[HN Gopher] Why we should leave old oil rigs in the sea, and why...
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Why we should leave old oil rigs in the sea, and why we don't
Author : MichelBen
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-01-27 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote:
| Ok - I get the 'artificial reef is good' aspect but leaving the
| topside structures in place?
|
| No way is that environmentally safe to do (imo). I've been on a
| few rigs over the years and the Topside structures are heavily
| contaminated with various petrochemicals.
|
| By the time you have decontaminated it sufficiently for it not to
| be toxic to marine life and doing it at sea with all of the added
| costs and complexities vs. a full cap and off-shore decommission?
| Uhmm no, the sums don't add up.
|
| Factor in the the added (admittedly pennies per tonne) value of
| the the scrap metal and the benefits of just leaving it there are
| head scratching.
|
| Being fair - perhaps a properly capped well with the jacket left
| as an artificial reef might make sense, although the chances of
| it being snagged or snapped in the decades to come by a passing
| vessel probably outweighs the slight benefits of leaving it there
| for marine life to inhabit it.
|
| I'm assuming that the proposal in TFA includes the costs of
| ensuring that all of that rusting infrastructure is properly
| decontaminated before it slowly corrodes and drops down to the
| sea bed but the article doesn't seem to mention that.
|
| The costs of ensuring that the topside structure (the 'oil rig'
| bit that sticks out of the water) is properly decontaminated at
| sea to a level that would be safe(-ish) for marine life? Yeah, I
| think HN correctly spotted the smell of bs in the authors'
| proposal.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| The article includes a link to the US program for turning rigs
| into reefs [1]. You should read that link. To start, the rig
| must be a good candidate for acceptance into the program (which
| includes contamination - or lack thereof) and the operator must
| generally "donate" half of the money they would save to the US
| state that will be accepting the rig to pay for the costs
| involved in maintaining the rig as a reef.
|
| [1] https://www.bsee.gov/what-we-do/environmental-
| focuses/rigs-t...
| Triv888 wrote:
| > I've been on a few rigs over the years and the Topside
| structures are heavily contaminated with various
| petrochemicals.
|
| I bet that is nothing compared to what leaked from the well..
| tda wrote:
| Maybe one day we figure out how to reuse the foundation/jacket
| for a huge windmill, that would be a win. And enough space to add
| an offshore High Voltage Station
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I'm surprised that all these oil rigs are not used by
| libertarians to start new micronations.
| yostrovs wrote:
| Why only libertarians? You can have communists living on these
| rigs in utopia as well.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| There's no reason why communists couldn't make an attempt but
| historically micronations have been much more of a
| libertarian thing than a communist one. Communists seem to be
| much more into either changing the economic system of an
| entire country or founding communes within a existing country
| than being into making ocean platforms into a new communist
| nation.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| They're not far enough out to be in international waters.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It happens on occasion, and those "libertarians" often very
| quickly realize how valuable government infrastructure can be.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| That or a nearby government decides it doesn't want some new
| nation that might cause them trouble nearby so they invade.
| It's happened at least once when the newly formed Republic of
| Minerva was invaded by Tonga. Without a military of their
| own, Minerva had no way of preventing even a small nation
| like Tonga from taking over.
| [deleted]
| kabes wrote:
| Bit of topic, but that video in the article of these 2 boats
| lifting the entire oil rig is the coolest thing I've seen this
| month.
| megablast wrote:
| It's so great, that you don't even link to it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWsl-6P09eM
| robocat wrote:
| The Shell promo video is longer and has more details:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xXmEHPFp8
| zackangelo wrote:
| I helped build and worked on a similar vessel, the VB10K [0].
| We originally built it just for this purpose (decommissioning)
| after a bunch of hurricanes toppled oil rigs between 2005-2008.
|
| [0] https://gcaptain.com/interesting-ship-versbar-heavy-lift-
| ves...
| cesis wrote:
| It's actually a single ship not 2.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneering_Spirit_(ship)
| tda wrote:
| And because of this ship it is easy to see how expensive
| topside removal must be. The vessel costed some 2.5B or so.
| Recovering that in a few dozen decommissionings means a Hugh
| price. And don't forget the operational cost of a crew of a
| few hundred, easily adds up to a few 100k/day. Then the
| topside, probably full of toxic flame retardants and asbestos
| needs to be dealt with.
| glup wrote:
| I want to grow up and be this ship.
| n3k5 wrote:
| This page has a picture that shows the vessel's layout more
| clearly:
|
| https://deltamarin.com/references/pioneering-spirit-
| pieter-s...
| taylorfinley wrote:
| This piece felt pretty one-sided, and given that it advocates for
| reducing costs to the petrochemical industry I was curious about
| the author and his potential motivations for writing this piece.
|
| I found it informative that on his linkedin profile he describes
| himself as a "Chemical Engineering Consultant."
| mc32 wrote:
| It sounds like it, but it's not the industry that pays
| directly, but the government.
|
| That said the question is are the habitats created, on balance,
| better than any of the drawbacks of leaving the systems in
| place?
|
| What happens when the structures partially collapse or
| completely collapse? Do they create dangers either to well
| heads, vessels, ecosystems ?
| korethr wrote:
| If I understand this correctly the obligation to remove these
| structures from internetational law that the UK has agreed to.
| ISTM that the point of this law is to protect the ecosystems of
| the waters -- it seems to be operating on the assumption that
| leaving these structures in the ocean causes them to remain a
| disruption to the ecosystem. A sort of, you made your mess, now
| clean up after yourself, rationale.
|
| But if leaving these structures in the ocean causes them to to
| become marine habits and is actually a net positive on the marine
| ecosystem, then the goals of this policy are at odds with its
| actual effects.
|
| So now I wonder how hard it is to go back to OSPAR with evidence
| that leaving the structures in place is a good thing and getting
| the policy changed to allow that. Hopefully the OSPAR convention
| is less dysfunctional than the US Congress?
| smackay wrote:
| It's a long flight across the North Sea for migrating birds and
| the platforms have provided a rest stop and no doubt saved many
| birds from a watery grave - the gas flares have probably killed
| many more but that's another matter.
|
| My brother was meteorologist out on the rigs for a while and he
| said that one morning after a storm he went outside and the heli-
| deck was completely packed with Golden Plovers (Pluvialis
| apricaria). There was not a square centimetre left exposed.
| Another time, in a force 12 gale, he watched a Lapwing (Vanellus
| vanellus) just outside the control room window flying for 20
| minutes without making any headway against the wind. Not sure if
| it made it onto the platform.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| It's odd that they say it only creates 35 jobs. Then why is it so
| expensive? Seems like if it is so expensive, that will create, if
| not jobs, lots of person-hours of work, which is effectively
| jobs. Ok, so the jobs may be out of the country, such as
| manufacturers of equipment, but still. It takes labor to make it
| happen, and that is jobs.
|
| I'm not one to advocate for doing things just to create jobs, but
| that statement seemed disingenuous.
| noja wrote:
| "Decommissioning the UK's offshore oil and gas infrastructure
| will cost the taxpayer PS24 billion"
|
| errr... what?
|
| Why is the entity that installed the platform there not
| responsible for that cost?
|
| This article reads very much like a paid piece.
| qw3rty01 wrote:
| It wasn't quite clear in the article, but the government isn't
| paying to remove the platforms, rather the cost of removing the
| platforms can be written off on taxes, so they (all the oil
| companies combined) would be paying 24bn less in taxes than
| they otherwise would have.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I think the better question is why it costs $24B...
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Actually, if we're really talking about a tax writeoff, the
| cost of removing the platforms would be much greater than
| 24BPS - specifically, if would be enough that, if the
| income used to pay for it were included in the company's
| taxable income, the marginal income tax _alone_ would be
| 24BPS.
| obmelvin wrote:
| I certainly think you are asking a fair question, but I
| also think it is understandable that such operations would
| be considerably expensive. The equipment to remove oil rigs
| is not cheap [0] and I would assume the demand for such
| ships is high. Also, I can imagine that a rushed
| decommission can lead to various ecological disasters that
| would then cost more to clean up than a proper decommission
| (+ the added environmental damage)
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsnW5CHrpQ8 - "How Do
| You Move an Oil Rig? With This Enormous $200M Ship"
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment of your argument.
|
| I also agree with OP that $24 billion is a ridiculous
| amount of money assuming it isn't mostly graft. If the
| oil company had to pay for this operation entirely with
| its own money, with bankruptcy-threatening fines for
| failure to comply with strict independent oversight, I
| bet they could do it for 10% of that cost.
|
| This comment is purely speculation based on my loose
| understanding of corruption in the construction industry.
| I am not familiar with petroleum engineering and could be
| wrong as I am quite obviously guessing.
| nitrogen wrote:
| How does that $24bil compare to oil revenue? Big numbers
| aren't scary if they are contextualized by even bigger
| numbers.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| You're missing the point. It's like the $10,000 toilet
| seat covers the US military paid for. I'm not saying they
| can't afford it. I'm saying it's graft.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/t
| he-...
| nitrogen wrote:
| Paying $10k for one toilet seat might be graft. We have
| to ask what the engineering specs were. $10k for an ISS
| toilet seat might be reasonable. And that $10k might be
| buying something else they don't want on the budget,
| which is near enough to graft as makes no difference.
|
| But paying $1mil for many toilet seats probably isn't
| graft if you run 10,000 profitable paid toilets.
|
| Until someone can successfully decomission a fleet of oil
| rigs for way less than $24bil, we don't know if it's a
| good price or not, but especially if it's a small
| fraction of the overall lifetime value of the oil
| produced, it might not be a big deal.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| That's a small vessel in the grand scheme of things, and
| only works for floating platforms, which can be towed if
| time is not an issue. For fixed installations let me
| introduce you to the completely crazy Pioneering Spirit.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xXmEHPFp8 - Dismantling
| a platform in the North Sea
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneering_Spirit_(ship)
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| PS24 billion, or about $33 billion.
| noja wrote:
| That sounds... fair? Like a normal expenditure (it doesn't
| sound like tax avoidance).
| serjester wrote:
| BP was owned by the British government up until 1987. Maybe
| it's their rigs from back in the day?
|
| Private companies are usually required to have insurance to
| cover decommissioning their assets in the event of bankruptcy.
| I'd be very surprised if Britain wasn't directly involved in
| the operation of these.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| If its anything like how it works in most other oil and gas
| sectors, they transfer the well infrastructure to shell
| companies for next to nothing when they are at or near the end
| of their useful production life, that then promptly go
| bankrupt.
|
| Now the big companies don't have to pay for clean up, magic.
| noja wrote:
| That only works once. If the other side expects shenanigans,
| then the company can prepay the cleanup cost somehow, either
| as an ongoing tax, as upfront fee, or as an insurance pool
| that you pay into. There are probably hundreds of ways of
| structuring it.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Except there is zero political will to ensure such a fund
| is either extant, or properly funded.
|
| This story has repeated itself a lot.
| specialist wrote:
| TIL: There's a million (or so) abandoned well heads in
| North America. Suggesting the trick happened more than
| once.
| ghouse wrote:
| Privatize the gains (assets), socialize the losses (or the
| liability)
| demarq wrote:
| rig will rust and finally give in to the forces of the ocean,
| taking the habitat with it.
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