Have you ever been in one of those moments when everything around you is totally out of control and there is nothing you can do but kinda laugh at the insanity of it all ….. This story is about one of those moments that happened to me many years ago!
The crux of the matter is that for a fraction of a second I thought I would die by being pushed into the Arctic Ocean …… what a thought …… just a slight shove could have been deemed an unfortunate industrial accident ….. Oops!! ….. LOL ….. My imagination so creative!!!!!
It was happenstance that I even wound up in this story. I was working for a company called Homco International that specialized in what was call Fishing. Fishing is a series of processes to help a drilling rig when they got stuck while drilling an oil well. Dome Petroleum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_Petroleum ) had 5 drillships working many miles offshore in the Beaufort Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean. Their base was near a small hamlet called Tuktoyaktuk which lies hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuktoyaktuk ) Dome needed Homco to have someone on standby in case one of their drill ships had trouble. They were so far north that it would take far too long to have someone get up there otherwise.
It was late September and when I arrived in Tuk. There was no snow on the ground but it was snowing. I have not been able to find the population in 1979 but today it is a small village of about 900 residents.
At that time Dome had a typical resources camp but it was full so they arrange for me to stay at the Tuk Hotel for a couple of nights before a room became available in camp.
The Tuk hotel was a set of log cabins connected by these little tunnels. (Similar to the photo here). It was a great pleasure to meet some of the Inuit people and eat their food. Primarily whitefish from the sea of course. I wound up strolling the beach with some of their children.
The sea was totally calm during that time ….I loved those times ….. Very serene and peaceful!!
A couple of days later I moved to the main camp which was a long way from the beach. There was little to do in camp (unlike camps today) and after a few days things got pretty boring. I decided to ask the Dome Operations Manager if I would be able to visit one of the drillships …… I would be nothing more than a tourist. He agreed that I could and that I should be ready late afternoon the following day …… I would fly out by helicopter to one to one of the drillships. To me it didn’t much matter which one ……. At the appointed time, I would be ready to go!!!
I got to the flight center the next day at the appointed time ….. Out on the helipad was a huge helicopter …… I was oriented in getting on and off the helicopter ….. How to don a survival suit …… we would be flying over the ocean …… 4 minutes in the cold water was your survival expectancy without the survival suit ……
About 15 minutes prior to flight time, the Flight Director came out and informed me that I had been bumped from the flight. I asked what had happened but he didn’t know ….. OK ……. well I returned to camp disappointed but and Operations Manager told me that there had been an issue and that I would go the following day ….. No further explanation ….. OKayyy!!!!
So just like the day before, schlepp out to the helipad again ….. Suit up in the survival suit ….. And wait!! The big helicopter was there waiting just like yesterday but this time 8 of us actually loaded up and with a little more waiting the engines fired up …… rotors started spinning and off we went …. we were told the rig was 100 miles ……. the 214b’s specifications say its range was 250 miles …… a return trip would be pretty risky …… in any case out we went over the Arctic Ocean …… 160 MPH ……
This fleet of drill ships were recommissioned Liberty Ships …. freighters that had been used during WWII effort. This is a picture from the internet but you get a sense of the ship and you can see how the helipad is almost tacked onto the rear end of the ship. They had built what was called a well in the center of the ship through which the rig drilled into the ocean floor.
The Beaufort Sea is a very large body of water …… considered a bay of the Arctic Ocean …… as a result has some very large swells. The ships were fitted with a system to keep them positioned over the hole that they were drilling and to accommodate these swells. As the chopper lands on the helipad, the pilot must fly the chopper to account for the up and down of the ocean swells and the ship’s helipad movement. The helicopter doesn’t actually land, it is flying to whole time that people get off and the return passengers then get on …… Just as important, the helipad hangs off the stern of the ship and has a small ladder that leads from the helipad to the ship’s deck ….. Just as important is that the returning passengers need their own survival suits for the return flight and they expect me to take mine off in the chopper before I get out …… OK …. Well I do as I was told ….. take off the survival suit and climb out the helicopter door.
Remember the Bell 214b is a “medium lift helicopter” which means those rotors ….. The ones that are causing this chopper to fly right now …… are rotating at speed and each time they go round you can feel the force holding that machine steady …… think something like ….. loud sonic booms every time they pass over your head …..
So as I get out of the chopper, the noise is crazy …… the wind is crazy …… they point me to the ladder that leads to the deck of the ship …… I look over the edge for an instant ….. The cold Arctic Ocean ……. Noise …… wind …… and then unexpectedly ….. In front of me …… standing at the top of the ladder ……. blocking access to the ship ……. An oil covered monster of a man ……. You have likely seen an image like this …… Hardhat …… coveralls …… soaked in black oil from head to toe ……. And he is huge ….. Seemed well over six feet
He was the Tool Push (rig manager) waiting there …… and again unbeknownst to me …… this larger than life man was waiting for ME!!! …… as I get closer to him I see him shouting ……. Almost as though he was yelling at the universe …… over the noise of the helicopter ….. As I get closer it becomes obvious that he is very angry …… he screams out at me ….. “What the fuck are you doing here?” ….. I was dumbfounded ….. I was six inches from his blackened face ……
I had no idea why he would be so upset …… the phrase “shaking in your boots” comes to mind ….. I looked down at the ocean ….. Looked back at him and ……. told the truth ….. all I said was “I am a tourist” …… he screamed again “what the fuck are you talking about?” ….. I looked down ….. There it was …… the Arctic Ocean …… no survival suit …. Wind …. Noise …… what now???? And he asked “you are from Homco?” sounding confused ……. And then again “why are you here?” ….. “I asked Operations if I could come see a drill ship in case I had to go to work” ….. “Oh” ….. He seemed to get it …… I really had no idea what was going on ….. I certainly hadn’t done anything wrong as far as I knew …… Without saying another word, he turned around and marched off ….. Seemed to have instantaneously lost interest in me ……
So that was it …… one moment ….. Standing there ….. The noise from the helicopter rotors pounding the air …… the wind …… the thought had come …… the thought went ……. I climb down the ladder ….. The chopper flies away ….. Everything around goes relatively quiet as the chopper flies away …..
I never did see that rig manager again …… and that was fine with me!!!!
I was taken by one of the ship’s staff to a berth. Totally coincidentally a friend of mine, Mark Shields, who I had worked with at Schlumberger (another service company) happened to be my overnight roommate on the ship. Mark showed me around the ship. Between us I was able to figure out what had just happened.
Sidebar ….. Enter environmental regulations!!! So this is the late 1970’s. As you might imagine, drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean was controversial at best. The notion of being environmentally conscious had not quite made it into “The Oilpatch”. Rig workers primarily came from Alberta where you did what you had to do to get the job done. The same thinking that permeated land based drilling was running headlong into this new thing called environmental regulation. Oilfield workers were not opposed to ignoring “regulation”. …… They were hardcore Albertans ….. not really interested in regulations of any kind ….. knowing what the regs were was a hindrance ……. the regulators were back on shore at camp ….. “You gotta do what you gotta do” dominated what was to be done.
So back to what happened …… Day One trip was cancelled ….. That rig had gotten stuck but they had warned management and had my flight cancelled prior to us leaving shore …… likely an incident that should have been reported to the regulators and didn’t …… trip Day Two not so lucky ….. By the time the rig manager learned that I was to fly out to his ship they had also had gotten stuck in their well and were already in the process of “doing what had to be done”
You see the standard “go-to” land based method of getting “unstuck” was not acceptable out in the middle of the ocean. On land, the rig would pump oil downhole and up to the stuck point. The oil would lubricate the hole and pipe. The rig would then work the pipe up and down and hopefully they would pull free. The risk of an oil spill in the Beaufort Sea made this practice unacceptable to the regulators …… to the rig guys ….. Not so much …… both rigs had gotten stuck ….. Both rigs had broken the rules and pumped oil downhole ….. Rig number 2 had a secondary incident …… my unannounced arrival on the helicopter right in the middle of them breaking the rules ….. my job was to get them unstuck the right way!!!!
Once the Rig Manager learned that I was coming he figured that someone had ratted him out and that there would be consequences as a result ….. And that explained why he was so charged up ……. Had the incidents/infraction actually been reported a lot of people might have been fired ….. Dome Petroleum could have been severely fined …. How far might a man go to protect his job …. protect his company ……..
Anyway ….. No one actually died …. All is well that ends well ….. I got to see the drillship ….. I never actually did any work for the two weeks …… but it all made for a good story!!!! All of it true ….. Even my imagining that the rig monster Tool Push might have pushed me overboard ….. LOL!!!!
(PS the term LOL was decades away from being invented – LOL)
