Midnight apocalypse
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part—
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.
[Casabianca..]
12 weeks later
It’s an end of the world thing. It’s night and there is no land on this horizon yet I feel I could walk for miles across the decks of the dozens and dozens of ships all corralled into this tiny area. The captain tells us there are over 196 vessels within an 8 mile radius and I believe it. It’s like a town, lights everywhere.
And the noise, I cant see it from here but I can feel it. I work my way from my initial vantage point by the ROV towards the blasting noise. The Q4000 is square vessel and the walkways I stand on cling to the side and snake past lifeboats and winches, pipes and vents. Ahead is a corner and as I turn it I am met by… Armageddon!….
The light the heat and noise hit you like a car crash. It’s the biggest flare I have ever seen. 12 massive jets, each one pounding out more energy than a jumbo jet taking off and each adding it’s cacophony to your overloaded senses. The jets are arranged in a circle and the gas and oil blasts out of each one under huge pressure and then explodes in fiery rage. The noise is wide ranging from high pitched screaming of banshees right down to a baseline that is felt as shockwaves hitting you in the chest. One and a half million litres of oil a day plus untold volumes of gas. To date 17 million dollars worth of crude oil sacrificed to the beast. Everything is vibrating under the force here, at the other side of the vessel the light is blinding and the heat burns my face despite the wall of water. I have to close my eyes and turn away, the image burning my mind, the after images dancing wildly on the retinas. I knew it was there, I had seen it flying in on the chopper as we landed but I hadn’t heard it screaming then. This is the oil that won’t make it to the beaches and it’s protesting violently.
A water curtain from dozens of nozzles pumps out a never ending rainfall but it’s not even close to being enough. At the safety meeting the guy says “your in lifeboat 1, we are only using 1 and 2. Don’t go near 3 and 4”, “Why?” says I still naïve to this place, “I think they’ve melted” he says with a straight face, I laughed cos I thought he was joking.
There is a ship just feet away from me and from it’s back deck streams massive
jets of water a hundred feet long straight into the mighty inferno. From it’s bow, vortices of water stream forwards in the sea as it thrusts full aft to counter the water jets force. It’s there to stop our metal ship catching fire from this hellflame, plastic lifeboats never stood a chance.
As I walk forwards I see a cubbyhole and in it a man sits in a chair watching the flame. He wears the darkest of dark glasses and next to him is a button. He is staring at the monster transfixed, 
it’s his job to watch the giant fiery eye and he reckons its watching him, It keeps blinking he says without actually looking away. It suddenly dawns on me he is trying to outstare it. The button is labelled , it says “kill” switch and the irony of that misses him. If you hit the button the flare shuts down. This is not a good thing though. If the gas does not come out here, it comes out somewhere else. Somewhere we really don’t want. This is the gas that swallowed the rig that killed the men that ate the company. It played with the rig first. Pretending to tip it over, people and containers thrown around and after the swipe, it ate the rig with fire burning the very metal itself till naught was left but the burning sea.
it’s his job to watch the giant fiery eye and he reckons its watching him, It keeps blinking he says without actually looking away. It suddenly dawns on me he is trying to outstare it. The button is labelled , it says “kill” switch and the irony of that misses him. If you hit the button the flare shuts down. This is not a good thing though. If the gas does not come out here, it comes out somewhere else. Somewhere we really don’t want. This is the gas that swallowed the rig that killed the men that ate the company. It played with the rig first. Pretending to tip it over, people and containers thrown around and after the swipe, it ate the rig with fire burning the very metal itself till naught was left but the burning sea.
BP has stripped the Gulf of resources and brought them all here to this one spot to witness this Canuteian attempt to hold back the tide of oil and gas. 
These people are not playing at this, every asset available, rigs and ships sits here watching our flame and working away beavering to the hidden plan.
These people are not playing at this, every asset available, rigs and ships sits here watching our flame and working away beavering to the hidden plan. There’s a command centre called “the hive” where instructions emanate from. 
There are moments in modern history when events cause massive changes to our future landscape. The 3 mile island, 9,11, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie and added to the list goes Deepwater Horizon. I don’t mean the terrible loss of lives, I mean the after effects that rumble on changing our daily lives and our work environment. This will never happen again because there are no more BP’s with pockets 20 Billion deep or balls to bear the burden. This changes everything from who drills and where they do it to the cost of fuel and the impetus to move to an electric world, Windmills look sadly beautiful and seem to be relatively harmless to everyone except kestrels it seems. Who now will insure an offshore rig. The heyday and lore of the offshore driller is going to close and become a thing of legend, like the days of whaling fleets and tall ships it will sputter out because of a simple inevitable mistake one night right here in this starkly blue landscape of nothingness.
The guys just want to get off now, counting days, the well is sealed and the contamination stemmed. Whats left is the downer of the anticlimax. A mild torture of constant noise, vibration and frustration. It was novel to begin with, it’s not now. It’s shit now. Me, my eyes take it all in, already the vessels are visibly thinning, The accountants just wrestled control away from the engineers. There will never be another story quite like this one in my field and I want to remember this, See if it can be retold, I don’t think it can, you kinda have to be here, we’ll see…. Oh there will be other accidents but not played out like this. Not with this much at stake. Not when the presidents kicking ass and shares in freefall and lives changed forever for people who never even heard of this place before. And here I am watching it all on CNN as they watch me. Hello everyone and welcome to our fading world, live and entertaining disaster in your living room. Catch it while you can, Top of the news, man eats dog, and later, live video from the gulf of Mexico disaster……catch it while you can….
http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do?categoryId=9034366&contentId=7063636
Chris
Hive is somewhere else, it’s not here. They see our live feeds and pictures they have an image of what’s going on here but images lie, no image can tell this story. Perhaps it’s as well, who can concentrate in this madness. Radios squawk gibberish, "Roger, pressure line 1, no change, back off, wait one, working, all stop, come back to you on that, Nope, Nope, Nope".....crackle... But things are still happening, 15 ROV’s floating around getting tangled together, work either tense or tedious, no in betweens here. Take her out for maintenance not a chance, first one who blinks is gay. It’s become a game, who can stay in longest…..
We tune into CNN in the darkened control van to find out what we're doing, there’s our video picture on the world stage, we flick the ROV’s thrusters and CNN flicks it’s pictures back at us a minute later. Who set this up?, I want to send subliminal messages using the video overlay. “Buy ROV Shares”, “Eat more fish”,” save a whale”, No one laughs, they’ve misplaced that skill... No they haven’t, it’s just been put to one side, screwing around gets you fired, Hive has no sense of humour over this, no pictures no video. Shame. It’s 3am and I decide to feed some soft porn to CNN and see how long it takes for them to notice but the guys point out that’s a career finisher so Debbie doesn’t do Dallas tonight. I get a pat on the head and sent off out of harms way to make some coffee, keep me away from the video sender.
There are moments in modern history when events cause massive changes to our future landscape. The 3 mile island, 9,11, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie and added to the list goes Deepwater Horizon. I don’t mean the terrible loss of lives, I mean the after effects that rumble on changing our daily lives and our work environment. This will never happen again because there are no more BP’s with pockets 20 Billion deep or balls to bear the burden. This changes everything from who drills and where they do it to the cost of fuel and the impetus to move to an electric world, Windmills look sadly beautiful and seem to be relatively harmless to everyone except kestrels it seems. Who now will insure an offshore rig. The heyday and lore of the offshore driller is going to close and become a thing of legend, like the days of whaling fleets and tall ships it will sputter out because of a simple inevitable mistake one night right here in this starkly blue landscape of nothingness.
The guys just want to get off now, counting days, the well is sealed and the contamination stemmed. Whats left is the downer of the anticlimax. A mild torture of constant noise, vibration and frustration. It was novel to begin with, it’s not now. It’s shit now. Me, my eyes take it all in, already the vessels are visibly thinning, The accountants just wrestled control away from the engineers. There will never be another story quite like this one in my field and I want to remember this, See if it can be retold, I don’t think it can, you kinda have to be here, we’ll see…. Oh there will be other accidents but not played out like this. Not with this much at stake. Not when the presidents kicking ass and shares in freefall and lives changed forever for people who never even heard of this place before. And here I am watching it all on CNN as they watch me. Hello everyone and welcome to our fading world, live and entertaining disaster in your living room. Catch it while you can, Top of the news, man eats dog, and later, live video from the gulf of Mexico disaster……catch it while you can….
http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do?categoryId=9034366&contentId=7063636
Chris
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