Oil rig revisited

Several weeks ago we went to visit the oil rig, well, we though it was time to revisit the site and see what happened. We actually visited a couple of weeks ago and in real time, it's been a couple of months since we first visited. 

There has been a fair bit of progress since we first visited, the main difference is the fact that the tower has been removed, as has a lot of the heavy equipment from the rig, most of which is still laying around on the dock side waiting to be recycled or processed, whichever​ is the case.

One thing that we did note is that despite all the items removed, one thing is still present on the rig. It's quite hard to see, as it's hidden in the shadows and my phone camera doesn't handle half light conditions very well, but the life boat is still hanging on its davits. I would have though that this would have gone early, removed to preserve it from damage and sell on or to put onto another rig, as they are still worth money, even when they are getting old. As long as it's still certified then it's still good to use. The only thing that we can think of is that the lift boat is being kept on board incase of an emergency, as i guess that dropping in the lifeboat is probably still the quickest way off the rig, despite it being sat right next to the dock.

Another interesting fact that we picked up, although when i say we, what i really mean is the wife, is that when the rig came in for decommissioning, it was still full of food! Not fresh food but tinned, dried and similar. Apparently it's always like that, they just remove the perishables and leave the rest for the decommissioning crew to deal with. Crazy or what? There must have been a fair few pounds worth of food in there but i guess when your dealing in tens of thousands, if not millions, of pounds at a time, a few hundred won't mean much. Still i would have thought that shifting it on to another rig or supply boat wouldn't have been that hard. Anyway, it all got donated to a good cause, one of the local charities i believe, so at least it didn't just go in the bin.

We'll pop back again at some point and see what changes have been made and how far the decommissioning process has got.