That's beauty? Surely something must be lodged in the eye of whatever beholder wrote that. These blocks of rust look far more Borg than Begonia.
The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
21–30 of 151 posts
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#22As an aside, deep sea oil drilling and production platforms are incredible put-a-man-on-the-moon engineering feats. If oil weren't politically unpopular, the engineering behind these would be celebrated and admired.
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#23As an aside, deep sea oil drilling and production platforms are incredible put-a-man-on-the-moon engineering feats. If oil weren't politically unpopular, the engineering behind these would be celebrated and admired.
Any references to look into? Sounds cool.
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#24I agree it is beautiful, but in a strange way.
Most construction results in familiar forms. Arbitrary choices are few because the problem has been sufficiently solved.
I am floored by the diversity in the forms here. I am not all that thrilled with the aesthetic by itself.
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#25I agree it is beautiful, but in a strange way. Most construction results in familiar forms. Arbitrary choices are few because the problem has been sufficiently solved. I am floored by the diversity in the forms here. I am not all that thrilled with the aesthetic by itself.
I agree. When I first landed from the link, I thought, "Where's the beauty?"
As I scrolled, like you, I found I was becoming impressed with the diversity. (Norway seems to be trying to win some kind of prize that has not been created yet.)
More scrolling and I'm thinking, "I would love to 3D model these and resin-print kits so that you can build them, paint them and (?)... display them off the coast of your model railroad."
I think you hit on something with "arbitrary choices"...
There is a kind of "design" that is devoid of design. I had this realization 50 years ago when I first tried to rebuild a carburetor and had left it on the dining room table — when I returned home to find the indeterminately-shaped thing in an environment flush with design I was struck by the utilitarian of its design. Every facet, hole, angle there serving only the utility of the part, likely cost savings and ease of manufacturing being the guiding principle, not aesthetics at all.
Likewise, these bizarre oil rigs look like the fever dream of an overworked architectural engineer. Kowloon Walled City vibes....
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#26If this piqued anyone's interest in oil/gas rigs, an engineering disasters podcast I like ("Well, there's your problem") covered a couple of North Sea rig catastrophes in detail that may interest you:
- Piper Alpha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVaMNHQQCs0
- Byford Dolphin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azThd0R7Bt0
Just as a quick content warning: engineering disasters involving loss of life are not exactly a jolly affair, but the Byford Dolphin ep has a few grisly details that make it unsuitable for the faint of heart.
edit: Just thought I should clarify why this popped into my head because it might seem a little morbid otherwise. I'm from the North East of Scotland where there have been a few of these disasters that hit the headlines, and my dad and plenty of friends worked in oil. This meant I got a lot of exposure to this, so "oil rig" is connected with "disaster" in my head, and now decades later finding out why these things happened was fascinating.
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think outside of the industry people just say "oil rigs" for everything from semi-subs to FPSOs to TLPs to monopods to GBSs to jackets.
Yup. It's a rig. It can search or reach for oil among other things. That said, what does exploratory mean in this context?
It means you're drilling a hole and dropping sensors down it to get a better idea of whether a particular location would be profitable to extract oil/gas from. Production platforms are semi-permanent structures that do the extracting once oil/gas have been found. (My knowledge of the field is pretty old but AFAIK, things still work pretty much the same way--although I assume seismic tools locate oil/gas reservoirs without drilling have gotten a lot better.)
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#28When I rode from John o' Groats to Land's End[1] I remember riding past a firth on the east coast of Scotland with a load of oil rigs ready for either refitting or decommissioning.
It was crazy surreal. The landscape is an amazing backdrop anyway but these things are just so big, so weird looking and so out of place... it felt like being party to an alien invasion.
It made me think of the John Christopher classic The Tripods.
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1. See how I casually worked that in like I ride it every week. :P
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#29As an aside, deep sea oil drilling and production platforms are incredible put-a-man-on-the-moon engineering feats. If oil weren't politically unpopular, the engineering behind these would be celebrated and admired.
Any references to look into? Sounds cool.
Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
#30When I rode from John o' Groats to Land's End[1] I remember riding past a firth on the east coast of Scotland with a load of oil rigs ready for either refitting or decommissioning. It was crazy surreal. The landscape is an amazing backdrop anyway but these things are just so big, so weird looking and so out of place... it felt like being party to an alien invasion. It made me think of the John Christopher classic The…
What used to happen--and I assume still does--is that during periods of slack demand some older rigs will get decommissioned but serviceable rigs that just didn't have work for them at the moment would get "stacked" with some minimal skeleton crew for maintenance. In Texas, Sabine Pass was a common spot to stack rigs.