It really is. My first engineering job out of school was designing offshore drilling rigs (mostly service systems like ballast) and running shipyard projects. The economics of the industry have really gone through boom and bust cycles as the article says. I lucked out on timing. I got out just as a bust cycle was getting serious to go back to school as I had always planned to anyway.
They truly are magnificent structures. The popular image of the oil industry is one of roughnecks around ugly old drilling equipment next to a hole in the ground.
The size and scale of the engineering challenge, especially of deep water drilling, are incredible. I wish more people could be exposed to the marvels of engineering in the O&G industry.
I was interested to learn a while back that one of the rigs I worked on the design of, the Ocean Odyssey, was repurposed as an equatorial launch platform after it was damaged in a blowout. It was mothballed after Sea Launch ran into financial difficulties.
For any UK comedy fans, there's an episode of Only Fools and Horses that was made to promote careers in the oil industry. No laughter track and I guess they didn't want to pay for the theme tune but it's still a fun watch
Is it worth sinking them in areas where they can boost aquatic life ecosystems or attract scuba diving tourism. I have read many times on how old shipwrecks turn into a house where lot of aquatic life flourish.
That does happen, but I think it's only done with fixed platform structures[0], rather than the mobile platforms like in the article. Apparently 532 rigs have been turned into reefs in the Gulf of Mexico[1].
The reason why I thought about this was because whenever you look at any world war timeline shipwrecks, it is totally overtaken by aquatic life. I am sure those ships had enough toxic things on them maybe radio active stuff too but somehow nature reclaimed it.
Too much value in the steel and other materials, I'd guess. Sounds like hard and dangerous work for people cutting them up, but it is work, probably in areas without a lot of other prospects.
The rig was worth about $3 million as scrap in Turkey, according to the article ($190/ton at 17,000 tons). Approximately $0, maybe less, if the owners were forced to send it to an EU scrapyard, as regulators keep threatening to enforce.
At that price level, sinking it to create an artificial reef for environmental or tourism benefits is a competitive option. Though there may be other reasons it's not best suited for that.
It's happened with production platforms. I assume in the case of the exploration rigs, there's a positive ROI to towing them to a ship breaker and selling them for scrap.
I wonder if it'd be possible to augment or replace the existing living spaces (and other spaces) on a rig. Maybe turn a rig into a hotel-on-the-water kind of thing.
The thing is: You're now effectively living on an island, albeit one that requires ongoing maintenance and other expenditures to remain seaworthy. And hope you don't have a big storm that you're very exposed to. Most people don't want to live someplace where they have to take a boat trip to go to work or the grocery store.
Some are fine with that but, guess what, you can often live on islands with a fairly low COL. There's tons of land in the US generally. It's just some specific locations of land that are expensive.
From an engineering perspective, you also can't build it up that much. When I worked on rig designs, every time we added equipment, we had to verify that the center of gravity remained within acceptable limits. You can't just build a multi-level structure atop the entire rig or it would become dangerously unstable.
They've tried floating hotels before, generally they aren't successful.
The problem with floating hotels is that they're all the disadvantages of cruise ships, mixed with the disadvantages of a hotel.
Like a cruise ship, you're still on a relatively small floating building, which limits the activities you can do, and you also have to deal with sea sickness and storms. Like a hotel you're stuck in one place, the main drawcard of cruise ships is that you're cruising between locations.
Now instead of a floating hotel, you could turn it into a little sovereign floating town for libertarians. People have proposed this and made efforts to manifest such a libertarian utopia, but have never actually succeeded.
aside from the significant engineering required, my guess is that most people who could afford to construct or live on such a structure don't actually find libertarianism that appealing.
Surprised there's not more photos of ship-breaking itself, which lends itself to some dramatic shots. Examples: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/11/the-ship-breakers/...