Decades ago on my first trip aboard a supply vessel to an offshore platform, I was trying to time the rolling deck for a jump at the swinging lift basket that was to carry me to the platform when a member of the crew tapped my shoulder and with a shake of his head motioned me to step back.
Although relatively new then to covering the offshore industry, I'd spent enough time in Permian basin oil fields to know a covert warning like that meant something was about to happen to somebody. The target was soon evident, as only one of several would-be passengers stepped aboard the basket's bottom ring and grabbed the webbing for a makeshift "elevator" ride to the platform deck several stories above.
A worker operating the crane aboard the platform quickly snatched the basket into the air, swung it over the water, and in one swift motion dunked his surprised passenger like a donut, shoulders-deep into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The victim of this offshore industry baptismal, a junior company executive being "welcomed" back from an extended absence, joined our laughter at the practical joke.
Rites of passage
I thought of that traditional welcome-dunking late last month when US Interior Sec. Ken Salazar, his deputy David Hayes, and Michael R. Bromwich, director of the newly minted Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOE), visited three offshore units in the gulf.
It's a shame no one convinced the three in advance that a ride on a lift basket and ceremonial dunking in the gulf is a rite of passage for first-time visitors to offshore facilities—something like the colorful initiations for those crossing the equator for the first time. Maybe a dip in the gulf might have cooled their tempers and some of the rhetoric they and other government officials have directed at the industry lately.
Good-natured participation by the regulators in a water-soaked initiation might have created some camaraderie with the industry—particularly Bromwich, whose new department replaced the former Minerals Management Service. MMS was one of the few federal agencies many in the business respected because it respected the industry it regulated.
But Salazar was attorney general of Colorado before being elected to the Senate; Hayes is a former environmental lawyer; and Bromwich was a federal prosecutor and inspector general for the Department of Justice. People from such litigious backgrounds take their work—and themselves—seriously and are not known for a sense of humor. And the offshore industry is too deep in federal pooh already to risk offending officials more.
Hurricane season
Another government agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, earlier predicted the 2010 hurricane season would be among the most active on record. But only one small hurricane and one tropical storm have yet threatened gulf operations.
Tropical Storm Alex became a Category 1 hurricane on June 30, the first June hurricane to form in the Atlantic since the abnormally active 1995 season when Hurricane Opal later devastated the Florida Panhandle. But Alex missed the major oil and gas production areas in the gulf and came ashore on Mexico's sparsely populated Tamaulipas coast as a Category 2 storm before dissipating July 1. Nevertheless, crude spiked to $80/bbl as workers evacuated offshore facilities and shut in production while Alex was gaining strength over the gulf.
Tropical Storm Bonnie later pushed up crude prices by a $2/bbl premium when companies again curtailed offshore work and production ahead of the storm. But Bonnie quickly fizzled without becoming a hurricane.
Still, the BOE reported workers were evacuated from 84 of the 634 manned production platforms and from 10 of 39 rigs still in the gulf, with 46.7% of the oil and 22% of the gas normally produced being shut in ahead of Bonnie. With the feds already on the warpath, offshore operators currently are taking extra safety precautions in hopes of saving their scalps.
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