Rig diving to be prohibited?

There was a piece on the news tonight about prohibiting rig diving and fishing near oil rigs during security alerts. The world is going downhill fast. Next thing we will have to register our regulators with homeland security.

I'd hate to see a ban on rig diving. I've been wanting to do a dive on a rig for years and havn't been able to yet.

I suppose the government assumes all scuba divers are former SEAL's or elite commandos who will blow up oil rigs. What a joke.

Tigerdiver,
You are not thinking this through. All divers do not need to be terrorists - just one.

If you can learn to fly a jumbo jet, using scuba is hardly a challenge but the boat is the real problem.

In order to effectively protect a remote facility you need to rigerously control access and approach. There are a couple of ways of doing this, controlled access - a checkpoint that only allows approved passage - or a total exclusion zone. Clearly interviewing dive boats before allowing them to approach a platform is impractical so the total exclusion zone is the only realistic alternative.

This exclusion zone has been in place in much of the world for years and as an ex rig worker and ex anti-terrorist worker, I am completely astonished that it has not been implemented a long time ago.

We live in a different and more dangerous world now. You better get used to it because loss of some diving privileges might well be the least of your worries in a year or so.

Grajan once bubbled...
We live in a different and more dangerous world now.

Click to expand...

I'm just not sure which is the biggest threat to our freedom: The terrorists or our government.

I'll take the fifth on that one.....

To screw things up royally that is.

Lease agreements on the GOM rigs generally require the rigs to be available for fishing and other recreational uses when this use would not impact rig operations. "Rules" require recreational users to derer to service vessels and it's normally a "bad idea" to dive under an occupied platform. Bored rig workers have been known to "accidentally drop stuff" that can have a very adverse effect on a small boat's seaworthyness.

OTOH getting with in a mile of the LOOP was generally a big mistake even before 9/11/01. Different rules were necessary with various flexible pipes in the area, not to mention the parinoid security folks.

I have some experience in handling commercial explosives. While divers in a 40'+ boat MAY be able to bring enough "chemistry" along to do serious damage to a rig, most of the small boats don't have either the capacity or the range to bring along enough commercial grade goodies to do much damage to a rig. Military grade goodies are REALLY hard to get in the US even with the proper FEL license class.

There are places in the offshore oil production infrastructure where a single dive team in a small boat could cause significant problems, but a rig isn't one of them. Most (if not all currently producing riggs) have subsurface flow fuses to cut off production flow in case of a flowline breach between the mudline and the wellhead. Attacking a single well or well cluster will cause no significant effect on the economy, US energy budget, or even the platform owner's bottom line. The GOM even has enough oil eating bacteria in the water that the minimal spill created before the flow fuse kicks in will be cleaned up and added to the food chain very quickly. Rigs are a very poor targeting choice at best. OTOH if "THE BAD GUYS" want to waste time targeting them instead of an effective target why should discourage that attitude? Assuming "they" will be targeting something having them concentrate on the least effective target may actually be a good thing. Us wasting effort guarding and patroling the rigs when the divers and fishermen already there and using the rigs for recreation purposes make a pretty good "watchdog"

This garbage makes as much sense as forcing hikers to use the same rules for hiking in Central Park and the Grand Tetons, with Central Park being the controling model!
FT

...I'm hearing rumors that the oil rigs are the new training grounds for killer dolphins and sea lions.

PaulB, what we need is what we are SUPPOSED to have, and don't.

We have congresscritters, bureaucrats and judges that disregard the Constitution they swore to uphold and defend, at the least opportunity.

To get back to what we should have all we need to do is put some teeth in the oath those folks take. Something about an oak tree and natural fiber rope is about correct. Violate your oath, spend time walking on air. About a week after that starts we'd run out of suitable undecorated oak tree limbs, and the remaining power freaks in DC MIGHT get a clue. If not, the rope is reuseable even after having someone in it for a week. A bit ripe, but still functional.

I know it's a bad attitude, but its the only one I have this week.

FT