A few years ago I ran a photolab for Jessops in central London, before all the shit hit the fan and we all lost our jobs. It was a pretty mundane affair, mostly taking identity photos for international visas, passports and shotgun licenses, or helping out the technically inept print their recent blurry Magaluf photos. But this one time a well spoken lady came in and wanted to use our digitalisation service. Expecting a plethora of decades old family shots, she wiped all expression off my face when she pulled out a collection of colour slides from the BP facilities archive. Refineries, rigs, offices and pipelines from the world over, and I couldn't not burn myself a copy of the resulting images.
Despite knowing next to nothing about what I was actually looking at, the images gave off an alluring charm and ignited an inner craving to one day see some of it up close and personal. Oil infrastructure is something I've never really had any experience with. And why would I after growing up around films where the oil companies are always the ones fucking up the program and raping the environment. Wars have been started over it, countries invaded and it's still a massive political tool worldwide.
Jump forward to 2017, and word starts spreading about the impending decommissioning of the Brent oilfield. Discovered in 1971, with the concrete-legged "Condeep" Brent Bravo rig being built in 1975, followed by the concrete-legged Brent Delta, Brent Charlie, and steel-jacket Brent Alpha, with production starting in 1976.
To date, the Brent oilfield has produced over 3 billion barrels of oil. During it's peak production phase in 1982 the oilfield was churning out 500,000 barrels a day. Now, with the field run dry it's time for Shell to decommission and dismantle the oil rigs and pipeline after 40 years out at sea.
Plans were hatched, maps were snatched and before I knew it 'T' and I were flying up the motorway out of London towards the generic North. We'd arranged to meet up with FB and a non-member (who I'm gonna call 'M') in some reclusive village in the middle of nowhere, where we sorted out our rope gear and piled into one car for the remainder of the journey.
Nothing had prepared me for the sheer scale of this motherfucker. Sat there on it's purpose-built concrete quay, jacked up on the supports they'd used to skid it up off the ship they'd dragged it in on.
Fences were navigated, cameras were dodged and we now had the task of working out how the fuck to get up on it. This involved a lot of head scratching, followed by some sketchy looking lead climbing by FB and M up on to some of the inner girders. However, this ended up taking us ridiculously close to sunrise, and we had to retreat. This thing is located within spitting distance of a nuclear power station, and we knew 4 dudes traipsing around in the middle of night would cause concern to the friendly neighbourhood CNC. We were out of here.
As we woke up the next afternoon the others forged a plan to try again that night. Better prepared and with a route in mind to get up... but I couldn't make it. Work beaconed so I had no choice but to disembark on my 6 hour Megabus-of-shame back down to the smoke.
That night they absolutely nailed it.
Two weeks later and I'm on my way once again towards the generic North. Cradling an arsenal of rope gear I tried to restlessly sleep on what was today my Megabus-of-victory. After linking up with T, M and A (playas need internet names) we were once again loitering the wrong side of the fence, scoping out security and assessing the new fencing. A short while later and there we were. Man was on a fucking rig.
I've been fortunate enough during my UE 'career' to have spent time in a whole manner of ridiculous locations. It'd be impossible to list a favourite, but there's definitely certain situations which jump out from others, and the two nights spent with the grandeur of this rig are sure as shit up there. We'd managed to time our second visit with gale force winds inbetween some fairly intense rain storms, so navigating around topside mostly involved not getting blown off the fucking thing. We skulked around the insides of the rig, through the living quarters, locker rooms, sick bay, gear stores and various control rooms, all still kitted out like everyone had just fucked off on shore-leave.
It's hard to imagine what life must have been like working on one of these. I would have loved to have experienced opening up one of the outer 'blast' doors to just be confronted with hundreds of miles of water in each direction. Relying on calm weather and helicopters to take you back to civilisation and the family every other month. Seeing the personal effects of the smallest cogs in the oil industry, and the expanse of their day-to-day life environment atop 170 metre concrete legs.
Over the next decade it's estimated around 100 oil rigs are going to be removed from UK waters as they come to the end of their operational life. There's already scores of mothballed rigs parked up around the country and with the volatile price of oil over the past few years it's unlikely any of them will be brought back into operation. This, amongst the ever growing fears around fossil fuel reliance and global initiatives to rely more on renewable energies has likely drawn a line under the bulk of the UK oil industry.
But that's just going to mean more playgrounds for us, and if there's more of these to come than I couldn't be more psyched. The closest I've been to one previous is that one mission in Call of Duty where you have to blow one up, saving the day. Although you don't get to piss about on helidecks and lifeboats in that game.
We descended off the rig and disappeared from whence we came, undetected and back to A's flat for some bank holiday board gaming and pizza. It was a deeply contrasted weekend, rounded off by a shotgun trip into some drains on the way back south.
Thanks to FB, T, M and A for a couple of unforgettable nights.
Got rig?
Despite knowing next to nothing about what I was actually looking at, the images gave off an alluring charm and ignited an inner craving to one day see some of it up close and personal. Oil infrastructure is something I've never really had any experience with. And why would I after growing up around films where the oil companies are always the ones fucking up the program and raping the environment. Wars have been started over it, countries invaded and it's still a massive political tool worldwide.
Jump forward to 2017, and word starts spreading about the impending decommissioning of the Brent oilfield. Discovered in 1971, with the concrete-legged "Condeep" Brent Bravo rig being built in 1975, followed by the concrete-legged Brent Delta, Brent Charlie, and steel-jacket Brent Alpha, with production starting in 1976.
To date, the Brent oilfield has produced over 3 billion barrels of oil. During it's peak production phase in 1982 the oilfield was churning out 500,000 barrels a day. Now, with the field run dry it's time for Shell to decommission and dismantle the oil rigs and pipeline after 40 years out at sea.
Plans were hatched, maps were snatched and before I knew it 'T' and I were flying up the motorway out of London towards the generic North. We'd arranged to meet up with FB and a non-member (who I'm gonna call 'M') in some reclusive village in the middle of nowhere, where we sorted out our rope gear and piled into one car for the remainder of the journey.
Nothing had prepared me for the sheer scale of this motherfucker. Sat there on it's purpose-built concrete quay, jacked up on the supports they'd used to skid it up off the ship they'd dragged it in on.
Fences were navigated, cameras were dodged and we now had the task of working out how the fuck to get up on it. This involved a lot of head scratching, followed by some sketchy looking lead climbing by FB and M up on to some of the inner girders. However, this ended up taking us ridiculously close to sunrise, and we had to retreat. This thing is located within spitting distance of a nuclear power station, and we knew 4 dudes traipsing around in the middle of night would cause concern to the friendly neighbourhood CNC. We were out of here.
As we woke up the next afternoon the others forged a plan to try again that night. Better prepared and with a route in mind to get up... but I couldn't make it. Work beaconed so I had no choice but to disembark on my 6 hour Megabus-of-shame back down to the smoke.
That night they absolutely nailed it.
Two weeks later and I'm on my way once again towards the generic North. Cradling an arsenal of rope gear I tried to restlessly sleep on what was today my Megabus-of-victory. After linking up with T, M and A (playas need internet names) we were once again loitering the wrong side of the fence, scoping out security and assessing the new fencing. A short while later and there we were. Man was on a fucking rig.
I've been fortunate enough during my UE 'career' to have spent time in a whole manner of ridiculous locations. It'd be impossible to list a favourite, but there's definitely certain situations which jump out from others, and the two nights spent with the grandeur of this rig are sure as shit up there. We'd managed to time our second visit with gale force winds inbetween some fairly intense rain storms, so navigating around topside mostly involved not getting blown off the fucking thing. We skulked around the insides of the rig, through the living quarters, locker rooms, sick bay, gear stores and various control rooms, all still kitted out like everyone had just fucked off on shore-leave.
It's hard to imagine what life must have been like working on one of these. I would have loved to have experienced opening up one of the outer 'blast' doors to just be confronted with hundreds of miles of water in each direction. Relying on calm weather and helicopters to take you back to civilisation and the family every other month. Seeing the personal effects of the smallest cogs in the oil industry, and the expanse of their day-to-day life environment atop 170 metre concrete legs.
Over the next decade it's estimated around 100 oil rigs are going to be removed from UK waters as they come to the end of their operational life. There's already scores of mothballed rigs parked up around the country and with the volatile price of oil over the past few years it's unlikely any of them will be brought back into operation. This, amongst the ever growing fears around fossil fuel reliance and global initiatives to rely more on renewable energies has likely drawn a line under the bulk of the UK oil industry.
But that's just going to mean more playgrounds for us, and if there's more of these to come than I couldn't be more psyched. The closest I've been to one previous is that one mission in Call of Duty where you have to blow one up, saving the day. Although you don't get to piss about on helidecks and lifeboats in that game.
We descended off the rig and disappeared from whence we came, undetected and back to A's flat for some bank holiday board gaming and pizza. It was a deeply contrasted weekend, rounded off by a shotgun trip into some drains on the way back south.
Thanks to FB, T, M and A for a couple of unforgettable nights.
Got rig?
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