Trips offshore…

This stint in Scotland will be alternating weeks onshore and offshore. As this is the start of week 4 – I have complete 2 weeks onshore and 1 offshore and am schedule to go back offshore on Tuesday.

Both of my offshore trips will be to the same platform called the Alba Northern Platform. This is a different one than I was on last time in Scotland. The last trip out there was great - I flew on a Tuesday and returned onshore on Thursday, thus 2 nights offshore. While I was out there I got to have a tour of the platform, which was AWESOME. I’ve seen a lot of the drawings regarding the layout of this platform and how all of the equipment is connected, but seeing it in person is always much better. The OTL (Operations Team Lead) took a few hours out of his morning to bring me on the tour. We started at the very bottom of the platform (at the lifeboat level) and made our way up level by level. Lucky for me we did it this way or else I would have had to make it from the bottom to the top in one fell swoop at the end of the tour…i.e. LOTS of stairs at once! Yikes!

A one point in the tour he showed me one of the Separators that they have (which is a large horizontal vessel that separates the water from the oil). We were at one end of the platform and he pointed up, we were standing at the end of the separator – the end was HUGE. I can’t even imagine how large in diameter, but I’d have to guess that it was 15 – 20 ft. Then we continued on the tour looking at all the other cool stuff (I know…my engin’nerd side is sneaking out again), then when we got to the other end of the platform, he showed me the other side of the same separator. MASSIVE!! I could hardly believe it!


the shape of the separator - but SIGNIFICANTLY larger!

The OTL brought me through the rest of the platform, until we got to the top production level, then a driller brought me up the drilling rig and described all of its parts. What a cool tour! I’m so glad I did it!

After the tour I was getting ready for some training sessions and the general alarm went off. We all had to make our way to the belly of the platform (to the lifeboat level), put on our lifejackets, sign in and wait for instructions as to whether or not we’d have to ditch into the North Sea. Needless to say I was a bit nervous, but it was a false alarm (thank goodness) and everyone got to go back to what they were doing (unfortunately 1/3 of the guys offshore work shifts so they were woken up from their sleep to come down, that would have scared me even more if I had been sleeping!!) While I was walking from the bottom level up to the first level of the accommodation block, I counted 84 stairs. Then to get to the top of the accommodation block (which was about 5-6 floors) there were another 100ish stairs. During my day I went from the first floor to the 4th one often to get from my sessions, to my room and to the dining room. By the end of the 1st full day my legs were pooped! A complete tour, then an alarm…sheesh…don’t they know I’m a sask girl that lives on the FLAT prairies.
Here are some pictures that I found of the platform and a write up about it. I was not able to take any cool pictures of my own...plus these are much better than I could have got anyways!


The Alba platform. The flare is on the far left(facing north), the drilling rig is what sticks higher than the rest of the platform on the left side and the 4 lifeboats are on the bottom right (facing south). The large yellow sign is where the accomodation block is.


This is when they were adding to the platform. The ANP was originally designed to be the smaller of 2 platforms that would service this field. Prior to building the 2nd one it was decided that they would only have one platform, thus have had to add lots on to the side of the platform...large blocks of equpiment was literelly "bolted" on to the side of the existing platform. Off to the side of the platform in the water is the "Floatel" that they hired during the construction as there is limited bed space on the platform itself.



Chevron's Alba Platform in the Northern North Sea at Dusk - 28/09/2003

Alba is located in block 16/26, 130 miles north-east of Aberdeen. The field lies in a water depth of approximately 138m. Alba was discovered by Chevron in 1984 and it came on-stream ten years later, in January 1994. The field contains estimated total oil-in-place reserves of approximately 1 billion barrels (bbl) and has recoverable reserves of around 400 million bbl


So far it has been a great trip. Time is going by quickly! One more week (of which most is offshore) then I’ll be done working over here and Danny will arrive. Danny and I are going to tour around Aberdeenshire for a little bit and then make our way back to Canada together. Can’t wait!

Hope all is well at home!
Shay