DYING FOR OIL : by Ray Sinclair

 

Saturation Diver at work

The Most Dangerous Job in the Oil &Gas Industry.

THE SATURATION DIVER

That day in the summer of 1984, I was standing 140 metres on the seafloor of the North Sea. Floating above me and stationed alongside an oil rig is the Dive Support Vessel (DSV) Stadive. Mike Lambert was Dive Supervisor and in dive control.

The earpieces in my bright yellow Kirby Morgan Superlite17 diving helmet squawked into life. “Ray, we’ve got nearly 130 metres of cable out on the crane, you should be able to see the lights by now,” Lambert’s voice has an element of concern.

I am looking up in the direction of what would usually be the shimmering light of the surface. At this depth sunlight hardly filters down, due to the density of water, light photons are drained of energy and cannot penetrate effectively.

I was intently scanning the blackness of inner space for two chemically activated light sticks to appear from the darkness above. Fish, big cod, leisurely swim in and out of my peripheral vision giving a little comfort and an odd reassurance of not been alone down here.

As if looking for a faint, distant star in the night sky, I scan every inch of the pervasive black ocean above.

“That is a negative dive control, no lights in sight, no lights.”

DSV Stadive’s crane driver pays out more cable. “The gauge is reading 138 metres of cable out; you must be able to see the crane hook now?” Lambert says with a perplexed tone.

“All stop! All stop on the crane!! All stop on the crane!!” I yell.

The aptly called headache ball and crane hook with its steel cable weighing tons smash thunderously as it ploughs into the seabed within 20 centimetres of where I am standing.

I hear Lambert yell to the crane operator “All Stop, all stop, all stop!!”

My vision is now completely gone as a muddy cloud of soft silt rises from the impact of the crane hook. After some time, it settles. The limiting blackness of deep-sea is once again my work environment. I examine the crane hook now hoisted to the correct level. Sure enough, there are the chemical lights attached.

Surface support, the deck crew onboard ship had failed to activate them by breaking and shaking the sticks triggering the light-emitting chemical reaction. The lightsticks cost no more than a few dollars each.

This close call is undoubtedly one of many undocumented examples of dangers that are part of the life of the Saturation Diver working in the Oil and Gas Industry. Pride in their job and monetary rewards with offshore dreams of big houses and fast cars are what drives a man to put his life on the line so that you and I can go about our lives without giving oil any consideration.

Saturation divers do construction and demolition work at ocean depths up to 300 metres and must spend weeks on board ship living in a pressurised habitat, which minimises the risk of decompression sickness (the bends). Saturation divers breathe a helium-oxygen mixture to prevent nitrogen from becoming narcotic and causing a loss of senses similar to drunkenness. The divers are lowered to the seabed via a diving bell. The bell locks on and off the pressurised living habitat via an airlock system that enables separation of the diving bell from living chambers. Once at depth the diver drops out of the bell via a bottom door. The door opens when the bell pressure is equalised with the sea depth pressure. The diver makes their way to the worksite. Connecting the diver to the diving bell is his 30-metre long umbilical, a lifeline of hoses that has the three vital functions, the oxygen-helium supply, the hot water that circulates through the dive suit and the communications cable. Temperatures at depth in the North Sea vary from 4 to 6 degrees Celsius. This an extremely hostile work environment.

The brutal statistics, according to the North Sea Divers Alliance. The core pioneer divers between 350 and 400 who worked offshore rigs between 1965 and 1990 were at the most risk of severe injury and death. There were 56 confirmed diving fatalities in the North Sea.

Many others over time have struggled with significant health problems. 90 per cent were in life-threatening situations at work. 85 per cent of those who survived have suffered from decompression sickness in addition to avascular necrosis, pulmonary disease COPD and cancer, 30 per cent have been diagnosed with brain injury, 96 per cent of those studied, have had their quality of life significantly reduced and 23 divers have so far committed suicide.

On 5 November 1983, one of the most serious and certainly most horrific recorded diving accidents occurred on the semi-submersible drilling rig Byford Dolphin. The four divers, Edwin Coward (35) Roy Lucas (38) Bjørn Bergersen (29) and Truls Hellevik (34) were inside the pressurised saturation diving system and were to die instantly when their living chamber explosively decompressed from a pressure of nine atmospheres or 90 metres deep to one atmosphere or surface in a fraction of a second.

Warning graphic detail: One of the dive tenders William Crammond (32) opened the clamp between the diving bell and living chambers that keep the pressurised atmosphere in the diver’s habitat. He was killed instantly. Coward, Lucas and Bergersen had their blood turn to foam as a result of the explosive decompression not dissimilar to shaking a carbonated bottle of soda and unscrewing the top. Hellevik suffered a horrible death. He was closest to the open round interior door which should have been closed and sealed before the clamp was taken off. If sealed would have stopped the explosive decompression. The door was not closed and slightly ajar. Forensic pathologists report, “Hellevik, was subjected to the highest-pressure differential and in the process of trying to secure the inner door, the escaping air forced him through a 60-centimetre crescent-shaped opening created by the jammed interior door. Hellevik was violently dismembered, including bisection of the thoracoabdominal cavity which further resulted in the expulsion of all internal organs of the chest and abdomen except the trachea and a section of the small intestine and of the thoracic spine and projecting them some distance, one section later being found 10 metres vertically above the exterior pressure door”. In layman’s terms, he was shredded to pieces.

With the difference in pressure from the surface to saturation depth, anything blocking the opening would be exposed to a force of up to approximately 25 tonnes by the air trying to escape.

Pioneer diver Stephen Florence (63) from Yorkshire spent over four decades as a saturation diver. He considers himself “quite fortunate” having started work on the offshore oil rigs in the late 70s. With diving personnel “dropping like flies” in those pioneering days, Stephen recalls many close calls.

On one such occasion, he was on the seabed, 90 metres down. He and his buddy were using airlift bags to raise a 3ft diameter pipeline. They had to bolt the two ends of the flanges together and tighten them with hydro-jacks. The pipe was kilometres long. Lift bags were every five metres to take the enormous weight

A still from the diving film Pressure, depicts the working environment of the Saturation Diver. (Copyright Pressure Film)

“I had to get my head underneath between the pipeline and the seabed to tighten up the bottom bolts,” he said.

One of the airbags had an undetectable leak, and like a slowly deflating balloon, the weight of the pipeline was to gradually and silently pin his head to the seafloor.

“I could hear this creaking and realised it was my helmet being crushed. I couldn’t see or move. I was trapped for over half-an-hour, the weight bearing down on me,” he said.

That’s how long it took his dive buddy to get the air hose and top up the deflating bag so Stephen could free himself.

“I thought, I don’t like this at all, you must hold back the panic and stay calm. Saturation diving is a roller coaster. You can’t wait to get in saturation and earn great money. Then you can’t wait to get out, go home and breath fresh air again. The highs and lows are bound to affect you mentally,” he said.

Diving Supervisor of the DSV Seven Pelican, Phil Kearns (59) from Cheshire has been in the industry for 35 years. Phil was drawn to the adventurous lifestyle and the camaraderie. But never far away is the money.

He recalls a diver carrying out underwater burning at a depth of 120 metres.

Above the diver was a canopy, an overhang, the unburnt oxygen was collecting here and building up a bubble. Eventually, the diver unwittingly ignited the large bubble of oxygen. The subsequent underwater explosion killed him instantly “splitting him in half in his diving suit,” Phil said.

In his time, he has seen a shift in the safety culture by the oil companies, from the hypocrisy of paying lip service to safety issues of the pioneering days to a welcome legislative change.

He concludes that major accidents like the Piper Alpha production platform where 167 workers were killed, and the Deep-water Horizon drilling rig with the death of 11 and cleanup cost of sixty-two billion dollars (USD) forced governments to review the safety culture of the Oil and Gas Industry.

The mantra now is, “If you think safety is expensive, compare it to the cost of an accident. Public sentiment is on our side. The public will not accept an industry that routinely kills people,” he said.

Saturation diving by most employment standards is a strange one. It is certainly not for those who have a fear of confined spaces, the dark, the ocean, flying in helicopters, putting your life in the hands of another, the unknown, or a dislike of physically arduous work.

For all the pioneer divers who died, a debt is owed to them, not that they would ask for anything in return. They led the way in laying and maintaining the pipelines and offshore oil rigs that work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year so you can drive your car up to the petrol bowser and fill your tank up.

People from all walks of life are prone to error. Today oil companies do their best to mitigate the dangers of working in the Oil and Gas Industry. But accidents still happen.

People are not infallible. Anyone could have made a mistake and forgotten to break and shake the light sticks.

Copyright: Ray Sinclair

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WRITTEN BY

Ray Sinclair

Former Royal Navy Clearance and Deep Ocean Saturation Diver. Actor, Aspiring Poet. Presently completing a Bachelor of Journalism at QUT.

You... want to be a Clearance Diver ? A memoir by Ray Sinclair

 

My Blunt Instrument.

Moments in life define us May of 1978 was one such moment for me. I qualified as a Royal Navy Clearance Diver. Many men older, bigger and stronger would fail, ‘wrap their hand in.’ A bitterly cold and freezing winter course at Horsea Lake, Portsmouth would find out those who lacked the mental stamina to pass the course and those who rose to the top and became part of the elite. We all have a strategy, or default mode, unwittingly or not to get through life. I was once informed mine was a blunt instrument, and it has worked for me.

Eighteen months before becoming a Clearance Diver, I had walked “hands thrust in pockets” up the pedestrian ramp that allowed access to Birmingham city’s New Street railway station. The city centre felt old, tired and damp, uninspiring in the season’s dullness, a mood reflected in me. Up the ramp from street level past several commercial shops, was the Royal Navy recruiting office. Half-heartedly, I pushed open the glass door and sauntered in.

A Petty Officer from the Royal Navy possibly mid-thirties, sat behind his neat and orderly black desk. The kind of desk that looked like its only function was a barrier to separate the plebs from the officer. Neatly, within half an arm’s length to his right, was an ashtray, closer still a coffee cup. Behind him in perfect symmetry hung a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. He swayed ever so slightly from side to side in a swivel chair. He was as neat and orderly as the desk. Black tie, white collared shirt starched and pressed, rigid as only the military can be. His navy jacket with insignia was hung over the back of the chair. He was the recruiting officer.

This man would decide my destiny. Not that I was sure what destiny was or which was mine to follow. At 16, I had no interest in such philosophical matters. I was looking for something to do, something to be and preferably something that paid after school.

An hour before entering the recruiting office, I had taken the number ninety cream and blue double-decker bus from where I lived in Great Barr to the city centre. A journey of about twenty minutes. I sat on the upper level amongst a haze of wispy white layered thermal cigarette smoke. Grey building facades and low grey clouds of winter passed by as we trundled along. Passengers getting on and off the bus would drag fresh cold air upstairs, disturbing the smoke.

Inside the recruiting office, I waited with three other lads. I was conspicuously out of place. They had short, neat hair, polished black shoes, smart trousers, with shirt collars protruding from V-necked jumpers. One comforting factor, we were all skinny lads. My father in a jokey dad way once called me a ‘toast rack.’ The fact we were all skinny reassured me, ever so slightly, that I fitted in.

I wore patchwork jeans flared and frayed at the bottoms, a black t-shirt with a Judas Priests logo and a blue wrangler denim jacket. I can’t recall what was on my feet. No sandal-wearing hippie music for me. So most likely white plimsolls. I was into rock. Thin Lizzy, Status Quo and Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, were spun regularly on my record player as I ‘headbanged’ along. My hair was long and greasy, and my complexion would have been described as spotty, not quite pizza face. An uninspiring youth. The kind that when elderly female neighbours met each other shopping would say, “Shirley’s boy, he won’t amount to much, such a shame, his Mother is a lovely woman.”

“ Next!! Was bellowed out. There the officer sat, no handshake offered. I sat on the opposite side of his desk in a small chair. The kind of chair that didn’t swivel and had no armrests, my arms fluctuating between crossed and dangling loosely down, with my right hand occasionally sweeping back the fringe of my long, greasy hair.

“What can we do for you, lad,” he said.

“I want to be a navy diver,” I said.

The officer’s high-backed black office chair jolted backwards with the weight of his body. His eyes squinted shut and mouth wide open as he laughed at, I assume, the absurdity of my answer.

“What? So… you, want to be a Royal Navy Clearance Diver?”

“Yes,” I replied.

The Petty Officer composed himself. Leaning forward in his chair and as close to me as the desk would allow, he looked me in the eyes. “Look at you, you’d be two stone wet through! He paused for effect. “What makes you think you could be a clearance diver? He said condescendingly. “ Do you like to shoot guns, lad?”

I’d shot a gun once before. My mate’s older brother had a 22-air rifle that we borrowed once without asking. We were 14-year-old hunters, stalking the forest for prey. I shot from the hip, unintentionally killing a starling. I felt so terrible that I buried the bird in a box I had found and marked the grave with a small cross made of twigs.

“No, I don’t like guns. If I can’t be a clearance diver, I won’t be joining.”

He paused, rested back in his chair and started swaying again ever so slightly side to side as he pondered the somewhat dishevelled teenager who sat uncomfortably opposite him. He leaned forward and said, “Listen, lad, I am going to be honest with you. “It is one of the toughest branches of the Royal Navy. “Men…” he paused again for me to reflect on the word, “bigger and stronger than you have failed, those that pass are the elite, the roughest, toughest men of the Royal Navy!” Churchillian in his delivery.

I replayed a recent scene. There I was in my navy-blue overalls, stacking like bricks white two-pound sugar bags at the local supermarket, unimaginatively called Low Cost. I had left school, having done reasonably well. “Could do better” appeared to be the teacher’s standard comments on most of my reports. I guess my social life took precedence over my schoolwork.

I glanced up the shopping aisle and striding down were three of my teachers, Mr White, Mr Pritchard and his brother. They walked up to me near the wall of sugar I was stacking, looked at each other. One of the Pritchard brother’s who taught religious education looked me up and down, then said to me: “We thought you’d end up here.” His tone was a matter of fact. They walked past without another word and made their way to the cash registers.

I have a default mode when I am told I cannot do something. It has been this way for as long as I can recall. Maybe it is in my genetic make-up or part of my upbringing. The critics, the doubters, the non-believers, those who scoff and the eyeball rollers can deflate you, but in my case, the more they say “No, you can’t” the more it motivates me. The flag that raises in my mind is big and bold, heroically fluttering, emblazoned with “I’ll show you.”

Resting back in his chair again, he said, “You, just haven’t got what it takes, boy”. I gave a wry smile. Confidence, at 16, is an attribute I lacked but made up for it with a dogged determination to prove the naysayers wrong.

“That’s it son. The interviews over”. Good luck with whatever you decide to do. “The Navy life is not for you,” he said.

He motioned with his left hand and a nod of his head towards the exit door.

Without further discussion, I slumped towards the door, passing the nervous, smartly dressed lads on my way out.

Heading home on the smoke-filled upper deck of the bus, my tenacious flag was proudly flying. I had the idea of another strategy to get another interview and the prerequisite medical to at least get into HMS Raleigh in Plymouth, the shore establishment for basic training.

Through a friend who was already accepted into the Royal Navy, I managed to secure another interview. The week leading up to the next interview, I dug out my old school uniform, black blazer and trousers, white collared shirt and V-necked grey jumper, socks with polished black shoes, no tie. Reluctantly, I’d had my hair trimmed, still shoulder length. I sat opposite another recruitment officer, basically a carbon copy of the last one.

I never mentioned my intention to become a clearance diver. I now knew you had to start as a junior seaman sailor and do basic training before selecting a branch to specialise. I signed on to serve for 22 years.

The train from Birmingham, New street to Plymouth Station was about to depart, there were plenty of young men seated in my cabin, I assume joining the navy also. On the platform to my right stood in a line was my Grandmother, Mother, Aunty Sandra and older sister Teresa, I sat on the window seat facing in the direction of travel, I turned my head to look out the window, they were crying. The train slowly pulled away, through tears that I try to hold back, I could see my family waving me off.

After five hours, I arrived at Plymouth Station. Suitcase in hand, hair still shoulder length, I sauntered through the main gates of HMS Raleigh to begin basic training. The honoured badge of Clearance Diver would soon be sewn onto my naval uniform.

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