FLOATING THROUGH LIFE Sarah Naismith, Drilling Engineer, and Douglas Brown, Offshore Installation Manager, on board the Sedco 711.
A world apart
Aine Ryan
News Reporter
aineryan@mayonews.ie
PYRAMIDAL Croagh Patrick may be visible on clear days from the Corrib gas rig, but for the majority of its inhabitants Elly Bay might as well be in Egypt, and Mayo in Morocco, as they go about their daily chores.
For the 100 staff on the Sedco 711 rig, which has been anchored 83km off the coast of Belmullet intermittently for several years, the Corrib gas controversy is also utterly irrelevant. For the majority of the Roughnecks and Roustabouts, those working in accommodation and the galley, this flotel-cum-marine industrial site is their world.
Take 23-year-old Leslie Cowie from Elgin in north-east Scotland. The former Council worker has taken to life ‘offshore’ like a duck to water. “The rig is our home for half the year and this [recreation room] is like our sitting room,” she explains. The fact that females are in a significant minority poses no problems for the good-humoured Scottish lass.
“The men really look out for you, even if they give you a wee bit of cheek now and then. They’re like brothers and uncles,” says Leslie, laughing. She was due ‘onshore leave’ within a couple of days and was heading to Scotland’s version of Oxegen, the famous T in the Park festival near Kinross, held over last weekend.
In the interim, however, Leslie’s having a quick break after helping to serve lunch. She is sitting on one of the couches in the large non-smoking room, which has a flat-screen television, a computer and shelves filled with board games. The slow, undulating, roll of the rig is the only reminder that we are not lounging around in an efficiently-run hotel or, as the Offshore Installation Manager (OIM), Dougie Brown, suggests, living in ‘a small city’ (operated by three generators, plus an emergency one).
Notwithstanding the rigorous efforts to provide comfort for its crew, working conditions are obviously harsh, demanding, dangerous and treacherous for the majority who work on the rig floor and on the slippery exterior of this multi-levelled hulk.
Therefore, it’s only fair that riggers have one statutory dispensation: smoking. (It would be far too dangerous to smoke outside, with so many explosive substances onboard). Life must be tough enough away from home, for fortnightly stretches and working 12-hour shifts with a strict no-alcohol policy, even on Christmas Day!
Ironically, the only Irish person working on Sedco 711 is a woman and, apparently, the only female offshore Drilling Engineer in the country. For Dublin native, Ms Sarah Naismith, the discomforts of teetering mid-Atlantic all seem worthwhile. She epitomised personable positivity as she helped us media interlopers into our Survival Suits before boarding our Sikorsky 61 helicopter at Donegal Airport, Carrickfinn, in the early hours of last Tuesday morning (July 3).
Moreover, some hours later – long after our 70-minute flight down the Donegal coastline and out-to-sea, and our welcome reception of steaming coffee and freshly-made rowies (also known as butteries, or Aberdeen rolls) – she was on hand when this writer got a sudden touch of the heeby-jeebies, lost her sea-legs and was quickly relayed to the Medical Room. Thank goodness for good-looking ex-army medics who roll their ‘r’s with a lyrical Scottish brogue! Oh! and the medication they dispense.
A typical day for Sarah starts at 5.30am and usually involves a briefing on the previous 24-hour’s drilling activities. A strong cup of coffee invariably helps clear her head as she prepares the Daily Drilling Report. Then it’s addressing the inevitable vicissitudes of drilling at a depth of 3.6km with pipe-lengths of 30m. Bits can break, like during a recent drilling operation through an extremely hard rock formation during which a major piece of downhole equipment broke. It required pulling the entire pipe back out of the well and all the way up to deck to replace it. Quite a costly exercise.
Probably not quite as costly as another recent incident involving a four-foot member of the cod family, subsequently christened ‘Larry the Ling’ by the rig crew. The giant deep-water fish managed to be hoovered-up during failed efforts to place a well-head protection structure on one of the six well-heads. Larry’s loss of direction left the crew scratching their heads for three days and cost the company a massive €0.25 million.
