sure would love to see the end of the wire after it parted or was it a parted wire at all but rather a failed tow shackle? Was that not the first report but that is was stoopidly called a “buckle” and that would point to either undersized gear for the load on the tow or an improperly rigged tow (ie. no surge gear). I will say that in no way is this the result to dragging the wire on the bottom. Not with those angles of lead shown in the video!
[QUOTE=c.captain;110429]But will we?[/QUOTE]
There is a reason they buy ex-coasties. Don’t forget that the CG “determined” that the Discoverer didn’t really go aground.
[QUOTE=“Steamer;110401”]
In case you haven’t noticed, there is a big difference between policy making O-5 and above ring knockers moving to executive positions and an enlisted puke with a limited ticket running a crew boat.[/QUOTE]
Crewboat? Is that where u finished up Steamer? I haven’t run a crewboat since 1987. BTW, a USCG Vessel CAPT is O-6 not O-5. Get ur FAX straight. It would not have mattered if he had been an Admiral.
Yeah I WA enlisted because I would rather nave a beer bottle in front of me than a pr-frontal lobotomy.
Who’s bringing the popcorn?
I spent the last two weeks listening to a retired jarhead and retired bubblehead sniping at each other. This has potential to be interesting…
[QUOTE=c.captain;110429]But will we?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think so. It will take a while.
[QUOTE=BMCSRetired;110458]
I would rather nave a beer bottle in front of me than a pr-frontal lobotomy.[/QUOTE]
Put your beer down for a few weeks and take a remedial reading course.
[I]“In case you haven’t noticed, there is a big difference between policy making [B]O-5 and above[/B] ring knockers …”[/I]
What part of that is so difficult for even a bosun to understand?
Don’t bother with the popcorn boys, I don’t even need to sharpen a stick.
[QUOTE="Steamer;110478]
Don’t bother with the popcorn boys, I don’t even need to sharpen a stick.[/QUOTE]
Probably because there is no one around to help u out of your chair old-timer. Additionally, somebody else is typing your responses on a computer keyboard from the drawings on that cave wall you use to communicate with.
Besides, the policy makers now are O-4s. The O-5 and above just leave it on their desks while they are polishing up their resume’s for that cushy retirement jobs. Look at most port directors (NYC/NJ), ABS, etc… I am on your side on this one.
This is my last one. They can not outlaw them from taking those jobs because they would challenge it on court and WIN.
I kvetch how this degenerated.
They could put a cause in the UCMJ to cover O + retirees immediately accepting jobs from those they used to regulate. But that is about as likely to happen as it becoming illegal to leave Congress and become a bag man [lobbyist]. That USA headquartered multinational companies like Transocean get prosecuted for paying bribes in other countries in order to do business is hypocrisy at its worst when it is perfectly legal in the good old US of A…
Lets face it money talks and BS walks…they will be drilling. … why are they even having a CG hearing… coasties signed off on the vessel in Louisiana anyway…all the film they have is edited… they should see what we have… but they don’t want it …all they want is their “edited video” and unlicensed personnel only got $20 more a day for being there as opposed to GOM.
AIVIQ - IMO 9579016. No roller seen. Wire looks to me like it parted within about three deck widths from the stern. Wire washing around on deck. 2" wire about 6 lbs/ft. Very little load on the wire post partum… (Probably had the pins up but the wire snagged a few times too many on the pin caps). Corners look sharp as well. Anyone out there smart enough to do the catenary calcs to lift the wire off the deck @ +- 1000 ft? Yep, POP indeed…
Edit, maybe that is a roller…
Edit edit, draft marke on a roller seems sort of silly…
[QUOTE=“DredgeBoyThrottleJocky;110519”]
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1583168#. No roller seen. Wire looks to me like it parted within about three deck widths from the stern. Wire washing around on deck. 2" wire about 6 lbs/ft. Very little load on the wire post partum… (Probably had the pins up but the wire snagged a few times too many on the pin caps). Corners look sharp as well. Anyone out there smart enough to do the catenary calcs to lift the wire off the deck @ ± 1000 ft? Yep, POP indeed…
Edit, maybe that is a roller…
Edit edit, draft marke on a roller seems sort of silly…
http://www.workboat.com/imagedetail.aspx?id=13326[/QUOTE]
It’ not one solid roller, it’s two rollers. The center is fixed. So having draft markings there is no problem. Most large Chouest anchor boat are like this…
[QUOTE=DredgeBoyThrottleJocky;110519]http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1583168#. No roller seen. Wire looks to me like it parted within about three deck widths from the stern. Wire washing around on deck. 2" wire about 6 lbs/ft. Very little load on the wire post partum… (Probably had the pins up but the wire snagged a few times too many on the pin caps). Corners look sharp as well. Anyone out there smart enough to do the catenary calcs to lift the wire off the deck @ ± 1000 ft? Yep, POP indeed…
Edit, maybe that is a roller…
Edit edit, draft marke on a roller seems sort of silly…
http://www.workboat.com/imagedetail.aspx?id=13326[/QUOTE]
The wire they were towing with was at a minimum 3-5/8", maybe even 4". That is a reverse waterfall (3) drum winch rated for 500 tons. Typically, small wire cannot even be dead manned, and has no place on such a winch. This one does have that capability, only because the dead man was custom made, without the wedge type, to accommodate smaller synthetics and to facilitate spooling on larger rope with with roulette thimbles already made-up.
Draft marks do not go on rollers. It’s customary to have them center-line, in between the rollers.
On the subject of the video. I wouldn’t get to caught up on this being the initial break. There are more camera’s on the Aiviq than they probably have at there main office. Everything is videoed winches, deck, etc… This video is just 30 something seconds of what they released. This could very well be one of the many breaks of the emergency tow line. Which would make a lot more sense, with the close proximity to the rig, absence of surge gear, absence of chafing gear, and so on…
[QUOTE=Bayou985;110525]On the subject of the video. I wouldn’t get to caught up on this being the initial break. There are more camera’s on the Aiviq than they probably have at there main office. Everything is videoed winches, deck, etc… This video is just 30 something seconds of what they released. This could very well be one of the many breaks of the emergency tow line. Which would make a lot more sense, with the close proximity to the rig, absence of surge gear, absence of chafing gear, and so on…[/QUOTE]
The camera system is extensive and covers all of the winches, etc…like you say, but those are not typically recorded. The back deck camera does record on a hard drive, but that is there because of the 3rd Party riggers (Delmar), and they manage, installed, and record the deck for their own purposes - on just that one fixed camera, on a separate system.
The surge gear would be on the rig side, in the water…and not visible anyway. I am sure there is an added length of 3.5" chain in the tow. As far as the wire at the stern roller, you will not see and chafing gear on it.
Thanks for that, might learn something today after all. Sure looks to me in that video that that wire was slack, I.E., if the jewelry let go there would be at least a few tons of gear dragging behind, and a couple feet of water wouldn’t be enough to push it around like that… Do you know if there are hard corners on the plates welded to the tops of the tow pins? (I’m guessing there’s a term for those, dammed if i know what it is). Or that was that the emergency wire, was there a goofball?
[QUOTE=“anchorman;110526”]
The camera system is extensive and covers all of the winches, etc…like you say, but those are not typically recorded. The back deck camera does record on a hard drive, but that is there because of the 3rd Party riggers (Delmar), and they manage, installed, and record the deck for their own purposes - on just that one fixed camera, on a separate system.
The surge gear would be on the rig side, in the water…and not visible anyway. I am sure there is an added length of 3.5" chain in the tow. As far as the wire at the stern roller, you will not see and chafing gear on it.[/QUOTE]
Yes your right, the surge gear would be on the rig side and not visible regardless of which tow line that was. I guess I was typing faster than I was thinking. My point was, I think people may be reading to deep into this video.
[QUOTE=DredgeBoyThrottleJocky;110527]Thanks for that, might learn something today after all. Sure looks to me in that video that that wire was slack, I.E., if the jewelry let go there would be at least a few tons of gear dragging behind, and a couple feet of water wouldn’t be enough to push it around like that… Do you know if there are hard corners on the plates welded to the tops of the tow pins? (I’m guessing there’s a term for those, dammed if i know what it is).[/QUOTE]
There are guide pins toward the stern, made by Triplex, but the last thing in world you would do is to put them up while towing; that’s not even a consideration. Those things stay in the deck unless you are anchor handling, or making/breaking connections.
SHIT! Looks like there have been hearings still ongoing over the holiday weekend. I thought the whole shitteroo shut down last Thursday. Anyway, this is Friday’s story from the hearings…
[B]Questions raised over why Shell didn’t anticipate big storm[/B]
Published: May 24, 2013
By LISA DEMER — ldemer@adn.com
On their interrupted December voyage, Shell’s Kulluk drilling rig and its tow ship, the Aiviq, experienced a terrible trifecta of bad weather, failed tow gear and the temporary loss of all four engines on the Aiviq.
Shouldn’t Royal Dutch Shell and its contractor have accounted for that possibility? That angle was pursued Friday during Day 5 of a Coast Guard marine casualty hearing into the Dec. 31 grounding of the Kulluk by Barry Strauch, the National Transportation Safety Board representative on the Coast Guard panel.
“Certainly, a lot happened on one voyage,” Strauch said in questioning John Kaighin, Shell’s marine manager for Alaska and the company official directly overseeing the transit. “Would you call that bad luck? Act of God?”
Kaighin said he didn’t agree with those characterizations. “They are operational failures that we basically worked through to solve.”
And all three problems didn’t erupt at the same time, Kaighin noted. When the tow gear first failed Dec. 27, the Kulluk was adrift for three hours and 17 minutes before crews connected an emergency tow rope, he said. The vessels were connected when the Aiviq engines failed that night and into the next morning, he said. And the big storm didn’t hit until a day or so later.
“Once we had the problem with propulsion, we didn’t advance the tow as expected. We expected to be 400 miles away on the 31st,” Kaighin said.
The night of the 31st, the Kulluk was being pounded by waves 35 feet high, and occasionally up to 45 feet, when it hit the rocks south of Kodiak Island.
A weather study Shell sought for the December trip listed a 1 percent chance of 35-foot seas, Strauch noted.
“Knowing what we know now, it seems like good planning would anticipate the 1 percent” – the slim chance of big storm waves, said Strauch of the NTSB.
How, he asked, was that possibility factored into calculations for the strength of the tow gear?
Kaighin never gave a direct answer.
The tow setup or something similar had been used before with the Aiviq and the Kulluk, he said. Planning for the tow had started in January, nearly a year earlier. And Shell expected to be ahead of the bad weather.
“The weather conditions we encountered at that specific location … that was not on our original tow route when we were basically trying to solve the problem with the Aiviq,” Kaighin testified.
With the round Kulluk a unique vessel to tow, the Aiviq could only travel 4 mph or so. How, Strauch asked, could they could get out of the way of the weather?
They could slow down, Kaighin said. They could change direction. Or they could ride it out.
Key people with Shell as well as the contracted tow master and the warranty surveyor for its insurance carrier agreed to the tow plan, Kaighin testified.
Another Coast Guard panel member, Alan Blume, a marine casualty investigator for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, asked why the republic – where the Kulluk is registered – wasn’t notified within 24 hours of the grounding, as required.
There was a lot going on but that was a mistake, Kaighin said. Shell is taking steps to make sure such a lapse doesn’t happen again, he said.
The Kulluk and Aiviq left Dutch Harbor Dec. 21 for what was supposed to be a weeks-long journey to a Seattle shipyard. But after the initial tow gear failure, a series of systems rigged at sea also failed to hold the Kulluk to vessels that came to help.
Crews found that the first failure happened after a critical connecting shackle somehow fell off and disappeared at sea.
An earlier tow in November, from the Beaufort Sea drilling site to Dutch Harbor, also had problems, Tracy Chouest, Alaska operations manager for Aiviq owner Edison Chouest Offshore, testified. He’s not part of the Chouest family that owns the Louisiana-based company, he said.
During the November tow, the Aiviq lost its generators and suffered a temporary power blackout, Chouest testified. An engine failed and couldn’t be restarted. Crew members who testified earlier said they experienced violent seas on the journey north from Dutch Harbor.
Tracy Chouest was in Louisiana on vacation when the December troubles began but huddled with Gary Chouest, one of the company owners, and a Shell manager in a conference room to help manage the response. Gary Chouest spared no expense to get the Aiviq running, sending his jet to two cities to pick up spare fuel injectors, Tracy Chouest testified.
Earlier witnesses testified the tow gear was visually inspected in Dutch Harbor before the December transit and no defects or rust was seen.
Coast Guard investigator Keith Fawcett wanted to know more. “Did the gear go through non-destructive testing to see if it had suffered damage for cyclic loading?”
No, Kaighin testified.
The Coast Guard, meanwhile is doing its own tests on the primary tow gear that was recovered. No results have been released.
The hearing in the Anchorage Assembly chambers at Loussac Library continues Saturday with another Shell witness, Sean Churchfield. The panel is taking Sunday and Monday off, then it will run until May 31.
from Saturday
[B]Kulluk left Dutch Harbor to avoid taxes, Shell official testifies[/B]
Published: May 25, 2013
Sean Churchfield, Shell Operation Manager for Alaska, answers questions during a US Coast Guard hearing, on Saturday.
\By LISA DEMER — ldemer@adn.com
Shell’s Kulluk oil drilling rig left Dutch Harbor in December to avoid the prospect of millions in taxes, a Shell official revealed Saturday morning in testimony to a Coast Guard investigation panel.
Questions over the timing of the Kulluk’s departure have been swirling since the Dec. 31 grounding of the rig in a fierce Gulf of Alaska winter storm.
Before Saturday’s sworn testimony by Sean Churchfield, operations manager for Royal Dutch Shell in Alaska, Shell had maintained that taxes were “a consideration” but not the driving factor for when the Kulluk was being moved to a Seattle shipyard for major maintenance.
Churchfield said it differently on Saturday.
“Our preference for the timing was to be gone before the end of the year, driven by the economic factors,” Churchfield said. He was being questioned by Lt. Cmdr. Brian McNamara of the Coast Guard Investigations National Center of Expertise. As with other witnesses, Churchfield had a lawyer by his side, in his case, Gregory Linsin, a Shell lawyer with Blank Rome law firm.
“Why specifically was the end of the year such a concern?” McNamara asked.
“The end of the year to my understanding was when the tax liability potentially would have become effective,” Churchfield answered.
Another consideration he said, was the cost of maintaining the rig in Dutch Harbor. Under later questioning by Linsin, Churchfield said that Shell’s other drilling rig, the Noble Discoverer, was being docked in Seward, and it was inefficient and expensive having the rigs in two locations.
But the potential tax hit was the bigger expense, he said.
TRIP FOR NEW CRANES
Churchfield said he didn’t know how much the Alaska tax would have been other than “millions.” Alaska law provides for an annual 2 percent tax on the value of property used in oil and gas exploration, production and pipeline transportation. The date for assessing the value of covered properties is Jan. 1.
Shell has never revealed the Kulluk’s overall value. The company has said it put $292 million into upgrades between 2006 and 2012 as it prepared for drilling. Shell bought the Kulluk in 2005 for the Alaska Arctic. The round rig, now 30 years old, is reinforced for ice but had been mothballed for years before Shell acquired it.
State officials have said they hadn’t determined whether Shell would owe the tax on a mobile drilling unit that was in port.
Shell decided Dec. 7 to move the Kulluk from Dutch Harbor to a Seattle shipyard for major off-season maintenance, including the replacement of the rig’s cranes, Churchfield said. Shell evaluated doing the work in Alaska to avoid another big journey, he said, but a bigger shipyard was needed. What was supposed to be a weeks-long trip started Dec. 21.
The Coast Guard is investigating the circumstances of the grounding and could make recommendations for safety improvements and also could seek actions against the licenses of mariners involved.
SURVEYOR: GEAR PASSED
Saturday’s hearing, on a bright blue holiday weekend day in Anchorage, drew perhaps a dozen people besides panel members, lawyers and journalists. One of the more assertive panel members was missing, too. Barry Strauch of the National Transportation Safety Board had to return to Washington, D.C., for prior commitments, a Coast Guard spokesman said.
Tom Lakosh, a citizen activist who has been pushing the panel to explore more angles, came again to press his case during breaks. Gary Chouest, one of the owners of Edison Chouest Offshore, which built the Kulluk tow vessel, was there. So was Mark Fesmire, director of the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s Alaska region. BSEE ovesees offshore drilling.
On Saturday, the panel also heard from Anthony Flynn of GL Noble Denton, an oil and gas technical service consultant. Flynn served as Shell’s warranty surveyor for three Kulluk tows, including the disastrous one in December, checking the setup ahead of time for Shell’s insurance underwriters. He arrived in Dutch Harbor Dec. 19, just two days before the voyage began. He had been on the Kulluk at sea but not the Aiviq, the Kulluk’s tow vessel.
Flynn, testifying by phone from Houston, said he found no big issues with either vessel. Earlier witnesses said he asked Kulluk crew members to fasten down gear and supplies more securely. The Aiviq’s chief engineer, Carl Broekhuis, testified Thursday that he remembers Flynn only spending about 30 minutes on the Aiviq and asked him just one question: Whether he had any major engineering issues.
“And I said ‘no,’” Broekhuis testified earlier. Flynn on Saturday said he recalls spending one and a half to two hours on the vessel.
Cmdr. Joshua McTaggart, who is leading the investigation, asked Flynn to describe how he inspected the Kulluk’s tow gear in Dutch Harbor.
Flynn said some of the tow hardware was suspended from a crane and crews were connecting pieces.
“It was obvious to everybody there. You could see the shackles being connected and the pins and the nuts and the cotter pins being put in place,” Flynn testified. The tow master, a Shell representative, an engineer and others all looked the gear over, he said. “We were all satisfied there was no damage.”
Was he sure, McTaggart asked, that the cotter pins – kind of bobby-pin shaped fasteners – were in place?
Yes, said Flynn. Don’t his pictures show that? McTaggart said one photo was from the right perspective, but was dark. The Coast Guard has not released any of the evidence from its investigation.
OUTDATED TOW PLAN
The shackles were listed in multiple Shell tow plans as being rated for 85 tons of working load strength, and Shell showed Flynn certification for 85-ton shackles that he needed to see to approve the trip. But in fact, Shell and its contractors had upgraded the shackles to 120-ton strength. Shell didn’t seek certification for the bigger shackles, however, and didn’t have that paperwork in hand, marine manager John Kaighin testified Friday.
The outdated tow plan was an oversight, Churchfield said. Flynn said he never knew the shackles he inspected were 120-ton strength, not 85-ton, but that only improved the setup.
The same tow gear had been used since the Kulluk and Aiviq left the Seattle area in June to head to Alaska for drilling, Flynn said. Kulluk crew members told him in November during an earlier inspection that they were “rocking and rolling” in a storm on the trip north but the tow gear held.
McTaggart asked whether that made him want to take a closer look at the equipment.
“The opposite,” Flynn said. “I think it gave me confidence in it.”
McTaggart kept on. Couldn’t the stress of a tow in harsh conditions damage the equipment? Should it be tested?
If it looked deformed or damaged, a piece of gear as basic as a shackle should simply be replaced, Flynn said.
On the Kulluk, the main tow gear failed Dec. 27 as the seas were picking up. The Coast Guard is zeroing in on a key connecting shackle that somehow came apart and was lost at sea. While hooked by an emergency rope tow to the Kulluk, all four main engines shut down on the Aiviq. Despite repeated efforts to connect the Kulluk to various vessels that came to help, crews couldn’t get it under control in the escalating storm.
An earlier witness said Shell had a four-day window of good weather when vessels left Dutch Harbor. A weather study for Shell showed similar weather for December and January, Churchfield said. The drilling rig and its tow vessel were both ready to go. A high level team had signed off on the plan, as had the Shell tow master, the warranty surveyor and others.
Shell never put any financial limits on the tow operation itself and didn’t try to do it the cheapest way, Churchfield said under questioning by his lawyer.
“The imperative was always that the tow must be conducted safely,” Churchfield testified.
Shell couldn’t get a slot in a Seattle shipyard for the crane work until February, Churchfield said. Shell’s Kaighin earlier testified that Shell arranged for a temporary berth at the Port of Everett for preliminary work until the shipyard space opened up.
Shell also faced taxes in Washington state, Churchfield noted.
DIFFERENT STORY
At a press conference in Anchorage the day after the grounding, Churchfield was asked if Shell left when it did because of the Alaska tax potential.
“No, the reason we boated down there was actually to get the off-season repairs done,” Churchfield said in January. “Once we had the rig ready for tow, prepared and inspected, was when we moved down to give us the maximum time to ready for the 2013 season.”
In later interviews, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the tax issue was considered but not the primary factor.
The Kulluk departure timing has been a political issue. U.S. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, asserted back in January that Shell was rushing to leave the state because of taxes.
The Kulluk needed to be back in Alaska by June for this year’s drilling season, Churchfield said. Shell now is regrouping and no longer plans to drill in Alaska this year. It intends to return at some point, officials have said.
The Coast Guard hearing continues Tuesday.