Its good for me

The evenings are hauntingly beautiful from the helideck. Its still winter here, so there is a humid chill in the air as I take my midnight strolls. Our current prospect is a 4-D job, which means we are shooting seismic not to find oil, but to monitor wells that are already in production. 2 large FPSO’s (Floating Production storage and offloading vessels) hover in the center of our prospect – at night you could mistake them for cruise ships in full gaiety – lights coming out of every port hole, reflecting across the blackened ocean, multi-decks suggesting varying suites on each level, and oh - the large flame spouting out from one end of the vessel burning off H2S, which forces reality upon the situation. These 2 vessels pump out a quarter million barrels of oil a day each.

I’ve now moved to a different vessel. I spent the previous one and a half years on Geco Emerald as she searched for oil in India, Norway, and Angola. I didn’t want to open the email subject line: “Vessel Change”, I was so happy with my crew on Emerald – they were like family. I called a few of the crew “Cousin” or “Cus” (one of them actually shares the same middle name as me – Orzechowski – what are the odds?). I consoled myself with the knowledge that it was a temporary change and that it would be a good opportunity to meet more people, learn about a different boat, and then go back “home” to Emerald. Yesterday, I learned I would stay on Western Pride, my new vessel. It was one of those things in my gut I knew would happen. And, as much as I wanted to fight it and get back on Emerald, I know that logically this move makes sense. This boat uses a newer technology – one that all the future vessels of our company will have, and in 2 years time only a handful will have the old technology. And in the office I’m doing testing that is directly associated with the new technology – so the logic – yes keep Laura on Pride. Yesterday it was hard to face up to this fact. The new crew are very nice, although a bit on the mellow side. On Emerald I was used to basketball games, foosball tournaments, afternoon cricket and a pull up competition thrown in. Here – they watch movies and sometimes play the Wii. It will just take time – I have to remember I was on Emerald for a year and I developed relationships that one year ago I never thought possible. But now, here I am on Pride.

Our current job here in Angola is interesting because we literally must dodge the floating vessel / platforms. The trouble is that the most important part of what we want to visualize or “map” for the oil company is directly under the FPSO’s however for obvious reasons our, our vessel can not go directly over where the FPSO is. So we have to do 2 things – 1. Go as close as we possibly can. 2. Use a gun boat. This entails having one boat that has guns on one side of the platform and our recording vessel on the other. The midpoint between the 2 is directly under the FPSO – the target that the client wants. On these “close passes” sometimes I can feel the heat from the flame and see the people on the FPSO, watching us on the seismic vessel. The light from the H2S creates my shadow on the helideck at midnight.