Member Info for adoubleuk

yuyus,

"Just out of curiosity who posting has experience of (etc)"

Me. (Partially)

Drill Lines yup. (millions of ton-miles!)
Towing Bridles yup. Including being Billy-Pughed down to inspect, prior to tow
Hang Of Lines yup. (Btw, I have Moduspec certification)
Slick joint compensator Lines Not for donkey's years, and not in a senior position
Crane lines yup
Heavy Lift Jewellery . yup. Not much point knowing the lines without knowing the rest
Semi Anchor Lines ( drum to anchor cable ) Nope.

But you knew that anyway!

McGee,

"The difference being you can pre set a power pack to give you the max power to lift the calculated intended weight you can’t do this with a load cell"

Yes, of course.

The thing is though, we (maybe excluding yourself) don't know what the setup on that boat is. So the tech discussion, although interesting at times, is just blowing air.

I'm afraid that when it boils down to it, I'm very much in the same rather uncompromising camp as SpruceGoose2. Latch-up is a critical 'milestone' operation, very much 'get it right first time'. BW have got it wrong twice now.

But I'm sure they'll be pulling out all the stops to ensure there's no repeat. Or they'd dam' well better be doing so.

Dear Lady Sonia,

If you want to remain up-to-date on what's going on with Hurricane, realtime, I'd suggest you look at this BB on a daily basis, instead of relying on strobe-light flashes in the media.

Wulbert,

Excellent. Thank you for compiling the words of wisdom that clever man has already imparted to us. Without them I'm sure I'd be in the poorhouse already.

Keep up the good work!

I'm also amused by 'Longwait's' response. Because people who haven't been here for at least a couple of years might not understand the cryptic references to 'Carnegie'. But Carnegie was another fount of investing wisdom, but with a rather gloomy outlook.

I suspect he's gone into retirement, writing his autobiography entitled 'How to lose friends and be influenced by people'.

I rather miss him.

McGee,

"Gauge ,definitely not a in line load cell"

Agreed, but have no idea of the actual setup. Let's just call it a 'pull-on-the -line indicator'. Doesn't matter what sort it is.

SG2,

Thank you for your 'understanding'!

Equally, that list is far from exhaustive.

" I'm not anti HUR - just very anti shhh-it engineering being covered -up by Directors."

But honestly, I don't think that's the case here. I bears repeating, it's Bluewater who's screwed-up badly, and financially nearly all of it is on their shoulders. It only really impacts Hurricane in terms of delayed start-up of revenue, but only relative to the operation which went wrong. Not pre-planning.

Pre-planned timelines contained 'contingency', but of course, one doesn't like seeing 'contingency' eaten into. And although a lot of that contingency was probably weather-related, I bet nobody considered the idea of two latch-ups going wrong.

We might be shaking our heads, but Dr T is probably breathing fire.

And also I'd be surprised if Bluewater isn't raising hell and high water to remedy the situation. Because this is a blot on their copy-book (if there's still anyone left in the industry who understands what that phrase means)!

Lady Sonia,

"On a serious note, is GWA drilling underway yet?"

Serious note?

No, it isn't.

Back to your boudoir...

Wellwell,

"They should have had a load cell in the system. Q is did they and if so was it calibrated? I suspect they would not knowingly exceed the SWL and this damage was a result of the vessel heave. "

Despite singing your praises in my previous post, of course there was a load / pull sensor in the system. Simply because there HAS to be. Otrher than a deck / rigfloor mounted air-tugger (or the thing on the front of my old landrover), have you ever seen a winch without a load indicator? Such a thing would be useless,

(Well, not quite true. Winches for ship's dockside mooring lines generally don't have 'em, nor do those on the crab-fishing boats in the Barents Sea that they show on Discovery channel.) But you know what I mean... :-)

OMG. I'd intended to take some time out, but now can't having seen the 'tech discussion' continuing...

I applaud Wellwell for having re-posted links to a couple of photos at 12:03. For the sake of the 'newcomers', who now seem to be numerous. And his choice of photos was judicious.

The one of the 'test-fit' on the Dubai dock is the only inside view of the turret we have, and the latching mechanism. Note the guy leaning on the 'ring'. Now Look at the other photo of the buoy complete. Look at the 'ring' on top, and think back to the other picture. The size of the bloke? Now, you might start getting an idea of the scale.

SG2: "....... Otherwise, derisible engineering. Sorry folks."

Sorry, SG2, but that doesn't wash, for me. It isn't.

fitguy2: "Surely they had a load indicator?"

Yes, surely there must be one. It's inconceivable ( unimaginable / out-of-this-world / utterly mad) that some sort of load indicator isn't built-in.

In today's ongoing discussions, I feel that a few possible factors have been ommitted. And although such discussions won't change anything, I feel it heartening to see that quite a few people are interested in the 'tech' side. So I'd just like to throw a few more ingredients into the pot.

(a) This is not a 'routine operation'. In fact, it's only been done once before with this vessel, on Ettrick, about ten years ago.
(b) It's doubtful that the people involved at the moment are all the same 'team' who did that, back then.
(c) (More technically), it strikes me that as soon as the buoy is up into the latching position within the turret, you latch it! No standing around looking at things. No dingdongs from HSE having a conference. Did this happen?
(d) Nobody has yet mentioned the possibility of 'human error'.
(e) On Monday I made the mistake of floating the idea that maybe they were using an 'old' pull-in 'rope'. I've realised that was stupid. Of course it was a new one. But where did it come from? If it was made in China, take the SWL and multimply it by zero point five. And use the test certificate as bog-paper.
(f) Don't accuse Dr Trice of 'misleading us' with his mention of two metre swell and six hours. He's a geologist (+) and a businessman, and was just repeating Bluewater's optimistic stuff. Which we now see is incorrect. Maybe 'start pull-in to latching is just 6 hours, but there's lots of faffing-around involved beforehand.
(g) (Repeat) Neil Platt has nothing to do with the nuts-and-bolts of this operation.

But I'm sure all involved, especially Bluewater are far more aware of this than any of us!

They simply can't afford to get it wrong next time, so will be brainstorming the thing from all angles to sure to get it right.

BC,

"Is it possible they will wait to spud until after this passes?"

On any rig, progressing drilling is dependent upon supplies onboard. For starting a new hole section and with bad weather forecast, onboard there should be the casing for that section, mud chemicals to drill the whole section + contingency, cement, relevent wellhead equip etc. (Plus catering supplies nad required personnel, but that goes without saying!) If they have all this stuff for the 'surface hole', there's no real reason why not to spud, irrespective of the weather. It's a jackup rig, so sea state makes no difference. Sure, high winds may limit crane use, but during the actual drilling phase, this is no great bother. Limited crane use may mean having to wait for the winds to die before 'running casing', but that's about all.

Cebo,

"AD, that is not to say that there will not already be a very thorough investigation on, there will IMO firstly to understand why the rope failed in order to ensure the next rope doesn't fail for the same reason/s and that will be the primary focus of the investigation. Root Cause Analysis may throw up procurement deficiencies, or other issues with but that will come later, they will basically want to know that whatever caused it will not happen again."

Absolutely. 110% percent agree. And that will be the priority right now, in parallel with passing brown envelopes to the owners of the Nigerian rope-factory to make sure their workers are working double -quick splicing that hemp.

Ref the Regs, I said probably, not definitively that they would come under Marine Regs so do not wager too much. There are also various MOUs in blade between the HSE and MCA that overlap responiblities and only serve to confuse simple people like myself. But it does matter when reporting accidents and DAs because RIDOR and the MAIB have different reporting criteria as well and I am pretty sure that lifting equipment failure is automatically reportable under RIDOR but not to the MAIB unless it had injury potential or caused actual damage to the vessel or environment."

I'm sorry, but I've seen all sorts of acronyms like RIDOR crop up here today, in correspondence about who's going to shut the Lancaster Field down and kill our investment entirely, just because Bluwater screwed-up latching the buoy, with no harm done other than wasting a lot of time and probably giving some crewmembers a bit of a fright, and I don't recognise any of them. Maybe I'm getting a bit out-of-touch regarding UKOS legislation.

"Now remind me why oh why have I started posting again here. Haha"

Because you enjoy teasing the Trolls with your far superior knowledge in the same way as I. Plus (being a Production Hand), you probably don't have anything better to do anyway! Hahaha!!!! :-)))

JayKay,

"I believe 42 was a subtle reference to bablefish..."

Yes, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

But slightly out of context.

Cebo,

"PS - any of you Oil type dudes know if BW use Sparrows or have their own blokes ?"

That's the sort of thing I've been trying to find out, to no avail. I suspect they have their own blokes: in-house 'specialists'. But very unsure about that. However it doesn't sound like the sort of thing Sparrows would deal with, anyway.

Yuyus,

"42"

Don't you mean 'point oh five two'?

After reading all the boll**cks here today from the derampers saying Hurricane might get shut down by the government because Bluwater screwed the pooch with the buoy, a bit of levity comes in fine.

'If you can't laugh about it, we'd all be crying'.

JayKay,

Yuyus is speaking 'oilfield language'. Lapsing a bit into 'Driller's Dialect'. I understood all of it.

I believe the Inuit people have more than twenty-five different words for 'snow'. And the only way to fully understand what they're talking about it is to go to the frozen wastelands themselves, for at least a year. Maybe more.

'Driller's dialect' requires at least a year on a rig just to get a basic grasp of the thing. Very basic.

Get two or three Drillers together at a dinner-party of a dozen otherwise 'normal' people, and get them to start talking work (which will happen anyway). They will be using ordinary, common-or-garden English words, nothing wierd like 'skryptzog'. But the way those words are put together are incomprehensible to other people, even if the drillers are speaking deeply about some technical matter, nodding, sometimes shaking their heads, or breaking out into helpless laughter. The other diners will be completely lost, wondering what these nutters are conversing about so seriously.

Do you know where the key to the vee-door is? I've been searching for it all my life. Maybe it fell down the rathole. Better call Schlumberger.

The shut-in drillpipe pressure was what? Mudweight was what? But no flow out of the bell-nipple? Maybe the donkey-dick's shot....

Etc...

JayKay,

"I'd chosen 'O' Level 'Rope' in the mid-80s when I did my 'options', would of come in more handy than English Lit ;o)"

No, Eng.Lit puts you in a good position to be able to read technical manuals about Steel Wire Rope later on and remain interested. OK, it 'ain't the weekend yet, but this isn't off-topic neither. But doesn't it sound a bit like a D.H.Lawrence novel when you read about 'braided cores'? Especially when you've got the choice between 'regular lay' or 'lang lay'? I could go on...

(cont page 94)

Cebo,

" Regulated by the MCA and as such any investigation would be carried out by the accident investigation branch (MAIB). Anyway there will be no Prohibition Notice from anyone IMO so it is probably immaterial. Although I would wager a pint in the PITS next time I am in town."

And my bet is that you'd win that pint from anyone daft enough to take you up on that wager!

There has been no ACCIDENT which merits any more than a moment's attention from anyone in any regulatory body, other than a shrug of the shoulders, and maybe an "oh that's a shame for Hurricane when everything was going so well". No damage, no pollution, nobody hurt, no risk to infrastructure which isn't even yet online.

Sure, it'll eventually get filed in some database or other, to gather dust as all such records do.

OK, if any of the above boxes were ticked (damage, pesonal injury, etc.), it might be a little bit different. But only a little bit.

You don't close down the restaurant because a waitress has dropped a trayful of glasses. And if you've got any sense, you don't even fire the waitress unless you suspect she did so deliberately. Instead you get everyone to pile in to help clear up the mess as quick as possible, so normal sedate business can be resumed.

Sure, when that shift's over, you might speak to the waitress and suggest that she comes in tomorrow wearing sensible shoes instead of stilettos. But that's another story...

snaggletooth,

" Have they just discovered the rope was made of liqourice and the cabin boy's cat had been chewing on it?"

No, that's not what happened.

Here's what it was.

Having been disturbed by all the boat's to-ing and fro-ing on the Friday, the Giant Squid hadn't got much kip. So when she went off a few miles, she finally wrapped herself round the buoy for some much-needed shut-eye. Underneath, as usual.

But got a rude awakening the next morning. Something was moving! Something large and dark on the surface had a hold of her lover-buoy, trying to drag him into its gaping maw!

Keeping a tight grip on Sir Yellow, she waited 'till they were close, she unfurled her feeding tentacles (those are the long ones), stuck them onto the dark belly of the predator, and with all her might, started pushing.

And we know the rest...

OK. Time for Adoubleuk to hit the streets for a drink and some supper.

Simon_Said,

" Sea conditions aren't ideal right now "

For what? The rig's pinned, and those photos from the 'Echo' show her jacked-up three of four feet out of the water. Doing 'preload' in other words. That should be done by now, so everything else (jacking up, skidding out, and preparing) has nothing to do with sea state.

Or is it blowing a force 6 down there, so a supply-boat can't get in? Heck, Poole Bay isn't the N.Sea. Just about the most sheltered place they could be drilling in!

Wellwell,

"As an aside, we are all familiar with the old adage that there's no such thing as bad news, and this escapade has potentially shone a light on Hurricane given the various news articles around the hook-up and that will be helpful when it's a success; potentially."

Yeah, that's crossed my mind, as well! :-)))