Life On Offshore

Working Conditions

Life and work conditions on the board of offshore oil rigs are heavy and strict.
Drilling, construction or metallurgical workers on offshore oil rigs and their respective assistants work outdoors in rough weather conditions.
Timetables and shifts are another very important subject when it comes to oil rig jobs. They vary, depending on the company and the type of position. A very general type of timetable is consisted in fourteen days on, followed by fourteen days off.
Hourly schedules timetables for oil rig jobs vary from 80 to 100 hours/week and this may seem like a very long and tiring working week on oil rig platform. But, it should be considered that offshore workers are in the workplace 24 hours per day.
On the other hand, time off on oil rig jobs is one of the attractive side of this sort of posts. Few positions on offshore jobs offer the workers so much time to carry out their private and familiar activities or to devote to another job or business.

At any one time you will find nearly 200 people living and working on a rig. Of course, being in such a confined space means you need to be able to get on with people and conflict must be avoided. You could find you are spending more time with your roommate than your family.
There have been oil rigs which, after being rated, were considered to be the same quality as a four or five star hotel.
You will get cabin with up to 2 to 4 bunk beds, desk and chair, T.V. and telephone. Space is very tight.
Crew members share cabins with one, two or three team members, depending on the position.
Your bedroom is not only serviced but generally your bed is made for you and the bathroom cleaned.

The galley and dining room/mess are normally found on a lower deck and meals are provided around the clock.
The main meal times are at 0500-0700hrs, 1100-1300hrs, 1700-1900hrs and 2300-0100hrs, but the galley is open almost 24 hours a day so you can obtain snacks in between meal times.
The quality of food varies from rig to rig but is usually pretty good.
Alcohol being forbidden offshore, there’s only non-alcoholic wine or beer to wash down the feast.

Most rigs these days have reasonably well-equipped gymnasiums on board. Big TV screens on the walls is also pretty commonplace, and someone has usually rigged up some sort of sound system that you can plug your iPod into if you want to listen to music.
Many rigs also have additional recreational activities like table tennis tables, pinball machines, saunas,
Most people also have hard drives full of movies that they take out with them and watch on their laptops while lying in bed.

One of my favourite things about working offshore is that you don’t have to do any cooking, cleaning or washing of clothes.
Before you go to bed, you place your work clothes from that day in a laundry bag and place them on the floor in the corridor outside your cabin and from there they get collected by one of the utilities and washed, dried, folded and placed back on the floor outside your door so by the time you wake up they are ready to wear again

Satellite communications equipment is becoming ever-increasingly sophisticated offshore with online communications for workers wanting to connect with loved ones back home now an accepted standard of living conditions offshore.
There will always be two separate communication networks; one provided by the drilling contractor and one provided by the operating oil and gas company. Both of these networks provide free wifi for the workers onboard the rig
Mobile/cell phone use outside of the accommodation block is absolutely prohibited, as is taking photos.

All rigs have day shift and night shift medical personnel on board, and usually one of them will be a fully qualified medical doctor.
They work out of a reasonably well-equipped “hospital” which is located in the accommodation block and usually in an area that can be easily accessed from the helideck.
The medics who work on the rigs are generally ex-military personnel and well equipped to deal with the first aid treatment of serious trauma injuries.