Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

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Mgellis
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Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Mgellis »

Friends,

Just brainstorming some scenario ideas and I wanted to check on a few things with people who are probably more knowledgeable than myself.

First, am I correct in assuming that blowing up someone else’s offshore oil rig makes sense because it prevents them from having access to that oil? (I imagine that seizing control of the oil rig is a better option because it gives YOU control of the oil, but I also imagine it is often a lot more difficult to do this. And then you have to keep other people from taking it back or blowing it up to keep you from having it.)

Second, blowing up someone’s oil may result is pretty ferocious environmental damage. To what extent is this a factor in mission planning? Is it simply considered a necessary evil, that winning the war has to take priority over protecting wildlife, etc.? Or is it one of those things that makes it pretty much off limits, except in the most desperate situations, and perhaps even a “war crime” if someone does it? On a scale of 1 to 10, how “evil” do most countries consider blowing up an oil rig and possibly causing this kind of environmental disaster?

Third, if you know an attack is probably coming in the very near future, and a government decides to at least try to avoid an environmental disaster, does anyone know how long it takes to shut down production and secure an oil rig so that the destruction of the platform is less likely to cause an oil spill? Hours? Days?

Thanks for your help. I look forward to your answers.

Mark

willpope697
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by willpope697 »

I think attacking the oil rigs makes perfect sense. But I think that it wouldn't be done unless you really needed to criple the oppositions supplies, due to the huge environmental damage. But I have no idea how long it would take to shut down and secure the rig.
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AlGrant
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by AlGrant »


Also interested in this.

Whilst oil/gas rigs may be located in a country's EEZ they are usually operated by international companies and manned by civilian staff.
Anybody, attacker or defender, blowing up a rig isn't going to win many friends!
Maybe something a terror organisation might consider but I'm not sure many countries would risk the consequences.

My guess is that unarmed civilian rig workers would find it difficult to do much if the helo's arrived and started landing ..... especially with little or no notice. Trying to get on the rig by boat would be a bit more difficult (but not impossible).

I have a draft scenario with an EEZ dispute between 2 countries and involving the capture of oil rigs.
I had thought about the consequences of attacks on the rigs but settled on having the captured rigs as the cause of the conflict, rather than the target.

I have troops landing on the rigs by helo for a hostile take over and setting up MANPADS and using the civilian rig crew as a human shield and putting an exclusion zone around the rigs and putting them 'off limits' for player (and damaging them will cause a scenario loss!) and focusing on establishing air/sea superiority in the area. The eventual fate of the rigs being decided once the fighting is over and the EEZ borders have been decided.



Al


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SeaQueen
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by SeaQueen »

I can't comment about the potential for environmental damage, except that bombing or shelling an offshore oil rig would most likely cause an enormous fire.

I can say, however, that is has been done historically. During Operation Preying Mantis, two surface action groups attacked and destroyed two armed oil rigs in the Arabian Gulf with their 5" guns, followed by TOW missiles from the helos embarked with the MAGTF. Additionally during Operation Nimble Archer, US warships attacked two more oil platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
http://www.navalhistory.org/2013/04/18/ ... april-1988
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedin ... rface-view
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/che ... ear-yemen/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nimble_Archer
jarraya
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by jarraya »

One minor thing - in the industry they are called "production facilities or platforms" and they come in various types - "rigs" are the mobile ones used to drill oil wells like the one that caused the Macondo incident in the Gulf of Mexico.

That said - taking an oil platform is not hard. Very easy by helicopter. Can also be done by boat, as they all have boat access ladders (in case you can't get a chopper on). In the UK, the SBS train regularly to retake oil platforms by boat, sub and helicopter.

As far as blowing one up, chances are you will have a serious environmental disaster. However, most modern production platforms come with failsafes that will shut in the wells automatically on the seabed if the platform is destroyed or loses power, thus preventing oil from flowing. This should limit the amount of oil that gets into the sea, but you'll still have quite a mess, depending on the type of production system that is destroyed.

The type of facility used depends on water depth. In the North Sea, for example, most production comes from platforms that are anchored to the sea bed. In other, deeper areas, floating systems are used, such as FPSOs (Floating Production Storage and Offloading). These are basically a supertanker converted to a production system. Imagine an oil plant on top of a million barrel storage facility, floating, anchored to the sea floor 2000m below. Hit that with a torpedo and you've got quite a mess.

One more thing - taking someone's oil platform doesn't really help you. It's probably connected to a pipeline that only goes to one place - the enemy's production facilities. If it's a floating production system (FPSO as per above) you will need to bring one of your tankers to offload the oil; if the enemy lets you!
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Zaslon »

An Aerial attack can provoke an environmental disaster if the equipment (Subsea safety Valves) fails (as Failed in Macondo).

You can close the well in seconds (a safety valve called BOP, Blow-Out preventer) when the BOP is activated. Some platforms, semisumbersible platforms for example can left his position and the wellhead in the subsea surface can be abandoned temporarily (abandon a well need more time, I don't remember ATM, but only some hours, less than a day, I guess).

Well, remember that Saddam Hussein did in 1991 during his retreat from Kuwait so it's not a hipotetical situation. Gladly, Red Adair (remember the film Hellfighters?) was still alive and he personally managed to control the wells. If we apply a logical plan, the development of an environmental disaster should be included in a plan. The disaster should develop the desired consequences...For example, if the enemy cannot be affected by the Oil spill, the evil can use it for damage the fishing resources, relocate resources from War effort to environmental remediation and of course reduce his income from Oil production. But as AlGrant said if the reservoir is developed by an international company, isn`t a good idea. With strong National Oil Companies is acceptable I think (Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Venezuela, China) because they usually have the 100% of the project (also in the platform there are internatioal workers, but sadly it's more strong for a casus belli the loss of thousand of million dollars than the life of some workers).

A sabotage in the platform can provoke an environmental disaster if like in Macondo, they deactivate all the alarms and the BOP "fail" for example.
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Dysta
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Dysta »

I am more inclined to see the reaction from UN, than either side in battle during the scenario. Will the force to cease fire, or form up a UN troops to lock down the oil-spill area with international navies?
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by jarraya »

You also need a huge amount of civilian vessels to clean up an oil disaster. Could make for a very interesting scenario!
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Dysta
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Dysta »

We don't even have an official response for this scenario, besides MAD and invasion upon natural disaster(s) in entire history.

The best I can think of, is how determine the offensive side (that attacked the oil rig) to continue the barbaric campaign with it, which will suffer their national reputation and eventually, make more enemies to the entire world.

Or, how determine the defensive side try to draw global attention by purposely destroy their own oil rig, and scapegoat the enemy with this 'crime'. It is also likely possible to buy some times by global interference, to cease fire for cleaning jobs.
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Zaslon »

Reaction from United Nations? Nothing but words, remember Srebrenica, Rwanda...
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Gunner98 »

Reaction from United Nations? Nothing but words, remember Srebrenica, Rwanda...

But they were very nasty notes [:D]
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Rudd »

ORIGINAL: Gunner98
Reaction from United Nations? Nothing but words, remember Srebrenica, Rwanda...

But they were very nasty notes [:D]
Nasty words with a [:-]...months later, they'll deploy their fleet
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Zaslon »

Hahahha yeeeah nasty words,

United Nation Forces are 95% Peacekeeping and/or Observation missions. Only a few missions in Africa (If I am not mistaken) have a more robust mandate and they can use the force (they suffered attacks and UN forces needed to create a credible dissuasion) in more scenarios.

This topic is more complex, because in the nineties UN ...heads made some experiments, and all these experiments ended in disasters, massacres, genocides....

Deploy UN forces for an Oil spill...I doubt that. They weren't deployed in Rwanda, Ukraine, Yemen, Lybia, Syria, Persian Gulf (I am thinking about Tankers War in the First Persian gulf War)...

there are some interesting books, like 'Shake hands with the devil' by Brig, Gen. Romeo Dallaire.
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Gunner98 »

Your right, very complex. Not all disasters but all potential disasters. Bosnia, Croatia, Namibia, Cyprus, Lebanon(`ish depends on when) etc. In addition to the mandate, various contributing countries have different agendas and different interpretations or bias on the mandate, some enforce it, some don't. Even the same country with a different stripe of Government will put a different take on how they want to do things.

I agree that there is not much potential for a UN mandate to protect oil rigs- they take weeks and months to agree to and then months to deploy forces. Not a viable option for this scenario.

I think I know the guy in the boat... seriously


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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by AlGrant »

ORIGINAL: Rudd
Nasty words with a [:-]...months later, they'll deploy their fleet


I think that if active drilling rigs were targeted and this posed a threat to the environment then the UN would have something to say on the matter
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) a full section (Part XII) covering The Protection and Preservation of the Marine Environment.
However talking and taking action are 2 totally different things, historically the UN is quite good at one of them and quite poor at the other!

I can easily imaging Ban Ki-moon appearing on TV within a few hours of any attack saying how wrong it is ...... harder to imaging much else happening quickly.

In theory I suppose that using UNCLOS, warships could be deployed with a UN mandate to prevent any further attacks, can't imagine it would happen overnight though (weeks at best).
But I seriously doubt you would see anybody trying to conduct a clean up operation as long as there was fighting in the area.

Interesting stuff though ..... and it has given me some info I can use for the briefing in my scenario (which doesn't involve blowing up rigs)

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Dysta
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Dysta »

So, UN-able is unable.

In relative topic, does oil-drenched sea affect ship's movement, as well as the acoustics for submarine detection?
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by mikmykWS »

Destroying a live productive rig these days is probably out other than trying to seize the thing. Nigerian insurgents have done or tried that a few times in deltas. Not sure the government would blow the rig to kill the insurgents though. I suspect you'd see more of an assault to retake the thing in most cases.

Iran and Iraq had no qualms about environmental damage during the Tanker stage of their war. This was during the 80's though and world wasn't exactly caring about environmental stuff yet. The combatants also viewed the fight as life or death so everything was secondary to removing a resource that could sustain a war effort. I would approach this similarly with a scenario theme.

Mike
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by jimcarravall »

ORIGINAL: Mgellis

Friends,

Just brainstorming some scenario ideas and I wanted to check on a few things with people who are probably more knowledgeable than myself.

First, am I correct in assuming that blowing up someone else’s offshore oil rig makes sense because it prevents them from having access to that oil? (I imagine that seizing control of the oil rig is a better option because it gives YOU control of the oil, but I also imagine it is often a lot more difficult to do this. And then you have to keep other people from taking it back or blowing it up to keep you from having it.)

Second, blowing up someone’s oil may result is pretty ferocious environmental damage. To what extent is this a factor in mission planning? Is it simply considered a necessary evil, that winning the war has to take priority over protecting wildlife, etc.? Or is it one of those things that makes it pretty much off limits, except in the most desperate situations, and perhaps even a “war crime” if someone does it? On a scale of 1 to 10, how “evil” do most countries consider blowing up an oil rig and possibly causing this kind of environmental disaster?

Third, if you know an attack is probably coming in the very near future, and a government decides to at least try to avoid an environmental disaster, does anyone know how long it takes to shut down production and secure an oil rig so that the destruction of the platform is less likely to cause an oil spill? Hours? Days?

Thanks for your help. I look forward to your answers.

Mark


1) Blowing up oil rigs shouldn't make an immediate difference within the construct of present scenario time frames as it relates to a nation's fuel supply.

The real life lead time necessary to extract crude, transport, refine, and redistribute refined fuel back into the country's infrastructure exceeds any current individual scenario's duration.

It would make sense if the creator wanted to factor in strategic benefits as part of scoring.

For an example of how destruction of oil logistics can become a strategic consideration, look at the circumstances surrounding the air strikes on present day ISIS-controlled shipping and storage capacity. A recent story indicated that ISIS, which is a form of employment for the soldiers supporting it, has had to cut soldier pay as the ability to sell petroleum on the black market was hindered by the coalition air strikes in support of the Syrian, Kurdish, and Iraqi opposition forces.

2) It might be worthwhile to review circumstances during Operation Desert Storm as it relates to environmental damage from destruction of oil production capability. While not centered on off shore drilling, there was a significant effort by the Iraqi Army to create environmental and economic chaos for the invading force(s) as it abandoned Kuwait and retreated toward Baghdad. It was years before the destroyed capacity was recovered, first by putting out fires, and then by rebuilding the exploration, drilling, and crude transportation capacity. In addition, there was a significant amount of reporting regarding the danger troops and citizens faced from the pall of burning crude in the region.

3) The proximate cause of most damage from the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was traced back to the failure of a safety valve at the well head on the bottom of the gulf that failed to stop the flow of oil when the rig exploded. Here's a video that might shed some light on how quickly response occurs following a catastrophic failure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOK9J0wETYo
Take care,

jim
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Dysta
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Dysta »

ORIGINAL: Dysta

does oil-drenched sea affect ship's movement, as well as the acoustics for submarine detection?
I searched on Google for a week and still no relative topic about it, so I presumed black goo will not make military hardware any weaker.
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RE: Scenarios involving blowing up oil rigs

Post by Zaslon »

Yeap Dysta.

Crude oil has a lower density than sea water and don't produce magnetic anomalies (MAD of the Orion, May and Atlantique detect submarines by the magnetic anomaly that they generate). Surely it affects acoustic detection (due to the lower density) but, sonars will be below the crude oil layer.
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