
Dismantling a Million Tons of North Sea Oil Rigs - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/business/energy-environment/oil-north-sea-shell.html
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dboreham
Interesting to read this because as a kid I watched these rigs rise into the
sky as they were built then floated out. They're building wind turbines in
that shipyard now.

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DrMonkFish
Harland and Wolff?

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dboreham
Methil, which built Brent A and at least three other large platforms. As
others have noted there were several other yards involved at that time, such
was the size of the North Sea fields development effort. Some historical info
here :
[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1976/mar/...](http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1976/mar/15/oil-
production-platforms)

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HillaryBriss
On the Southern California coast, they've dismantled some old oil rigs too.
But they were allowed to leave a certain amount of the infrastructure intact,
about 70 feet or so below the surface, because there was so much marine life
clinging to them. They became artificial reefs.

In fact, there's enough interesting sea life there to support recreational
diving trips to the sites.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/science/marine-life-
thriv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/science/marine-life-thrives-in-
unlikely-place-offshore-oil-rigs.html?mcubz=1)

[http://www.scubadiving.com/travel/pacific-
western/southern-c...](http://www.scubadiving.com/travel/pacific-
western/southern-californias-oil-rigs)

~~~
rmchugh
I've read that some environmental groups want to do something similar in the
North Sea, seems like a good idea. Ocean fisheries need all the help they can
get.

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pjc50
See also (long)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14244227)

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Tepix
Can't some of these oil rigs be reused as artificial islands? Is the
Seasteading institute looking into this already? They should be all over it.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
A seasteader would have to pay more than the rig's value as scrap (less the
cost of scrapping it). That might turn out to be quite a bit of money.

Or, it might turn out to be zero. The article left it unclear whether they
(the owners of the platforms) are making or losing money by doing this.

But there are two other concerns that would have to be addressed: Plugging the
oil well, and navigational hazards. Neither seems to me to be insurmountable.
Plugging the hole and leaving the platform there is easier than plugging the
hole and removing the platform. And the navigational hazard has been there for
decades. Leaving it changes nothing; an existing risk merely continues.

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briffle
Plugging the hole and leaving the structure would also mean maintaining the
structure. I can't imagine the costs of maintaining something that large.

~~~
oh_sigh
Especially in the middle of the sea, which is not a very forgiving
environment.

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dpeck
related, there are several old Navy towers off the coast of Georgia/South
Carolina (USA) that were at one point going to be scrapped as well but with so
much marine life around them last I heard they were transfered to the state
gov't and just being left as is. They're quite a sight to see appearing on the
horizon as you're moving towards one.

[http://www.thehulltruth.com/florida-georgia/384438-navy-
towe...](http://www.thehulltruth.com/florida-georgia/384438-navy-towers-
offshore-georiga.html)

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merraksh
I was trying to find a pattern for the border between competence regions, and
it's quite obvious that point (x,y) belongs to the nation closest to it, much
as in a Voronoi diagram based on a continuum of points.

~~~
shard
Seems a little more complicated than that. Germany's claim looks to have been
reduced on both sides by the fields being operated by Netherlands and Denmark.
I'm curious what kind of agreement was made between them such that Germany
gave up the claims to the oil fields. In fact, it looks like Germany is not
drilling for any oil at all. Maybe they just don't want to be in that line of
business?

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germanier
While it looks like Germany gave up some claims on first glance that is a bit
misleading. That area is strangely shaped (coined Duck's Bill) to make
Germany's area larger after a 1969 ICJ judgement[0]. They probably
purposefully added areas without much oil leading to this shape.

Germany produces about 3% of its oil demand in own fields (with two of them
being in the North Sea, Mittelplate[1] is largest).

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Continental_Shelf_ca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Continental_Shelf_cases)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelplate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelplate)

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ryanmarsh
> “We may well be at that critical point in history where people will say that
> this is the point where the oil industry reached its peak and began to
> decline.”

No article about the industry is complete without a reference to "peak oil".

Do people realize there's a much harder problem to solve than alternative
sources of energy? Namely: How do we make all the other compounds essential to
modern life which currently originate in an oil well?

We won't be able to quit oil for a long fucking time.

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nerdponx
Wait, isn't "peak oil" about running out of oil reserves? Or am I getting my
hyperbolic predictions confused?

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jacquesm
It's about the halfway mark where half of all the fossil oil that will
(presumably) ever be produced has been produced.

The problem is that as the oil price goes up oil that was not economically
viable in the past suddenly becomes viable and so peak oil will shift a little
bit into the future.

Eventually it will run out though, it is a finite resource after all.

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chrisseaton
I don't think 'peak' implies half, just that it won't be any higher again. One
side of a mountain peak can have a shorter approach than another can't it?

~~~
jacquesm
Right, you are correct.

