Name: How Offshore Oil Rigs Work
Uploaded: 2021-06-09T12:44:55.000Z
Duration: 12 min 5 s
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基礎受動態

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The global petroleum industry lives and dies by the price of oil.

This number—a gauge of the average amount paid for a barrel, 42 gallons, or 159 liters—is

responsible for enormous shifts in the field.

Shifts that lead to the rise of some nations, and the fall of others.

Shifts that change where and how people get their energy.

That's because, just because there's more or less one global price, there are innumerable

different production costs depending on where and how the oil is extracted.

One country's barrel of oil can cost dozens of times more than another's, but then even

within the same country the costs are not the same.

A given country's cost looks more or less like this.

At a lower level of production, the average overall cost to produce a barrel of oil would

be a certain amount but then, as total production increases, that average per-barrel cost also

increases up until a point where the curve turns into a nearly vertical line, because

a country's production capacity has been reached.

This is because oil is found in plenty of different places.

Sometimes it's found under a big empty field near a major road, but sometimes its found

under thousands of feet of ocean nowhere near the coast.

Between these two, it's pretty easy to understand where it would be more expensive to extract.

On that national cost curve, though, one must also put a horizontal line.

If the price is here, then it makes sense to produce up to that amount of oil.

Any more and a barrel of oil would cost more to produce than what it sells for.

If the oil price moves up, though, then it makes sense to increase production even when

it raises the cost per barrel, and that's what happened for most of the last fifty years.

The oil price rose, with some up and down, from $20 in 1973 to a peak of over $140 in

Throughout that time, as long as an oil company could find a way to produce a barrel of oil

for less than the current price, they were guaranteed a profit.

That's what brought them from the field to the ocean.

Offshore oil rigs are inherently a higher-cost, higher-risk method of oil extraction, but

the oceans are, of course, home to a huge proportion of the world's oil reserves so,

if there are no more low-cost oilfields on land, that's where the companies go.

Before starting operations, though, these companies need to decide exactly where to

Now, usually, oil platforms are installed where there are already plenty of other platforms

such as in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Within these areas, though, they need to determine which exact spot has the greatest potential

for oil extraction, so geologists conduct surveys using ships and satellite imagery.

Once that spot is selected, a rig will be towed to its location and installed.

Once they're put in location, offshore oil platforms often don't move for years—they're

intended for long-term operation in a single spot.

Despite this, though, they operate quite differently from ships.

Usually, those working onboard have a shift of 12 hours a day, every day, for a period

of two or three weeks, followed by two or three weeks off onshore.

Keeping those work hours dense means that fewer people onboard are not working at a

given time, which means that less space is needed for accommodations.

But of course, this pattern means that there's quite a lot of back and forth between shore

This is actually one of the largest commercial applications of helicopters and huge companies

have emerged, especially in the past few decades, to serve offshore oil rigs.

For example, Bristow Aviation, one of the largest, has a fleet of almost 500, mostly

The North Sea oil field is primarily linked with Aberdeen, Scotland, onshore, at least

Aberdeen airport—a primarily regional airport that only has commercial passenger flights

to a couple dozen European destinations—happens to be the world's busiest heliport.

About 100 large helicopters take off from here each day, mostly flying out to the North

But Aberdeen is also linked to the oil fields another way.

It serves as a hub for the ships that service the rigs.

Now, especially in the North Sea, oil makes its way from the rigs to shore by undersea

pipeline, so there isn't a need to bring much back, but they do need to be frequently

replenished with supplies—both for the humans, and the rig's operations.

That's the job of platform supply vessels, which are essentially mini, short-range, flexible

Aberdeen Harbor is always abuzz with activity, filing up these vessels, to keep the hundreds

of offshore platforms themselves supplied.

Onboard, there are essentially three types of jobs: production, those directly involved

with the extraction and processing of oil, maintenance, those who keep the facilities

and equipment in working order, and service, those who cook or clean or care for the rest

There's always a focus, within the companies operating these platforms, to minimize the

numbers of people working actually onboard as much as possible.

It's expensive first to transport and supply these workers, and then their salaries are

also considerably higher than typical onshore salaries in the petroleum industry.

An average offshore salary in the UK is around 60 or 70 thousand dollars—nearly double

Therefore, most management and high-level decisions are made by workers back onshore

who video conference in to the platforms to coordinate.

Workers onboard are, for the most part, strictly operational.

On the inside, these platforms look a lot like ships.

The rooms are small and the recreation areas are sparse.

There isn't, after all, much down-time given the long hours while onboard.

The platforms are more or less self-sufficient.

Even though they're usually within a couple hundred miles of shore, ships only resupply

sporadically and helicopter flights are expensive, so water and electricity are produced onboard.

As you would image, the rigs themselves are also hugely expensive to build.

That's because, what you see, the platform, is only a small component of the overall structure.

With all designs, there's hundreds or thousands of feet of undersea drilling equipment, but

Certain platforms are floating, anchored to the ocean floor, but others are rather massive

The tallest in existence is the Petronius platform which has almost 2,000 feet or 600

meters of undersea towering to support the platform itself.

This made it, until the opening of the Burj Khalifa in 2010, the tallest free-standing

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How Offshore Oil Rigs Work

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