Moray Man Awarded Prestigious Honour For Transocean Rig Recovery
A MORAY man who led a mission to rescue an oil rig which had run aground off Stornoway, has been awarded a prestigious honour by his company.
Transocean Ltd offshore installation manager Bruce Thomson and his wife Angela, from Buckie, were flown first class to Houston, USA, where he was handed the First Excellence Award by company CEO and president Jeremy Thigpen.
It was recognition for the efforts of Mr Thomson and the small team of international experts he led last August to refloat the Transocean Winner rig, which had dramatically run aground off Dalmore beach, near Stornoway.
It tore free of her towing vessel, the ALP Forward, in a freak storm.
As the rig teetered precariously on the rocks, Mr Thomson and his colleagues were faced with the task of averting a potential environmental accident.
“I’m immensely proud to get this award, but the credit really goes to the 112 other guys who landed with me on the rig off Stornoway,” he said.
“The team members had never met before and we had one Scot (me), five Norwegians, five Dutch and a Spaniard, all of us relying on and trusting our lives to folk we didn’t know at that point.
“It was quite a unique challenge, really, and well outside of the zone we normally work in.
“Transocean is a drilling company but what we were doing was basically salvage work.
“We got the rig off the rocks and safely to Malta for a?couple of days of repairs before being broken up at Aliaga without any accidents or?environmental incidents, ?which is quite an achievement.”
The trip to Houston was a double celebration for Mr and Mrs Thomson as it coincided with the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary.
A native of Lossiemouth, he moved to Buckie 25 years ago and started offshore 17 years ago after working as a fisherman. He has been with Transocean for 10 years.
Mr Thomson recalls going back to work after a holiday and the phone ringing to tell him to go and rescue a grounded ?drilling rig, which had been on her way to be broken up in Turkey.
The offshore installation manager took charge of a multi-national team of experts, and a day later they were standing on the stricken rig.
“It was pretty eerie as the rig was on an unmanned tow,” he said.
“You could hear the water rushing through the vents and also the steel structure scraping against the rocks.
“Initially, we were on the rig for three hours and then had to come off as the weather was getting too bad for the helicopter. There was then a straight four-day spell when we couldn’t get on.
“I ultimately made the decision to go in by boat and set up habitation on the rig. It was very basic – there was no running water, cooking facilities or toilets and we had to climb up ropes on the column to get on her. That was a 130ft climb.”
Mr Thomson and his team of Transocean engineers and salvage experts stayed on the Winner from August 13-22, when she was floated off and taken on by the heavy lift carrier Hawk before heading for Malta.
Once there, on October 25, extensive repairs were required in order to convince the Turkish authorities the rig was not?going to sink once off-loaded by the Hawk.
In the end, the operation went smoothly and the Transocean Winner, after?arriving on November 1, was once again beached – this time by design – at Aliaga where she was broken up alongside the Transocean Sedco 702.
Mr Thomson was the first man on the Winner after the grounding, and the last off ?before she was handed over to be broken up.
Since joining Transocean, he has been involved with the?recycling of a total of 30 rigs since December 2014, all of these fortunately proving less of a challenge than the Transocean Winner.
He can look back with pride on a successful operation that ran up a bill of £20 million, consumed 5000 man hours and involved 6000 personnel transfers to the rig.
Source: www.4-traders.com
