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Rigtime GalI go drilling for natural gas on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

By Emily Yoffe
Posted Monday, June 4, 2007, at 5:27 PM ET

Click to view a slide show.Before I went for a 24-hour vacation on an offshore drilling rig, I looked into the role rigs play in popular culture. Rigs appear surprisingly often, usually ominously, in film. Probably it's because they stir some archetypal memory of strange, lost Atlantis-like civilizations, rising out of and then falling into the sea. Producers of Bond films like to put their villains on vast rigs—think Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. I rented the horror film Ghost Rig but had to turn it off when one character was bludgeoned to death by a colleague who had been possessed by the evil presence that lurked on the rig. Then I saw the dreadful ffolkes, which was made in 1979 and is surely the first thriller to be set on an offshore oil rig. Anthony Perkins stars as a terrorist who hijacks a North Sea rig for ransom. I assert he is the only villain in cinematic history to utter these climactic lines: "I'm going to the bathroom. At least I'm going to try to go to the bathroom!"

For the Human Guinea Pig column, I do things you might consider doing yourself, until you reject the idea as outlandish. Before a friend of mine in the energy business offered to help me spend some time hanging out on an offshore natural-gas drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, I had never considered this as a holiday option. (This is why I'm not a billionaire. It turns out Mohamed Al-Fayed, who is one, is planning to build a luxury hotel on an out-of-commission rig in the North Sea, an area known for its gale-force winds.) But now it seemed both salutary and patriotic to combine American energy independence with a vacation.

A rig is like a stationary cruise ship—minus the after-dinner Barry Manilow tribute—that has been turned inside out. All the things usually hidden away inside—the gears, the motors, the noise of machinery, the men in grease-covered overalls—are outside on proud display. And all life's amenities—the food, the beds, the pingpong table—are tucked deep inside, away from the sunlight.

Getting to the rig required an hour-and-a-half helicopter ride from the New Orleans airport. Looking out the window was like viewing a panorama of drilling history. Almost immediately after takeoff, my corporate chaperone, Bill Chemerinski, an expert in deepwater operations with Mariner Energy, pointed out what used to be offshore drilling: a barge in 10 feet of water. Then we passed production platforms standing in 200 to 300 feet of water—the depth of deepwater drilling a generation ago. Then, after about 50 miles the inner shelf dropped and the seabed gave way to rigs capable of drilling 10,000 feet below the surface. These are called semisubmersibles; that is, they are giant machines resting on pontoons, secured in place by 14-ton anchors. (Read more about them here.)

When we had flown 140 miles into the Gulf of Mexico, a little Lego tower, forlorn and tiny, emerged out of the mist. It was the Ocean America. Within minutes it became gigantic. It's more than 400 feet in length and 200 feet in width (by comparison, a football field is 360 feet by 160 feet). At the tallest point of the derrick it stands 270 feet above the water. We landed on the heliport, and the first person to greet me was a pretty, dark-haired woman, Amy Stewart, 44, the rig's safety officer and, she told me, my bunkmate. I didn't see many more women—of the revolving crew of 105 workers, there are only five. One is a ballast-control officer; the rest work in the kitchen and housekeeping.

Amy immediately took me inside to get outfitted. No one is allowed on the working portions of the deck without a hardhat, safety glasses, and steel-toed boots. I noticed that on the back of Amy's hardhat were two stickers. One read, "I ain't yo mama" and the other, "Wicked witch." She explained she found these on her hat one day and decided to keep them. To avoid getting caught in machinery, I was instructed to remove my earrings and wedding ring. (This could be a rig vacation slogan: "Leave your troubles—and your wedding band—behind!")

As we walked down the stairs to her room, she passed a worker coming up, holding two cups of soda. "Which hand are you going to put on the handrail?" she said to him, explaining to me that because the rig can shift in the currents, holding onto the railing is a rule.

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Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or comments to .
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Remarks from the Fray Editor:

Several former rig-workers and their family have weighed in with anecdotes of their own experiences. A sampling is provided below. For more, check out the Human Guinea Pig Fray.—G.A.

Remarks from the Fray:

At the risk of imitating the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen routine, I was stunned by how plush the rig was compared to my experiences as a derrick man on an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 1975. %.50 an hour, time-and-a-half after eight hours, and we once worked 36 straight hours. Five minute break in the morning, ten minute break for lunch. That was it. A far cry from college, which I had left for a year to see the real world.

A great if dangerous, dirty, extremely loud experience with the hardest working, most racist people I'd ever met.

--Inkstained

(To reply, click here.)

I worked in the Gulf from 2000-2003 and from what I saw the rigs range from what [was] described to something so dirty and awful that you were scared to touch the sheets.

On some rigs the showers were so disgusting that I actually felt cleaner before the shower! I would take my own pillow case out with me and slept in long pants and a long sleeve shirt for warmth as well as to not have to touch the bedding too much. And you don't always have a private shower, most of the time it's community.

What was described in this article barely scratches the surface of life on a rig. Try spending 30 days straight out there isolated from your friends and family, tired, covered in mud and pipe-dope half the time and then tell me if you would still call it a 'vacation'.

Although I do think if more people experienced it they would have a greater appreciation for the time, work, and money involved in getting the oil/gas out of the ground. Have you ever seen 'Oil, Sweat, and Rigs'? My fiance still works offshore and he and I watch that show and are amazed at the way it portrays what goes on out there. Some of it is accurate, but not all.

One last thing, I disagree that the people on a rig are the most racist people you'll meet. Yes, some of them are racist, but people from all walks of life are racist. I would say you'd be hard pressed to find a more colorful group of people anywhere else though. I learned about coon-hunting and fishing and fence building and seismic surveying and the list goes on and on.

It was an interesting experience that I am glad I had, but would never want to do it again.

--clspet

(To reply, click here.)

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