Ocean Ranger platform

The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform that sank in Canadian waters 315 kilometres (175 nautical miles) southeast from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland on February 15, 1982, with 84 crew onboard. There were no survivors. Image File history File links Ocean_ranger. ... Image File history File links Ocean_ranger. ... Map from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (Pêches et Oceans Canada) showing location of the Grand Banks The Grand Banks are a group of underwater plateaus southeast of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. ... Map of Newfoundland Newfoundland (French: Terre-Neuve; Irish: Talamh an Éisc; Latin: Terra Nova) is a large island off the northeast coast of North America, and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. ... February 15 is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi-submersible, offshore exploration, oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland, and in November 1980 moved to the Grand Banks. Because of her massive size, she was considered to have the ability to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs. An oil platform is a large structure used to house workers and machinery needed to drill and then produce oil and natural gas in the ocean. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Mitsubishi companies, or the Mitsubishi Group of Companies or the Mitsubishi Group is a large group (keiretsu) of independently operated Japanese companies which share the Mitsubishi brand name. ... State nickname: The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun Official languages English Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Governor Frank Murkowski (R) Senators Ted Stevens (R) Lisa Murkowski (R) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 663,267 mi² / 1,717,854 km² 13. ... State nickname: The Garden State Official languages None defined, English de facto Capital Trenton Largest city Newark Governor Richard Codey (D) Acting, Outgoing Jon Corzine (D) (Governor-Elect) Senators Jon Corzine (D) (Outgoing) Bob Menendez (D) (named as Corzines replacement) Frank Lautenberg (D) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 47th 22... For other uses, see November (disambiguation). ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

Considered unsinkable, training of the crews on board was insufficient at best. She was the Titanic of the offshore oil exploration industry. The New York Herald reports the disaster. ...

On Sunday, February 14, 1982, a vicious unexpected winter storm with 100 mph winds and 60 foot swells developed south of Newfoundland and headed for the Grand Banks. Around 7:00 P.M. (NST), with seas over 100 feet high, the main deck of the Ocean Ranger reported to the Mobil Oil shore base in St. John's that they had been hit by an especially huge wave and would attempt to separate the main drilling platform from the rest of the rig if they could retrieve the drill string. This had been done only once or twice before. They did not succeed. February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), headquartered in Irving, Texas, is an oil producer and distributor formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. ...

Sometime after 7 P.M. (NST), the Ocean Ranger reported another giant wave had crashed over the rig, smashing through the ballast control room port hole. The port hole was only 30 feet above the water line and did not have its steel storm plate installed. Water rushed in, soaking the control panel and shorting out its analogue relays, causing the rig to list to about 10 degrees.

The crew removed the relays, rinsed them in clean water to get the salt out of them, and dried them with a hairdryer. But when they reinstalled the relays and turned on the power, the control panel was still wet and shorted out again. Relay is also the name of a series of medium-altitude satellites; the first of which was launched in 1962. ... Categories: Stub | Hairdressing ... Categories: Technology stubs | Technology ...

The crew then attempted to manually start the pumps to right the rig, and here made the critical error that led to its demise. There were no manuals on board explaining the ballast control system. Knowledge about it had been passed from one crew rotation to the next by word of mouth. Instead of emptying the ballast tank on the side where the rig was listing, they instead pumped in more water, increasing the list to about 15 degrees.

Its fate was sealed. At 1:30 a.m. February 15, 1982, the Ocean Ranger radioed it was abandoning ship. February 15 is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Employee and company perceptions of the rig being unsinkable had resulted in a poor record of safety drill practice. During the actual evacuation attempt, many crew members did not even make it into the lifeboats, instead jumping over the side into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, to perish within minutes in the heavy seas. For the 1944 movie, see Lifeboat (movie). ... For other uses, see Atlantic (disambiguation) The Atlantic Ocean is Earths second-largest ocean, covering approximately one-fifth of its surface. ...

Rescue attempts by helicopter and the attending supply ship, Seaforth Highlander, were hampered by the storm and cold water. The men in the lifeboat caused it to capsize when they all stood on one side and tried to climb a rescue line thrown to them from the supply ship. The Seaforth Highlander then launched its own large inflatable life raft, but it floated away just out of reach of the freezing and drowning men. The men on the supply ship then used long poles with hooks on the ends to try to catch the men stranded in the sea, but to no avail. All hands aboard the Ocean Ranger perished, and at 3:38 a.m. on February 15, 1982, the rig capsized and sank to the floor of the Grand Banks. Capsizing refers to when a boat is inverted such that the bottom of the boat is on top. ... February 15 is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Over the next week, 22 bodies were recovered from the North Atlantic, most without a mark, the men having died in the cold water for lack of survival suits. Autopsies showed those men had drowned.

A Canadian Royal Commission spent two years looking into the disaster. The commission concluded that the Ocean Ranger had design and construction flaws, particularly in the ballast control room, and that the crew lacked proper safety training, survival suits, and equipment.

It also concluded that inspection and regulation by United States and Canadian government agencies was ineffective. In addition to key recommendations for Canada's offshore oil and gas industry, the commission recommended that the federal government invest annually in research and development for search and rescue technologies, such as improving the design of lifesaving equipment—a commitment that has been met in every fiscal year since 1982.

Correction: I was a young engineer (BSME) just out of school working for ODECO, the owner/operators of the rig, at the time of the sinking. I was hired into a toolpusher's (the title given to the head authority on a rig) training program along with 10-15 other engineers in an effort by ODECO to put engineers offshore because of the increasing complexity of the operations as deeper waters were being encountered. There was also a corporate culture of master/servant between the toolpushers and management that made communication between the two very difficult as the toolpushers tended to avoid revelations of mistakes. It was probably thought that fellow engineers would be much more forthcoming as to what was transpiring offshore in an effort to avoid disasters which had occurred in the past. Our group worked on the rigs, usually on the drill floor as roughnecks, so while it was awhile ago I have pretty good knowledge of rig operations. The reasons for it's sinking were explained a few years afterward by the head of operations to this group of engineers which differs from the above explanation.

First there are a few mistakes in the above text to clarify.

separate the main drilling platform from the rest of the rig if they could retrieve the drill string. This had been done only once or twice before

The main drilling platform is not detachable from the main rig. It is an integral part of the rig. Detaching the rig from the blow out preventer (BOP), which sits on sea floor, is probably what the author means. This has been done many times and is a simple and well understood procedure.

The crew removed the relays, rinsed them in clean water to get the salt out of them, and dried them with a hairdryer. But when they reinstalled the relays and turned on the power, the control panel was still wet and shorted out again. Relay is also the name of a series of medium-altitude satellites; the first of which was launched in 1962. ... Categories: Stub | Hairdressing ... Categories: Technology stubs | Technology ...

This was never revealed to us. What was revealed, was that some of the last messages from the rig was that for some unexplained reason the valves were opening and closing on their own. This communication was not directly to the company but through a land based office in Canada as the means of communication was not long range. On all previous rigs the ballast control systems employed pneumatic pilot valves which sent a control signal down to the ballast valves located in the legs, that allow movement of water between the ballast tanks and the ocean. On this rig a slightly different method was used which indirectly caused the sinking. Instead of using pneumatic valves at the control panel, electric switches were used that via solenoid operated the pilot vales located inside the control panel. It was these switches that malfunctioned after becoming wet. To the crew this appeared as random opening and closing of the ballast valves. If the crew would have known the difference between this rig and every rig they had worked on before, they could have simply opened up the control panel and overrided the electric switches (the pilot valves had this capability). I recall that all of this was based on the evidence that the only way the system could have behaved in this manner was because of the electrical components becoming wet not because of any reports involving hairdryers.

Rescue attempts by helicopter and the attending supply ship, Seaforth Highlander, were hampered by the storm and cold water. The men in the lifeboat caused it to capsize when they all stood on one side and tried to climb a rescue line thrown to them from the supply ship. The Seaforth Highlander then launched its own large inflatable life raft, but it floated away just out of reach of the freezing and drowning men. The men on the supply ship then used long poles with hooks on the ends to try to catch the men stranded in the sea, but to no avail. All hands aboard the Ocean Ranger perished, and at 3:38 a.m. on February 15, 1982, the rig capsized and sank to the floor of the Grand Banks. Capsizing refers to when a boat is inverted such that the bottom of the boat is on top. ... February 15 is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

I have never heard of any rescue attempt that spotted live men. They were dead before any boat or helicopter had arrived. The rig also did not actually sink to the bottom but flipped over 180 degrees and was found floating. The flipping of such a large structure would have been quite violent to humans onboard. The crew was physically unable to abandon the rig by lifeboat because of a design flaw in the lifeboat lowering mechanism. The way the lifeboat's lowering system worked, was that there was a lowering mechanism attached to the rig that was operated from inside the lifeboats by pulling down on a cable that ran from the lowering mechanism through a small opening in the deck of the lifeboats. As someone inside the lifeboat pulled on this, the lifeboat would lower. It was found later that the design of the mechanism did not work past a certain angle of list, hence the crew was unable to abandon ship properly.

I tend to believe the explanation of management because their audience was not ignorant of rig operations. In addition, there was quite a bit of nepotism at the company and some of the lives lost were kin of higher ups. I believe the disaster was a direct result of ignorance of how the ballast control system worked and was compounded by the inability of the crew to abandon ship. Indirectly, I believe that the corporate culture created the situation. The rig designers were ODECO engineers and probably would have figured out what was wrong quite quickly with the ballast control system if they would have been contacted by the rig personel, who because of this culture were reluctant to do.

It has been a quite long ago and I cannot swear my memory of the meeting is completely accurate. It was also my impression that that by the time the company heard anything about troubles on the rig it was already lost. I left the oil industry after about 3 years and this would account for any technical errors as I am far from an expert. It should also be remembered that these rigs were operated by oil men and not seaman. I do believe that there was a captain onboard since the rig was not towed between jobs but had it's own propulsion system. He would have been in charge only when the rig was not anchored which it was during the accident.

Video Clips

• The Ocean Ranger is Lost from cbc.ca
• Newfoundland reels from the Ocean Ranger disaster from cbc.ca