Today, a walk on the pier. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
Thanksgiving Day my wife and
I went down to Galveston's piers. Nice place for a
stroll! These quiet
docks are major bases for Gulf oil drilling and
exploration. Off-shore rigs are being built and
refitted. Last year the Zafiro Producer, the world's
highest-capacity offshore loading ship, was
outfitted over on Pelican Island across the water
to the north. Technology moves fast down here, just
out of sight of Galveston's famous shops and
museums.
Until recently, we took most of our off-shore oil
from beneath the shallow shelf that reaches out
into the Gulf. Most drilling has been done in that
shallow water. Most of the off-shore rigs, in
various states of repair, are meant to rest on the
ocean bottom. They have long legs that stick up
vertically from the platform while it's towed out
to a drilling site. Then the legs are lowered to
fix the platform in place.
But we also see Tension Leg Platforms for
deep-water drilling. A huge one rides by the pier
beside us. It's maybe a hundred feet high on fat
steel legs, hollow inside. The legs, in turn, rest
on vast pontoons. On the deck far above is a tall
oil derrick. The lower halves of its gray steel
legs are encrusted with barnacles. Once in deep
water, cocks are opened so the rig can settle down
and float at that depth using the legs and pontoons
as ballast. The legs are anchored to the ocean
floor by long cables, and drilling begins.
Further down the pier is a clean new vessel, maybe
300 feet long. Its markings say, Northern
Access, St. Petersburg. I stop by a man working
by the gangplank. "What is this boat?" "Is
scientific vessel," he answers with a thick Russian
accent. "You like make tour?" That was too good to
pass up. We sign a book, don hard hats, and go off
to see what's happening.
An English scientist on the stern deck explains:
This was once a Russian tugboat. Russian fitters in
a St. Petersburg shipyard cut it in two and
inserted a long center section. Now it's a
stretch-limo tugboat. A few months ago it
was re-outfitted and sent to do preliminary oil
exploration off Norway. Most of its crew is Russian
with a scattering of Norwegians, English and
others.
They float a five-mile sensor cable out behind the
ship. Then a compressed air gun sends sonic waves
into the water. Banks of computers read the
undersea geology in distorted reflections of the
sound from the sea bottom. And these are only
two-dimensional readings. If they find anything,
big ships go out with even fancier gear.
Last night I went to a bookstore looking for
general reading about off-shore drilling. There was
nothing there. I found lots on airplanes,
earth-movers, ships, and trains. But this
world is still a secret. It's wide open to anyone
who'll look, but otherwise it's unknown. This was
an odd Thanksgiving. It was an unexpected glance
into one of those many worlds behind the fence --
just beyond of our line of sight.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
