Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Offshore!!!
After three cancelled trips I finally got onto the Magnus platform to have a look at the jobs I’ve been working on for the last ten months – and now I’m stuck here!!! Having been delayed on Shetland on Saturday night we got in on Sunday morning and I was supposed to head back around noon today but alas, the fog stepped in once again and here I am, sat in a cabin at the top of Magnus (itself sat in 190m of water, 160 km NE of the Shetland Isles). Not a bad place, but having had family (younger siblings and spouses) up with Liz in Huntly since Saturday evening I’m feeling a little sorry for her!

So what’s it like? Well, in many ways it’s a 30 year-old rust-bucket! It’s quite strange wandering round actually, as all the photos I’ve looked at and plans I’ve studied are now there in front of me and some things seem very small and others a lot bigger. Inside the quarters there are nine floors up to the helideck and a broken lift, and “outside” in the process (working) areas there are 3-4 floors and an open piping deck, with an ALQ perched in the middle as well as the prominent cranes, drilling derrick and flare stack. It’s certainly impressive, and although its only 56 x 62m width-wise, getting anywhere takes a fair while due to the labyrinth of walkways and closed off areas, interspersed with stairwells and heavy, sealed doors. Geeks (you know who you are) – you will like this New Scientist article (from before Ben’s time!) that shows the scale of it: http://tinyurl.com/ayvb98l

Anyway, it’s been brilliant here, on a kind of treasure hunt looking at where the Piping and Instrument Diagrams (P&IDs) tie into the real thing. As most of my jobs are in the execute stage it has been a bit of a sightseeing tour since most of the engineering is done, other than looking at the Bunkering Lines job which is just going into Define…

Bunkering Lines
If I was to listen to our contractor, WG PSN, this job is bigger than Ben Hur. But going out to look at it, we are removing the existing fuel and water hoses (they’re replaced every 2-years anyway) and adding a semi-permanent fitting so they can be extended onto the flotel’s gantry when it pulls alongside in 12 months’ time. Which is all of 15 foot away. Difficult as it is to actually get a survey booked and done, the adage holds true: time on recce is seldom wasted!

Cold Boot
Two blogs ago I explained that the Cold Boot project had been delayed – but didn’t quite realise the implications of leaving it as it is. And this site is secure, right?
So… currently (and this has been the case for 4 years now), the boot drains “fluid” (mostly water and a few hydrocarbons) into the open drains. In doing this, the nearby gas monitor is switched off, but not the others (as this is judged to be too many). So, last week they drained it and the gas monitor picked up some hydrocarbon and caused a “yellow shutdown” which caused a partial but not complete shutdown. Without going into too much detail as this is now subject to a lot of investigations, this led to a build-up in pressure further down the system and kaboom! A 22” water pipe, specced at around 60 bar was subject to approximately 140 before it exploded and split wide open. Fortunately there was no one present as they would have been royally f*cked. Anyway, there’s lots of folk looking into it – predominantly because the pressure should not have built up like that and also because the platform’s been shut down since. So that’s nine days now that Magnus has not been pumping something like £1.5m worth of oil and gas. A day. Ouch.

Understandably, I’ve got a meeting lined up for when I’m back in to let people know how the project is progressing so it won’t happen again; they’ll love it when I tell them we’re looking at 1Q 2014 at the earliest!

Other jobs:

Bravo Crane has now finally been handed over, the last piece of which was a few days at Kenz in Zaandam, near Amsterdam last week. Finally, I thought, four of us going out for Amsterdam, what could possibly go wrong? Well ladies and gentlemen readers; never overestimate the power of civvies. After a good steak dinner, we retired to the hotel. I could not believe it, sat on my bed at 2130 hrs because the others were all tired/under the weather. Maybe I should have dragged them on my run (minus something in shorts and t-shirt in central Amsterdam, aah yeah) a few hours earlier to get some life into them. It just felt wrong (and I did check that they weren’t just going out without me…). I did consider having a night as the lone ranger but clearly hanging around civvies has made me weak too!

ETAP ALQ is nearly ready for handing over to the Renewals Team/ Cat B projects, as being £10-20m it’s outside of the “remit” for projects and mods. Shame really as it was interesting.

And design work (me doing some technical design) is due to start in March – better find that calculator of mine!

And in other news:

I’m doing a presentation to BP’s graduates (there could literally be a hundred but I’m expecting a few less) on leadership on Thursday as part of their “lunch and learn” series where they have a non-O&G developmental presentation. I think I’ve got a copy of MATT 6 somewhere…

Running on the Shetland Islands is windy and rainy; running on a running machine is just plain dull, but I’ve got to fight the pounds somehow!

Spare time offshore would be ideal for getting work done if the internet wasn’t as slow as it is (hence no sexy oil platform shot today folks). In all, this makes the “free time” all the more frustrating!

Liz and I haven’t entered any gnarly races this year (boo!!!!!), just the toughmudder, Edinburgh marathon and Balmoral trail race. Am considering running the Spey Way (60 something miles) at the end of June – can’t wait til the thesis is smashed and I can have my life back again!

And once again, Dougal is still getting bigger…