The following is an article John wrote for the online helicopter pilot community. John has also created a Powerpoint presentation to show what he was writing about.The oil industry is not glamorous – it is a rough, dirty, dangerous business. It starts hundreds of miles offshore, on production platforms and drilling rigs, where (predominantly) men do business with oil, gas and steel in an office made up of towering pylons, galvanized grating, hammering pumps, pitching workboat decks and always the lingering odor of gas and condensate – a constant reminder that every structure in the Gulf is sitting on a bomb – natural gas flowing out of the ground at thousands of pounds per square inch. This network of platforms is linked by slow boats, fast helicopters, satellite phones and the Internet. You can eat steak and watch Judge Judy on television, but the occasional movement of even the most mighty platform lets you know that you are in the end riding on six steel legs driving 250 feet down into the ocean depths. The Weather Channel is a daily staple, and during hurricane season it is on religiously.
My home for 14 days a month is Vermillion 200, a large production platform about 50 miles offshore. It won’t win any architecture awards, but it can sure look pretty at 5:20 PM when it fades into view out of the incessant Gulf haze. Oh yeah – I, and the EC120 I fly, are “Energy Two” from 5:30 AM to 7:30 PM. To the workers I take from platform to platform, I am “Pilot John”. I see solid ground about every third day, and it’s not a bad way to spend two weeks.
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Six weeks ago, I was beginning a concentrated course of study at Lake Charles, LA, home of Era Helicopters, LLC – one of three large helicopter operators in the Gulf of Mexico. I arrived with wide eyes. After three weeks of ground school they were bigger still, and after a couple of toadstool landings (I’ll get to that…), they were the size of saucers. With my Part 135 signoff in hand (the FAA’s seal of approval for me to act as a charter pilot), I headed home for six days, to try to gather myself for whatever lay ahead. A week later, I was pulling into Era’s Morgan City, LA base. Walking into the operations office, I introduce myself, “Hi, I’m John Lancaster.”
The response, “And…?”
Uh-oh.
In the end, I was meant to be there, and much to my surprise, I find out I’m going to be the ERT Loop 2 bird (I’ll get to that too), meaning that I will be living on and flying off of a platform offshore, only coming in twice a week to allow the base mechanics to do that voodoo that they do (…so well!). I guess all those groceries I brought with will have to do without me.
So back to now… Vermillion 200 sits on top of six oil & gas wells, and receives the flow from three nearby satellite wells. It is a blocky, angular, functionally ugly structure rising 150 feet above the water, with its six legs reaching 250 feet into the water below. It has seen 25 years in the Gulf, and although well maintained, it shows it. Eighty percent of the platform is devoted to the business of pumping energy (or pumping money, as it were) out of the ground, and performing the first step of transforming it into forward motion for your car or boiling water for your steamed asparagus. The majority of the platform is a tangled mass of piping and equipment spanning four stories. The other twenty percent of the platform is a large, white, rectangular box containing the offices, kitchen and dining area, and crew quarters. On top of quarters sits the helideck, and on top of that sits 690RW (that’s “Zero Romeo Whiskey” to those in the know), the sleek blue Eurocopter EC120 with which I ply my trade. Any time you are outside, you are walking on galvanized steel grating, and you can almost always see the ocean below your feet (dogs might not like it so much).
Anybody who has backpacked outside of the US will be familiar and comfortable with the accommodations on the platform. VR200 is one of the nicer ones, being owned and operated by ERT – Energy Resource Technology – one of the larger drilling companies you’ve never heard of. Anyway, the rooms are small, Spartan and (like everything in the South), overcooled, which means sleeping under three blankets while it is 85 degrees outside at midnight. Vermillion 200 is lately known, though, for the food. Gary, the cook, puts together three solid meals a day, and a lot of Era’s pilots seem to arrive at 1100 needing fuel around mealtime. Gary also makes a LOT of food, so it’s hard to leave the table lean (I’ll have to be careful – out here a pound of Gary’s cooking is a pound less fuel in the helicopter and out here fuel is everything).
But you’re still wondering about the “Loop 2 bird” thing. Well, sprinkled about the Gulf like cacti in the desert are platforms of various sizes, the smallest ones being single-leg “toadstools” (see I told you I’d get to that too) – one stout leg poking out of the ocean, topped with multiple levels of production equipment, then the flat roof of the helideck. The deck might be anywhere between 30 – 150 feet above the water, with most around 100 feet above the ocean surface. Many of the smaller toadstools have helidecks barely larger than the span of the rotor, meaning that most times we leave the tail of the helicopter hanging out over the water far below. The “loop” itself is a selected area containing 17 toadstools, two four-legged platforms, and VR200. Over the course of a hitch, I will take the various ERT technicians and subcontractors to every one of those platforms.
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A typical day may go like this: Up at 4:40 AM, dress, outside and up to the helideck to remove the tiedowns (without which the aircraft might well be blown off the deck on a windy night) and grab the fueling gloves. Down one flight of stairs for the fuel sample jar, then down three more flights and across an equipment deck to the huge storage tank where our Jet-A is stored. Here we sump any water or impurities out of the fuel, and set a sample aside. Then up the four flights of stairs where the helicopter’s fuel tank also gets sumped and a sample kept in the jar. Gloves in the helicopter, fuel jar stored, time for breakfast. After breakfast, it’s time to get the orders for the day, which might be a little or a lot of flying, depending on what’s going on. Today is busy – a couple of the platforms are “shut-in” meaning that they have turned themselves off due to a to-be-determined reason. All the platforms have extensive safety systems to ensure that they don’t: a) send contaminated product down the pipeline, b) dump pollution into the water, or c) blow up and turn into a giant blowtorch, powered by the 2,200 PSI natural gas coming up from the well. In order of presentation, these are Bad Things. So I load up my “guys”, Kevin and Dwight (and all their gear), and pack on all the fuel I can carry and still make it off the deck. Prestart checklist complete, I crank the engine to life with that familiar whine and whoosh which turns the rotors into a spinning disk. A minute later and Energy Two lifts off the deck and into the morning haze.
The platforms themselves run the gamut of design and physical condition. For instance, two of the platforms to be visited today are EastCam 184 and 185 (EastCam or EC is short for East Cameron, one of the exploration lease areas in the Gulf). These one-legged platforms are only a year old, and are a marvel of technology and steelworking. They look like they were designed by the Swiss and engineered by the Germans – every grating is perfectly laid, and the miles of stainless-steel tubing which carries the control signals and pressure readings are laid out like art, and nothing out of place. I feel like a dog watching television trying to figure out what the various tanks, valves, pressure vessels control panels and of course, all that pipe, from the ¼” control tubing up to the three-foot pipes emerging from the ocean floor which are the wells themselves. The platforms run themselves, with a hiss of gas flowing here, a rush of condensate or water there, and the optimistic hoot of the solar-powered foghorn (which can be put on a two-hour standby while work is being done, and will scare the whee out of you at 2:01 when you are standing a few feet from it and it comes back to life – take my word for it).
The next platform we go to is WestCam 331. This is a much older four-legged platform, and it is the opposite of EC 184 & 185. This one is a spaghetti-mess of pipe and tubing, looking like something Dr Seuss might have designed after too much cough syrup. It is amazing to me that the guys can sort out what goes where, as there are pipes and tubing leading to nowhere, huge, hulking bits of equipment which may or may not be functioning, and everywhere, hundreds valves and wheels any one of which, if set the wrong way, would at best shut in the platform and at worst, cause catastrophe. There is one piece of equipment which fascinates me – it is the glycol dryer, which burns a bit of the gas coming from below to remove water from the gas. It emits an enthralling sound, a low-bass, rhythmical, thrumming reminiscent of something from science fiction.
While the guys are banging on and swearing at the equipment, I am on a constant hunt for shade and breeze. It may only be a two-minute flight to a platform, then a three-hour wait while the guys do their work. It can be a challenge to stay cool, away from the mosquitoes, and out of the way, but the time passes and the work gets done, then it’s time for me to do my job again – get the A/C going in the helicopter, then get us back to VR200 in time for dinner.
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Once back home on 200, there is the paperwork to close out, logging all the flights, passengers and destinations for the day as well as all the numbers from the helicopter – starts, engine stats, performance checks and flight time. First though is to pop the engine cowlings so the turbine will cool enough before dark to do a compressor wash (this is a high-tech name for a process where we spin the turbine and blast water into the intake to wash off the salt from the air). Paperwork done, aircraft tied down, time for dinner and a shower, and then back up to do a thorough going-over of the helicopter – since there is no mechanic on the platform, the pilot is responsible for the daily inspection which also serves as a preflight for the next morning. Finally, once the engine has cooled enough (this may be 8:30 or 9:00 at night on a warm evening), I do the wash and tie down the rotor blades, and the day is officially done. By 9:30, I’m ready for bed so I can do it all again tomorrow.
Sometimes there is more time – time to reflect on the sprawling enormity of the oil & gas industry in the GOM, a staggeringly complex network of platforms, drilling rigs, pipelines, and people being ferried from place to place by hundreds of boats and ships and up to 1,000 helicopters every day. It is improbable that people can fathom just what it takes to get the energy from below the seafloor and bring it to homes, power plants, and vehicles, and how paradoxically fragile and resilient the system is. Seeing and hearing in the news media that Katrina impaired production is one thing, but seeing the twisted and shattered remains of massive platforms jutting out of the Gulf – sometimes just stumps of massive girders remaining where a platform one was, has a visceral impact. The amount of damage is impressive, but even more impressive is the scale of the effort to get it all back on line (and how much of it just kept working). It is not being done economically, but it is being done at an incredible pace, expense be damned. You feel the awesome and inexorable force of the oil economy – they literally are pumping money out of the ground, and the demand of our country says that getting it out is not an option. This is an industry where the platform cook gets paid $75,000 a year while working 14 days on, 14 off. It makes no sense while making perfect sense. The movie “Waterworld” has some allegorical links, not only to the environment but also to the brutal finality of the oil economy.
Finally, there is the view off of the helideck at sunset – like a cruise ship on a calm sea (as long as you keep your back to the business end), it’s a pretty nice place to be.
John Lancaster
Resources:
John's slideshow PDF
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