The day we survived...
ron thomas
I am in a yarn telling mood. So here comes a story at you from my adventures on an oil platform off Ventura, Ca.
We worked for Chevron USA on Platform Gail about 13 miles out from Port Hueneme (Y-Nee-Me) and 5 miles north of Anacapa Island. The rig stands in water about a thousand feet deep. It is a modern self contained city. Their is a hierarchy of operating crew members that run the platform and make it turn out thousands of barrels of oil. The ultimate leader of the platform is the foreman of which their is one. Think of him as having all the authority of a ship's captain. Directly below him in the organizational chart is the daylight Head Operator or HO and the night Head Operator. Think of them as the folks that co-ordinate the difficult ballet of 4 or 5 operators per shift that keeps the miles of pipeline and machinery in an orchestrated balance that makes the platform run smoothly and in an emergency see that gas, explosive and deadly toxins are fought back and personel are shifted to the proper task as needed. These young men really have their heads on straight and are unflappable in all sorts of dire emergencies. As you will see later on.
Next in the organizational chart comes the Head Oilfield Instrumentation Electrician or HOE. This guy coordinates many of the maintenance and troubleshooting functions on the platform machinery, computers, instrumentation, power generation and physical plant. He does this with other team members consisting of two mechanics, an electrician, and an instrument tech.
So there you have your typical crew. Even though it is small it is particularly potent as a team. The crew swells and deflates according to needs but the Production crew is always there. At times there are 120 people on board and at others there are less than 20.
The crews live aboard for 7 days and then are off for 7 days. My job? I was the Head Oilfield Instrumentation/Electrician, HOE. We got to the platform by 120 ft work boat or by Bell Helicopter. There is a three story hotel structure on the platform that housed the crews and had 2 recreation rooms and downstairs galley with a full time paramedic on board also.
You have enough to kind of have a visual now. The day shift starts at 6:00am and is over at 6:00PM the platform is ten stories high above the ocean surface and stands on a structure driven into the ocean floor a thousand feet down.
We had had our morning safety meeting and discussed what we were all going to be doing on that day. A daily ritual that lets every member of the team know where everybody is during the day.. A real necessity when dealing with volatile and poisonous petro chemicals. We left the control room and headed upstairs, coffee in hand, to the power generation module where the 4160 volt generators were. Here we usually made our morning checks and discussed the days problems. Steve, the electrician working with me and I were involved in our switch gear checks and adjustments. We both noticed the strong odor of methane and hydrogen sulfide gas. A deadly combination. We rushed to get our SCBA air paks and masks.... The alarm sounded from the automatic gas sensors. We were to go to the Control room in this emergency as soon as we masked up. We rounded the corner where our masks were stored only to see a huge gas cloud spewing from one of the main gas compressors. Right where our masks were stored. Maskless.. deadly gas... eminent fire and explosion...
Let me introduce you to Greg Vaughn our young and personable head operator on day shift this week. Greg is built like a GreenBay Packer Center. A mountain of a man containing a boitrous personality that is a natural leader.
Greg is just coming up the stairs from the controlroom... No mask either. The control room doesn't know the full nature of the disaster we three are looking at now. It could only be seconds away. Loss of life is assured...... I stand aghast at what is happening Steve has run toward the leak... Don't know why. In the blink of an eye Greg hoists his handheld radio and says, "Control Room do not ask why just do this NOW! ... Turn on the deluge system on the compressor deck."
A deluge system is water that pours from the ceiling in such a heavy volume that it is hard to breathe the water takes up so much space that there is very little left for air.
Greg had done something I think is amazing to this day.. He had correctly recognized that there could be no fire or explosion without air to support it. We all owe our existence today to this quick thinking young man.
I am in a yarn telling mood. So here comes a story at you from my adventures on an oil platform off Ventura, Ca.
We worked for Chevron USA on Platform Gail about 13 miles out from Port Hueneme (Y-Nee-Me) and 5 miles north of Anacapa Island. The rig stands in water about a thousand feet deep. It is a modern self contained city. Their is a hierarchy of operating crew members that run the platform and make it turn out thousands of barrels of oil. The ultimate leader of the platform is the foreman of which their is one. Think of him as having all the authority of a ship's captain. Directly below him in the organizational chart is the daylight Head Operator or HO and the night Head Operator. Think of them as the folks that co-ordinate the difficult ballet of 4 or 5 operators per shift that keeps the miles of pipeline and machinery in an orchestrated balance that makes the platform run smoothly and in an emergency see that gas, explosive and deadly toxins are fought back and personel are shifted to the proper task as needed. These young men really have their heads on straight and are unflappable in all sorts of dire emergencies. As you will see later on.
Next in the organizational chart comes the Head Oilfield Instrumentation Electrician or HOE. This guy coordinates many of the maintenance and troubleshooting functions on the platform machinery, computers, instrumentation, power generation and physical plant. He does this with other team members consisting of two mechanics, an electrician, and an instrument tech.
So there you have your typical crew. Even though it is small it is particularly potent as a team. The crew swells and deflates according to needs but the Production crew is always there. At times there are 120 people on board and at others there are less than 20.
The crews live aboard for 7 days and then are off for 7 days. My job? I was the Head Oilfield Instrumentation/Electrician, HOE. We got to the platform by 120 ft work boat or by Bell Helicopter. There is a three story hotel structure on the platform that housed the crews and had 2 recreation rooms and downstairs galley with a full time paramedic on board also.
You have enough to kind of have a visual now. The day shift starts at 6:00am and is over at 6:00PM the platform is ten stories high above the ocean surface and stands on a structure driven into the ocean floor a thousand feet down.
We had had our morning safety meeting and discussed what we were all going to be doing on that day. A daily ritual that lets every member of the team know where everybody is during the day.. A real necessity when dealing with volatile and poisonous petro chemicals. We left the control room and headed upstairs, coffee in hand, to the power generation module where the 4160 volt generators were. Here we usually made our morning checks and discussed the days problems. Steve, the electrician working with me and I were involved in our switch gear checks and adjustments. We both noticed the strong odor of methane and hydrogen sulfide gas. A deadly combination. We rushed to get our SCBA air paks and masks.... The alarm sounded from the automatic gas sensors. We were to go to the Control room in this emergency as soon as we masked up. We rounded the corner where our masks were stored only to see a huge gas cloud spewing from one of the main gas compressors. Right where our masks were stored. Maskless.. deadly gas... eminent fire and explosion...
Let me introduce you to Greg Vaughn our young and personable head operator on day shift this week. Greg is built like a GreenBay Packer Center. A mountain of a man containing a boitrous personality that is a natural leader.
Greg is just coming up the stairs from the controlroom... No mask either. The control room doesn't know the full nature of the disaster we three are looking at now. It could only be seconds away. Loss of life is assured...... I stand aghast at what is happening Steve has run toward the leak... Don't know why. In the blink of an eye Greg hoists his handheld radio and says, "Control Room do not ask why just do this NOW! ... Turn on the deluge system on the compressor deck."
A deluge system is water that pours from the ceiling in such a heavy volume that it is hard to breathe the water takes up so much space that there is very little left for air.
Greg had done something I think is amazing to this day.. He had correctly recognized that there could be no fire or explosion without air to support it. We all owe our existence today to this quick thinking young man.
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