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Hey guys, especially those of you who work offshore, have you heard of anything like this? If so, how often does this happen? It sounds pretty disgusting to me... This excerpt was taken from a dude named Covin, off of www.alrodngun.com, which I also frequent. You may want to go to that sight and see the picture taken by John, who was in the other boat at the rig that day...
"Was at a rig about 50 miles SSE of Dauphin Island catching AJs and snapper. The guys on the rig told us to back off 500 ft then they dropped a charge down the well i guess then it exploded. Shook the boat good. A minute later about 400 snapper and 50 AJs were on the surface dead or near to it! Never heard of or seen anything like it. Whats the deal? Thats what has been happing to our snapper! Not us guys with a hook line and sinker overfishing them! Made me sick!Does that happen often? I mean they killed all the fish on the bottom off that rig! We didn't have a camera but another boat there was taking pictures of it."
I raed about this on Al rodngun earlier and called the outdoors editor of the Mobile press register earlier oday. He had already heard of this and was doing research to write up a good article. I am happy to say that he was as pissed as I was and planned to make a big stink about it. If you look at the more recent posts there is a picture of the snapper floating on the surface.
Maclin
Yeah Rarebreed, I saw that tonight. That picture makes me want to puke. There's no doubt in my mind that this must have affected the research/data used to skew our snapper limits/regs at this point. Something is going on that's illegal here. Rather than boosting the hard-bottom marine population as the oil/gas rigs should do, they are decimating the numbers with TNT or C-4 or whatever they use.
That definately sucks, but we all drove our cars to work this morning, and boats out fishing this weekend. Might be a way of correcting some loss of circulation problems.
Guess thats one of the necessary evils of getting oil and nat. gas outta the ground.
I'm not justifying thier actions, but charges are put in a well all the time for different reasons, most commonly to perferate new production zones in the well. The charges are activated via electric wireline once the charge is at depth. All radio frequency ( ie VHF) is silenced before wiring the charge. For safety reasons all boats are asked to back away 500' in order to prevent accidental static discharge of the explosives. But, I can almost guarantee if the explosion happened above 1000' below the mudline something went very wrong. All wells in the GOM are required to have a SSV (Subsurface safety valve) at ~1000' below mudline. These are downhole one way valves that are shut in situations like hurricanes, etc. Again, if an explosion happened above that valve, there was a very serious problem. Normal explosive operations such as perferating are never even recognized at surface. Have to pull the charge out and look at the tattle tail indicator to know if it went off.
The guys on the platform did not benefit from the fish floating on surface, right?
If there is a fuss made about things like this, the oil companies will just prvent people from being within 500' of the platform at all times. The legally already have the right to do that under terrorist attack laws and liability laws. Do we as fishermen want to rock that boat?
Personnel on rigs and platforms are no longer allowed to fish. Of course I'm sure some break the rules, but all oil companies do not allow fishing from the offshore facilities.
Got this thread marked to see where the answer leads......
The editor that I talked to said that he worked on oil rigs for 19 years and never knew of any reason to detonate on an oil rig except to cap a well. I an sure that there are many other ways to cap a well other than detonating high explosives. Dont they have these neat machines that allow people to go deep underwater and perform many different tasks.
Can someone help me I cannot remember what these submersible machines are called?
I am sure they cost more than explosives but damn I bet they do not harm the already endangered red snapper.
Damn. One drag from a freezer boat kills more snapper than that. I'm with RUDE Attitude on this one. They are allready doing us a favor by allowing us to even get near the drilling rigs. On top of that they are providing lots of structure for those fish to be on in the first place. Those rigs drive the whole economy of south LA, plus several other coastal areas. All in all getting petroleum products out of the ground is pretty enviromentally friendly deal. I wouldn't get to freaked out about it.
The editor that I talked to said that he worked on oil rigs for 19 years and never knew of any reason to detonate on an oil rig except to cap a well. I an sure that there are many other ways to cap a well other than detonating high explosives. Dont they have these neat machines that allow people to go deep underwater and perform many different tasks.
Can someone help me I cannot remember what these submersible machines are called?
I am sure they cost more than explosives but damn I bet they do not harm the already endangered red snapper.
ROVs (remote operated vehicles) - But these are used at depths that snapper woulkd not even fathem... +1000' Economics drive that as those little buggers are expensive !!
I've been in the oilfield for 15 years and never heard of explosives used to cap wells. There are and have been for years regulations on abondoning wells above the water line. Most include a man in the water welding on a cap in water down to 300' or so. After that, there are platform setups that do the same. None of which to my knowledge require exposives.
The infamous Red Adair et all is the only company stupid enough/brave enough to set off explosives around a live well. They do this to a well that is on fire at surface to expell all the oxygen in the air around the flame to extinguish the fire. Then they cap it with a new well head.
I have spent my adult life on rigs, this is either a hoax or terrible accident, no rig will detonate explosives above a subsea safety valve. Not sure what happened but an explosion that shook their boat is very doubtful.
I personally work for an ROV company and can assure you that we work in water as shallow as 100 feet!!!! With all the platforms that have been knocked over since hurricane Ivan, we have been. Katrina, Rita, and Gustav added to the work load on our company but the work continues.
As far as fishing offshore from an oil rig. It depends on the operator (oil company) and who the rig belongs to. Some rig companies don't allow fishing where others do, but it ultimately comes down to the operator on whether or not it's allowed. I've been on some that do and some that don't. Been on barges in shallow waters that also did/didn't. The deeper jobs we've been on Tuna was the main fish we went for. In shallower waters it would be Snapper/Amberjack/Grouper.
Some of the shallow water work involved using explosives to shut down live wells. At no time that I was ever involved in this work was any explosive blown up above the mud line. No fish were ever harmed from explosives whatsoever. If someone is offshore doing this I can assure you that MMS has some knowledge of it and if they don't the rig can be fined. I've seen a lot of things in my years of working offshore but that is one thing that I have never come across. There are many regulations/rules out here to prevent accidents and to hear that someone just threw an explosive into a well just to do that is just plain rediculous. Explosives are used as a tool and like any tool when it is misused, someone gets hurt or something gets f%$#@d up. I can't think of one operator that has EVER just dropped an explosives charge into a well to do this. Now mind you, there are a lot of people that are involved when this gets done and the operator is the number 1 man/woman that has to be notifed because everything on that rig/barge is his/her responsibility.
So I too am gonna keep track on this because I can't believe for a minute that they are shooting explosives to kill fish for someone fishing nearby. Just plain dumb!!
So I too am gonna keep track on this because I can't believe for a minute that they are shooting explosives to kill fish for someone fishing nearby. Just plain dumb!!
I don't think that anyone is claiming that they did it to kill fish. I think that everyone is trying to figure out how/why this happened and if it is a common practice. I am still not 100% sure that it is not a hoax. I am glad to hear that Dute is already on it and I'm sure that we'll get an answer one way or another.
I personally work for an ROV company and can assure you that we work in water as shallow as 100 feet!!!! With all the platforms that have been knocked over since hurricane Ivan, we have been. Katrina, Rita, and Gustav added to the work load on our company but the work continues.
I didn't mean to emply the ROVs didn't work in shallower depths. I should have said I have never seen a well abondonment process with ROVs in shallower depths. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but I've never seen it. Are you guys involved in well abandonments, shallow or deep? Just curious.... I got to "fly" an ROV on a deep water rig for about 2 minutes. Definitely respect the guys with the know how to operate the ROVs and perform the tasks asked. It's a high dollarw video game
I'm sure this was a freak accident, and I'm not accusing all the oil/gas companies of doing this. I'm sure that something just went wrong.
As for the rigs, I am very appreciative of their hard bottom fisheries, and I am thankful that we can fish (most of) them. That brings up a good question, what VHF channel should I monitor when approaching/fishing a rig?
Not sure if it is standard, but the ones off of the Mississippi coast always monitor 16 and usually monitor 67/68. Most are single side band radios though. When you get in an area that has crew boats running around, flip through the VHF channels to see if you can pick up any in-field communication that might be going on between the crew/supply boats and the rig radio operators. The few times I have, they have been on 67/68.
Yes, a multi-million dollar video game without a "reset" button. It is fun work. I guess I could have explained better too. On rigs that drill and abandon wells, the wells are usually in deeper water. From 700ft on up. Mostly deeper water now days... exploration work is moving to more than 10000 ft water depths. Naturally when they drill a well that isn't what they expect they have to plug/abandon the well. But explosives are not used for that. So to answer your question, yes... abandonments take place in both shallow and deep water, yes.. we are involved in that.
The salvage/rig deconstruction work is mostly shallow due to the stationary platforms being there for the brunt of the storms and their ages. As they toppled over, the wells have broken and some even leak. That's where divers/rov's working as one go to that particular location, de-construct the platform and stop the wells from flowing.
"Flying" takes some time to develop. There is some really intense work out there that some would not believe is going on unless they've seen it. I've worked with divers hand in hand, where I've had to go get tools for them out of thier baskets (with the rov) and hand them off so they woulndn't have to go get them. We've had divers hold extra large pipe wrenches on wells for us to grab to loosen pipes. With the technology out there and experience of "pilots" there is very little that an ROV cannot do.
Better yet, what would be the motive of the big mean Oil Company randomly dropping charges and calling attention to themselves? Who would benefit from such a photo IF it was photoshopped, or not? What group would use it to further their agenda?
__________________ "a doughnut is only one step above a rent rod"
Guys, I was one of the boats at the rig. One of the guys on my boat actually took the picture with his smartpohne. I can assure you that it's 100% REAL.
We were running towards the rig (about 600 yards away) and saw black smoke around the rig. Got over to the southside of the rig and saw the sea of dead fish. At the time we didn't know what happened.. There was another boat at the rig (Covin) we pulled up next to them and they told us about the explosion, which explains the black smoke we saw running towards the rig.
I don't known the rules and regs for oil platforms, but would assume that if this was a scheduled event then it was not handled properly. If it was an emergency situation then I understand completely.
Offshore Snapper Slaughter 
I got to "fly" an ROV on a deep water rig for about 2 minutes. Definitely respect the guys with the know how to operate the ROVs and perform the tasks asked. It's a high dollarw video game 
