[Rickenbacker]

If oil rigs are going to become useless, how easy would it be to use the base of the rig and create a wind turbine or perhaps wave powered generator?

[RonMN]

That would probably be a good idea! Until the next hurrican season smashes them all to pieces

[pip]

Wouldn't an offshore rig be a little too far from the grid?

[mortifiedpenguin]

We could park all the huge, useless, gas guzzling tankers in a line and use them as platforms to string up power lines from the rigs to the mainland.

[Rickenbacker]

haha thats not such a bad idea, if they genuinely are to become useless as vehicles, theyll probably be used by someone for something (self sustaining ecosystem on a ship/fishing will probably become more popular if cattle are uneconomical)

[born2respawn]

The only problem with the idea would be hooking the system up to the grid, but seeing as people get really NIMBY over wind farms, it's not a bad idea. There are plenty of offshore windfarms in use around the world, so provided they're not positioned in an area prone to weather that could destroy them.

Aren't there plenty of offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment anyway?

[dmtu]

You jest, right?
A) there really isn't that many of them.
B) they are not permanent fixtures. They just drill the hole then move on to the next project and a relatively small pump is left where the rig was.
C) they are not even close to the size of actual commercial windmills.

[Devil]

And
D) they are not engineered to carry a massively heavy lump of ironmongery which, by definition, will have massive lateral forces applied to it., at the top. They would buckle into the sea in the first few days.

[born2respawn]

B) they are not permanent fixtures. They just drill the hole then move on to the next project and a relatively small pump is left where the rig was.

Depends on the rig, British ones tend towards actually resting on the sea floor. Mind you, I think one of the floating versions capsized way, way back with the loss of a lot of lives. This would account for a different approach.

[Omnitir]

Off the topic of using oil rigs for windmills (which doesn’t sound very likely), but about future fisheries-

haha thats not such a bad idea, if they genuinely are to become useless as vehicles, theyll probably be used by someone for something (self sustaining ecosystem on a ship/fishing will probably become more popular if cattle are uneconomical)

It’s estimated that with current trends, in 20 years most major fish species will be extinct or too small in number to sustain any large group of people. Even with peak oil, things don’t look good for the future of the world’s fish. The industrial age has raped the oceans just like everything else, leaving very little for future generations.
Our best use in the near future for the useless fleets of oil tankers would be to sink them in strategic locations in an effort to sustain marine eco-systems.

[apenas]

There are some pilot projects: link1 and link2

[mididoctors]

Offshore engineering tech is being applied to wind farms to be built off the furness peninsular England.
A company that helped developed the mobile platform technology is working on the project. the head is a friend of the family.

[alexis]

Saudi oil infrastructure rigged for self destruction
I don't know if this shit is true, either way this would be a smart threat indeed to any potential assailant...
FROM : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ "According to a new book exclusively obtained by the Huffington Post, Saudi Arabia has crafted a plan to protect itself from a possible invasion or internal attack. It includes the use of a series of explosives, including radioactive “dirty bombs,” that would cripple Saudi Arabian oil production and distribution systems for decades.
Bestselling author Gerald Posner lays out this “doomsday scenario” in his forthcoming “Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-US Connection” (Random House).
posner_cover.jpg According to the book, which will be released to the public on May 17, based on National Security Agency electronic intercepts, the Saudi Arabian government has in place a nationwide, self-destruction explosive system composed of conventional explosives and dirty bombs strategically placed at the Kingdom’s key oil ports, pipelines, pumping stations, storage tanks, offshore platforms, and backup facilities. If activated, the bombs would destroy the infrastructure of the world’s largest oil supplier, and leave the country a contaminated nuclear wasteland ensuring that the Kingdom’s oil would be unusable to anyone. The NSA file is dubbed internally Petro SE, for petroleum scorched earth.

To make certain that the damaged facilities cannot be rebuilt, the Saudis have deployed crude Radioactive Dispersal Devices (RDDs) throughout the Kingdom. Built covertly over several years, these dirty bombs are in place at -- among other locations -- all eight of the Kingdom’s refineries, sections of the world’s largest oil field at Ghawar, and at three of the ten indispensable processing towers at the largest-ever processing complex at Abqaiq.
According to the NSA intercepts, Petro SE was devised by the Saudis because of their overriding fear that if an internal revolt or external attack threatened the survival of the House of Saud, the U.S. and other Western powers might abandon them as the Shah of Iran was abandoned in 1979. Only by having in place a system that threatened to create crippling oil price increases, political instability and economic recessions did the royal family believe it could coerce Western military powers to keep them in power.

Some American and Israeli officials privately believe that Saudi officials have been aware for more than a decade that their conversations were monitored, and that as a result they greatly exaggerated Petro SE in order to blackmail the West into protecting them at all costs. For the Saudis, the threat to the U.S. and other powers works so long as those countries cannot be certain of the extent of the “self-destruction grid.”
Posner chronicles an over twenty-five year multinational intelligence gathering operation that exposes Petro SE -- the House of Saud’s “nuclear” insurance policy to escape the fate of Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran.
“Although the NSA is not certain of the radioactive elements finally used by the Saudis, they believe Petro SE successfully developed dozens of radiation dispersal devices,” Posner writes.

“These RDDs that the Saudis have integrated into their oil infrastructure are far less lethal than traditional nuclear weapons. The risk is not mass fatal casualties as with a nuclear explosive, but rather increased cancer rates over many years. In the short run, the psychological fear that an area is contaminated by radiation might be so great as to make it commercially unproductive.”
Posner is an award-winning author of nine books, including "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11" and "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK", and has written for such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report."

[Jdelagado]

I don't know if this shit is true, either way this would be a smart threat indeed to any potential assailant...
FROM : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ "According to a new book exclusively obtained by the Huffington Post, Saudi Arabia has crafted a plan to protect itself from a possible invasion or internal attack. It includes the use of a series of explosives, including radioactive “dirty bombs,” that would cripple Saudi Arabian oil production and distribution systems for decades. ...
“These RDDs that the Saudis have integrated into their oil infrastructure are far less lethal than traditional nuclear weapons. The risk is not mass fatal casualties as with a nuclear explosive, but rather increased cancer rates over many years. In the short run, the psychological fear that an area is contaminated by radiation might be so great as to make it commercially unproductive.”

Looks like another "Diminishing returns of TECHNOLOGY" post.....
Is it accurate? Who knows? Sounds like another crackpot.

[roman]

It's sounds pretty outlandish, but then again it's Saudi Arabia-- one of the richest yet most backwards countries on earth.

[AirlinePilot]

Check the link, LOOP LLC homepage, says that as of noon Marine Operations have been suspeneded. This could be a big deal or not.
Says pipeline deliveries are still up, I wonder what the effects would be if that infrastructure gets damaged at all? Link

[Ming]

From LOOP site:

(Louisiana Offshore Oil Port) was organized in 1972 as a Delaware corporation and converted to a limited liability company in 1996. Ashland Inc., Marathon Ashland Pipe Line LLC, Murphy Oil Corporation, and Shell Oil Company are LOOP's owners.

The port facility is located in the Gulf of Mexico, eighteen miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana, in 110 feet of water. LOOP is the only port in the U.S. capable of offloading deep draft tankers known as Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCC) and Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC). Along with offloading crude from VLCC’s, LOOP also offloads smaller tankers.

The port consists of three single-point mooring buoys used for the offloading of crude tankers and a marine terminal consisting of a two-level pumping platform and a three-level control platform. The onshore oil storage facility, twenty-five miles inland (the “Clovelly facility”), is connected to the port complex by a 48-inch diameter pipeline. It provides interim storage for crude oil before it is delivered via connecting pipelines to refineries on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest.

The oil is stored in eight underground caverns leached out of a naturally occurring salt dome. The caverns are capable of storing approximately 48 million barrels of crude oil (a barrel of oil is equal to 42 U.S. gallons). In 1996, one cavern was dedicated to the MARS stream coming in from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. The MARS crude oil system uses the same distribution system used by the foreign barrels.

Four pipelines connect the onshore storage facility to refineries in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast. LOOP also operates the 53-mile, 48-inch LOCAP pipeline that connects LOOP to CAPLINE at St. James, Louisiana. CAPLINE is a 40-inch pipeline that transports crude oil to several Midwest refineries.

LOOP is connected to over 50 percent of the U.S. refinery capacity and has offloaded over 6 billion barrels of foreign crude oil since it's inception.

[BabyPeanut]

From LOOP site:

deep draft tankers known as Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCC) and Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC).

Platts

VLCC Very large crude carrier; has capacity for 200,000 to 320,000 dwt.
ULCC Ultra large crude carrier; has capacity for 320,000 to 600,000 dwt.

Pipeline

dwt - dead weight tons, the weight of the cargo.
dwt x 7 = bbl. (approx.)

Definitions

bbl Barrel (42 gallons).

Give me a break, there's only one "b" in "barrel". How did they come to abbreviate it "bbl"?
600,000 * 7 = 4,200,000 barrels in one ULCC at most.

[eastbay]

http://www.answers.com/topic/bbl-1

Give me a break, there's only one "b" in "barrel". How did they come to abbreviate it "bbl"?

The term 'bbl' actually expands to 'Blue Barrel' because the barrels Standard Oil used to ship were blue in color.

... next question, please...

EastBay

[AirlinePilot]

Cool! I learn something new EVERY day on this site!