It looks like I'm biased or obsess with the oil and gas offshore photos. I cannot hide that because the industry is really good, interesting, fun, exciting and challenging. Trust me its a wonderful feeling being on those offshore platform, and that's probably why I keep on having those photos here. Gosshhh, I really miss my offshore life...
OK, about the photo. The platform is called
Troll A platform (
click at the photo to enlarge it, trust me it's gorgeous!). It is a huge platform for production of gas, it is the highest construction that has ever been moved to another position, and is among the largest and most complex engineering projects in history. Built by
Norwegian Contractors for
Norske Shell, the platform was a televised sensation when it was towed into the
North Sea in
1996, where it is operated by
Statoil. I'm guessing there are about 200-300 people working on this gas platform.
Troll A has an overall height of 472 meters and weighs 656,000 tons. It has the distinction of being the tallest structure ever moved by mankind. The platform stands on the sea floor 303 meters below the surface of the sea. The walls of Troll A's legs are over 1 meter thick.
The base and the deck were built separately (starting in 1991-1992). They were joined while the base was partially submerged. The Troll platform was towed over 200 km from Vats, in the northern part of Rogaland, to the Troll field, 80 km north-west of Bergen. The tow took seven days. The platform is built of reinforced concrete using the Condeep technology. Gas rises from 40 wells, and is exported through a number of pipes.
In 2006, the 10th anniversary of Statoil's operatorship of Troll gas production was celebrated with a concert by Katie Melua held in the Troll A platform. As well as entertaining the workers on the rig, the concert set a new world record for the deepest underwater concert at 303 meters.[1] In 1996 the platform set the Guiness World Record for 'largest offshore gas platform'.[2]
Facts adopted from
Wikipedia while photo adopted from oilrig-photos.com.