BHN Complex suffers accident

ONGC’s Offshore Platform BHN has suffered a major accident on Wednesday, July 27, 2005 afternoon. A multi-purpose support vessel of ONGC under SCI operation was reported on fire. Personnel have abandoned chartered rig Noble Charlie Yester which was deployed in the vicinity.

Search and Rescue operations are being carried out by deploying support and supply vessels as well as with helicopters and Coast Guard aircraft. All helicopters at Juhu helibase are grounded due to flooding. Navy has been alerted for assistance. Actions have been taken to mobilize medical assistance/evacuation as soon as possible. — ONGC Press Release

This is indeed a disheartening news to all of us that worked on the Revamp project during 1999 and 2000 and all those offshore surveys undertaken and the hardwork of engineers during this phase.

Many thanks to Shridhar, Murthy and Ashish for the update and pictures related to this incident.

Update: ONGC has issued a statement saying that they would be able to resume production of upto 70% capacity within four weeks.

Energy Bulletin

I came across Energy Bulletin, a really neat web site on various topics related to the energy business. They also have a feed link for their news. Do look-up and add to your feed readers.

Thunder Horse sinks after hit by Hurricane

Update [19 July]: It is an unconfirmed rumour that it probably was a human error that resulted in the pontoon flooding. In addition, a large winch was apparently lost from the topside as a result of the platform listing and it landed on a PLET 6000ft below (it could have been worse as there are 2×14 slot drill center manifolds directly underneath the platform!). The platform still appears to be floating and there was every indication that it would be righted and deballasted.

Struck by a hurricane, Dennis, offshore Gulf of Mexico, Thunder Horse sinks. There is a citing in Forbes about this.

Update: BP has issued a press release of the incident and damage.

Update 2: Thunder Horse is a 130,000 tonne production semi-submersible platform in commissioning stage. Thanks to info sent by our members Anil and Gopal regarding this news, photographs and updates.

More free feed readers

Once you become an information junkie using feeds, it’s hard to resist the updates. So, for those of you looking for free feed reader software to get your news the way you get your email, here are a couple of them:

• Awasu
• Pluck is a browser plugin for Internet Explorer

For the uninitiated, there are more details about what is a feed or RSS on c|net. There are also free sources of feeds listed here and here for use with your feed software.

Noble Denton Guidelines Online

Industry standard guidelines on transportation and installation of steel jackets by Noble Denton are available as pdf documents on their website.

The [Noble Denton] Group produce a range of documents for offshore operations which are regarded by many as the industry ’standard’. Existing guidelines, such as the recently introduced ones for transportation and installation of steel jackets, are regularly updated and new guidelines introduced.