Jebsen's Aladdin

An ex-Aladdinaut and former merchant seaman once said of Jebsen's “the offshore side was real good”. I wouldn’t quite go that far but I stuck it out longer on Jebsen’s Aladdin than I did anywhere else. She must have had something going for her.

One factor in the Aladdin story was Atle Jebsen. The maximo honcho of Jebsen’s Shipping was also on the Board of B.P. Norway. In 1982 B.P. Norway was looking for a semi-submersible drilling rig to work in Norwegian waters.

The Norwegian Government did not operate a protected economy at that time, (or so they said). They would allow a token foreign flag rig or supply boat to operate in Norwegian waters; from time to time. These vessels were usually old and technically inferior (on paper). Their license to operate could easily be withdrawn by requiring some of the bells and whistles that were being fitted to Norwegian new-build rigs and boats. This was not done to protect the jobs of Norwegians; it was a matter of “safety”.

The Aladdin may (on paper) have seemed to be a perfect fit for token rig of the year (1982). She was built in 1973 as the Waage I and she lacked the two-man cabins and automated derricks of the third generation rigs being built in Norway at that time. The Aladdin was owned by Jebsen’s Drilling which (on paper) had nothing to do with Atle Jebsen. As she flew the Brutish Empire’s red duster flag she was a foreign flag rig. A contract was signed at a generous day-rate, hiring the Aladdin and her crew to B.P. Norway for the next five years.

Our first job was in the late spring. To mark the occasion the Norwegian standby boat company brought out a beautiful little boat with a square stem. She looked like something from the 1930s; a subtle Norwegian way of saying that our rig was a museum-piece; in my interpretation.

The service company personnel who did specialist jobs for B.P. were all from Norwegian bases though some were native English-speakers. I had the impression that their initial fears about our competence soon turned to appreciation for our ability to get their jobs done with the minimum of embarrassing explanations to their bosses.

As part of his plan for world domination Atle Jebsen had crewed the Aladdin with people who knew the Odeco Victory/Voyager class rigs and were technically competent. We were better paid than many and we had a full complement of the ‘slightly eccentric’. For one reason or another the Aladdin had much higher morale than most of the rigs she was competing with.

One stormy night a packer that was supposed to be set by us deep under the seabed started to set itself at the top end of the cased hole. The packer decided to set each time the rig heaved down and then partially-release each time the rig heaved up. The service-hand who was going to have to write a report explaining this did not look happy; he seemed to have accepted that his days of working in the Norwegian sector were over. He was watching hevi-wate drill pipe moving up out of the rotary table then pausing before defying gravity once again. By sticking to the simple stuff and doing it quickly and competently we were able to recover from a seemingly hopeless quandary.

Rumour had it that the service-hand gave drink-money to our immediate supervisor as a token of his appreciation. At Norwegian drink prices that would have been no mean thank-you. I cannot say that I ever tasted that drink; it may have been an unfounded rumour though the ‘stuck-to-his-hand’ version of the story was also discussed in the coffee-shop.

I have happy memories of that coffee-shop. You could go in there late at night and see a member of the Antipodean minority washing his bell-end with milk, which then ran into the coffee-cup below. The Aladdin had a full complement of the slightly eccentric which has a bearing on my theme of ‘high morale makes hole’.

By the end of that summer we had proved to the service-hands and anyone else who might have doubted it that with the money spent on Harvey Schnee designed modifications and a high-morale crew we could out-drill any rig in the North Sea and still have time for ‘dead fly’ impersonations on the catwalk. For the winter months we were scheduled to work in the English Imperial Sector, the Norwegians would only grant us exemptions from their more recent regulatory requirements during the summer months. I’m not sure at what point B.P. Norway informed B.P. Englandshire of the arrangements that they had made.

B.P. Englandshire in 1982 was more like a department of the Imperial Civil Service than an oil company. They would not have been impressed by the Aladdin’s paper specification. We were given technically difficult jobs in areas where more modern rigs had experienced problems. The only way out of the contract for B.P. would have had to involve a major screw-up on our part. I can well remember our first B.P. Company Man back in imperial waters. He was from Fife and he turned out to be a really fine guy. The first impression was of a nervous guy who may have felt that he had been set up to take a fall. He asked detailed questions about drilling procedures that did not normally trouble Company Men. Within a few weeks he was visibly calmer. Well before the end of his six-month stint with us it was known that he had asked to stay on the Aladdin for his next assignment. That was the kind of low-key but sincere compliment that encouraged us.

The Norwegian authorities upped the requirements before we could go back in the summer of 1983. This would have involved major expenditure on new accommodation. B.P. Bingoland’s ugly duckling went from a five-winter embarrassment to a 41/2 year sentence. However the new B.P. Company Men who arrived at six-month intervals generally seemed pretty relaxed. They received detailed written instructions from town which they copied and gave to the mostly Norwegian senior figures in the Drilling Department. These cunning Vikings then photo-copied the instructions and distributed copies so that anybody could read them. They always treated us like adults and only concerned themselves with the minor details in a positive way; if it helped to get the hole drilled.

B.P. had a graduate recruitment programme aimed at preparing suitable deep-soothers to be the future of the Imperial Civil Service’s Department of Other People’s Oilfields. One of these young hopefuls was of the female persuasion. By the time she arrived the Company Man was so relaxed about our competence that he didn’t get up until the middle of the morning. The young lady followed his lead for a time. However one morning for one reason or other she presented herself in the galley. The Night Cook had never seen her before and he began a long harangue about how many ways he could cook an egg. This was interrupted by a loud Torry voice from behind the young lady’s head, “How about a sausage roll?”. I don’t know what she expected as she turned around. What she saw was a finger roll wrapped around a large penis. The young lady left the galley faster than she came in. Pretty soon everyone who was awake on the rig had had a good laugh about the story. The Company Man was not awake at the time. When he did get up the young lady told him her version of the story and he had a good laugh too. ‘If you can’t take a joke you should never have joined’.

Those of us who had seen real-world oil companies in operation were amazed at the sheer volume of trivial details that B.P. recorded, collated and sent to town. We came to the conclusion that they were trying to ensure that there were plenty of numbers for the young generation of Nigels and Priscillas to file away in the deep-sooth. This might have been part of the reason for the high volume of statistical data generated by drilling rigs on contract to B.P. I was later to be told that there was more to it than that. I shall return to the statistical legacy of Aladdin’s B.P. contract, once I have selected a few more offshore incidents from The Aladdin Saga.

The older generation of slightly eccentrics had been quietly competing to outdo each other in the gossip of the coffee-shop. This had encouraged a younger generation of apprentice eccentrics to try their hand at popular entertainment and steel-island-myth-making. There was no sad-and-dismal television to dumb-down people’s expectations in those days. The B.P. contract covered the period when reel-to-reel movies gave way to videos. A video of a horror-movie could be greatly enhanced in it’s entertainment value by a young pretender to the eccentric-of-the-month title.

First you catch a doo (pigeon) in a black bin liner (while you are on shift). Then you sneak into the horror-movie that you know the off-duty galley crew will be showing. You sit next to a talented bull-shitter whom you suspect to be a bag of nerves. At the scary bit in the movie you quietly lean over and let the doo out under his nose. In the ensuing confusion you quietly exit and return to your scrubbing brush. It was a bit cruel and heartless at times but if you wanted a high-morale rig with stories to tell, somebody had to do these things.

The Coffee-shop on the Aladdin circa 1985

There was a bit of a clannishness or cosa nostra about the Jebbies Engineering Department. This was moderated by an ex-trawler Engineer who could be relied on to try his best to fix things. He could also play his part in the oral tradition that was such a rich part of the Aladdin experience. Once upon a time, long ago and far away on an Aberdeen fishing trawler, off Iceland, the Engineer in the engine room received an urgent request from the Skipper on the bridge to present himself immediately. Oil and Water do not mix and it was with cautious steps that the Engineer climbed to the bridge. When he presented himself he was told to look out at the open foredeck where a group of deckhands were gutting fish. He soon perceived that one of the group was not gutting fish. He was having a close encounter with a skate. When the Engineer told this story in the Aladdin’s coffee-shop he named the skate-shagger who also worked on the Aladdin but was not on board at the time. Thus it came to pass that the internal workings of a skate were discussed in the presence of the skate-shagger and another ex-trawlerman who had not heard the Engineer’s story. The ex-trawlerman explained that with the aid of a kettle of boiling water a skate was, “jist like the real thing”. A loud Torry voice growled from the corner: “I jist hid mine een cald”.

I remember one year on the first of January I was standing on the gratings above the mud pits, feeling the worse for wear. I heard a friendly Yorkshire voice close to my ear, “Wot the fook are you dooin?” My head was hanging down at the time so I said, “I’m watching the mud”. To my great relief he ‘went away’ to annoy somebody else. The Norwegians were upset about that party; they were not invited.

The Victory/Voyager rigs had four ex-railroad EMD (Electro-Motive Division) diesel-electric generators. On the other rigs they had numbers. The Aladdin had a gifted poet of the Weegieland persuasion among her crew and our EMDs had names: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. The compressor was called Hurricane Hilda. There were other artistic expressions. At one time the (water-based) mud flowed onto a shaker under a gate painted as a mouth. There was a cartoon which claimed that a full range of exotic underwear was available from the bond. It may sound innocuous but when I first heard about it I thought the Captain and bond-holder was about to have a heart attack. Once I saw the artwork I could understand why he was upset.

The Aladdin’s story was built up from many incidents which relieved the boredom and discomfort of working and living in a hostile environment. After I had left I heard a story that B.P. had eventually crunched the numbers on the statistical data they had gathered on the Aladdin. They had concluded, so I was told, that the Aladdin had not only out-performed all the modern rigs they had on contract at the time, she had more than justified the seemingly high day-rate they had paid for her.

The last time I was on the Aladdin was in 1990. She had acquired the single-stack system that had been on the Sindbad Saxon at one time. She had also been modernised with a top-drive, which was noisy. The split (two-piece) kelly-flap which was invented on the Aladdin was still there but was by then only useful for wire-lining. The craig was a pale imitation and she was called the Dan Baroness. She may still exist as the fifth-generation Ocean Baroness. If they want to get the full potential from the old lady they should try flying a pair of longjohns from the masthead.

Jebsen’s Aladdin on tow circa 1985