Schools will waive the physical part of the application until you get there and take it with their doctor. If you have had a physical in the last 12 months, you should be okay.<br />
<br />
TRAINING HOURS: This may only be important to those individuals that hope to get as much training as they pay for. When talking with a lot of divers about their training, one of the most common issues mentioned is the lack of actual training hours received vs the training hours the schools advertise. It seems a common practice in some schools is to finish classes early on a consistant basis. For instance, if your class schedule says you have class from 8-4, but the instructor says you don't have to return to class after lunch, two and three times a week, then you are loosing anywhere between 6 and 12 hours of training per week. That is a substantial amount of training. Reducing hours with this practice, limits your training and could cause serious safety issues and reduction to your diving abilities when you are out in the field, as well as not meeting accredited hours or getting the amount of training you paid for. Getting out of a class a bit early on occasion is not an issues, as most circuliums pad the time a little to cover for unforeseen situations like bad weather. However, when it becomes a constant situation, you should complain!<br />
<br />
FINANCIAL AID. All the schools can help you pay your tuition with things like grants, loans, and scholarships. Anywhere from 70-90% of the divers that go to school, have some sort of financial aid. Grants and scholarships will generally only pay a part, and not everyone will be eligible for that. Most end up taking out a loan, either through a government program, or with a financial institution that the school has an agreement with. These loans are usually at low interests rates, BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY THEM BACK! Remember that! You will have 6 months grace time before they start demanding some payments for your education loan, but they will come knocking. School loan payments can often times be more than your car payment. Remember that your first couple of years working as a diver/tender, you will probably not be making enough to put gas in your car, much less a big loan. Think that through when you make your decisions. Talk with the schools. The ACDE schools are very good at doing all that they can to insure the least financial burden on you as possible. Find out what your payments will be, your interest rate, and how long it will take to pay off, etc. Don't go in it blind and wait for the heart attack to come when you get the first bill. If you do find yourself with a much higher loan burdon than you anticipated, talk with the loan institutions. They know you are just starting out and will almost always work out something that is less difficult for you to manage.<br />
<br />
ADVICE. The very best advice I can give to a prospective commercial diver, who has little knowledge about the industry, is to visit a work site. All states have, at the very least, inland commercial diving companies. Check your local yellow pages or the closest large city's yellow pages under "divers". If you can't find any, look at the list of ADC member companies on their website and find one that is near you. Call them, and explain your situation and ask if it would be possible to tag along on a job to see what is happening. This is not as uncommon a request as you might think. At the very least, ask them if you can visit the shop and talk with some of the divers (or even the owner as he is usually a diver himself). Seeing the industry first hand and talking to working divers directly will give you best information and answers to your questions than any other single factor. Don't be afraid to ask!<br />
If you have never been scuba diving before, go to your local dive shop and sign up for a basic course. They are usually relatively inexpensive, and it will go a long way in giving you a feel of what the underwater environment is like and a gage on how well you will do with the math and sciences part of the studies. Local dive shop owners and managers usually know where the commercial divers are in the area, as well. The local dive shop is a great place for information in the field overall. Start there.<br />
Take your time to make a decision. You are not in hurry. Don't fall into the used car dealer's gimmicks such as "our prices are going up next month", "our classes are filling up quick", "What class date can I sign you up for", etc. If your interested in attending their school, they will find you a seat, I assure you.<br />
When talking with diving companies about a job, ask specific wages for shop pay as well as off-shore pay, by the hour. The industry likes to use annual salary figures that are grossly inflated because of over-time pay, depth pay, penetration pay, and traveling extras, all of which should not be considered as a base salary. Getting salaries at an hourly rate shows you the bottom line so you can do the math yourself based on what you need to make in order to pay your bills. Ask how much time you will be working off-shore (where you can make more money). Have realistic expectations on what you will really earn to start out. Remember in the beginning you will probably see more shop time than off-shore time. That will increase as you stay longer with the company.<br />
<br />
BOTTOM LINE. This report is based on one person's opinion and interpretation, intended to give an outsider some insight into the industry. You need to do your own research and make your own informed decisions based on what is right for YOU.**
SEALAB 1 CELEBRATES ITS 45TH ANNIVERSARY
tag:community.cdiver.net,2009-08-30:2371245:BlogPost:35064
2009-08-30T16:38:16.000Z
Dive Diva
http://community.cdiver.net/profile/DiveDiva
From the late 1950's through the 1960's the U.S. Navy SEALAB program was guided by Captain George Bond. While this diving program got less media exposure than NASA's space program and even Cousteau's rival Conshelf program, SEALAB's impact has been very profound by proving the viability of saturation diving.<br />
<br />
<br />
The Following article is taken from the US Navy EDU Website<br />
<br />
MONDAY, JULY 20, 2009<br />
<br />
On July 20, 1964, SeaLab I (commanded by CAPT George F. Bond) lowered to a depth of 195 ft off the…
From the late 1950's through the 1960's the U.S. Navy SEALAB program was guided by Captain George Bond. While this diving program got less media exposure than NASA's space program and even Cousteau's rival Conshelf program, SEALAB's impact has been very profound by proving the viability of saturation diving.<br />
<br />
<br />
The Following article is taken from the US Navy EDU Website<br />
<br />
MONDAY, JULY 20, 2009<br />
<br />
On July 20, 1964, SeaLab I (commanded by CAPT George F. Bond) lowered to a depth of 195 ft off the coast of Bermuda after its initial test in Panama City, FL. Sealab I would build on the foundations laid during the earlier Genesis saturation-diving project. The habitat would be constructed from two converted floats and held in place with axles from railroad cars. The experiment involved four divers - LCDR Robert Thompson, MC; GM1(DV) Lester Anderson, QMC(DV) Robert A. Barth, and HMC(DV) Sanders Manning. SeaLab I was a bottom habitat, saturation diving experiment whose purpose was to evaluate human ability to work under the water at moderate depths for prolonged periods. Although the operation had to be cancelled ten days early due to an approaching storm, it was a total success. It conclusively demonstrated the feasibility of open-sea saturation diving and set the stage for SeaLab II.<br />
<br />
This program ultimately even had a huge impact on the global economy. The SEALAB program provided the commercial diving industry with its most important tool in the exploitation of offshore oil and gas reservoirs: the ability to dive deep and stay there for extended periods of time. In the process, the Navy medical community extracted a wealth of physiological data from their human subjects.<br />
<br />
In the words of one of her aquanauts, Bob Barth:<br />
"About Sealab One, the purpose of having that habitat built was to complete the feasibility study of putting man in the sea, no sat systems were available in the early 60's so we decided that the Cousteau concept of habitats was the best way to get someone on the bottom and leave them there. Four Navy folks occupied Sealab One for 11 days. I can tell you that those 11 days in that habitat were probably the best diving days I ever made; think about it, you travel down to 200 feet and not have to worry about bottom time, what you find sitting there is this monster house, (not something that we see very often). Bright lights, fresh water, warm showers, bunks, and plenty to eat, and nobody with a damn stop watch. She doesn't look like much now sitting out at the museum but in 1964 she was a palace. TBT 17000 +/- minutes, on the bottom."<br />
<br />
SeaLab I is currently on display at the Man in the Sea Museum in Panama City, FL.<br />
Note: For more about the SEALAB missions read, "Papa Topside: The Sealab Chronicles of Capt. George F. Bond, USN" by George F. Bond and "Sea Dwellers: The Humor, Drama, and Tragedy of the U.S. Navy Sealab Programs" by Bob Barth.