September 2011
Columns
Energy Issues
Dr. William J. Pike
Those of you who worked in the wild and wooly offshore arena in the boom days of the late ’70s and early ’80s will recall that our lost-time-incident (LTI) rates were almost astronomical. We were desperate for hands. Guys that worked in a convenience store one day were on the rig floor the next and, possibly, on the brake in just a couple of years. Whole crews had less than a year’s experience on some onshore rigs. To complicate matters, we were just beginning to drill high-pressure gas formations. It is no wonder, then, that at times I flew over as many as three burned-up jackups in a row while changing out of Cameron, Louisiana. It is no wonder also that our casualty (not fatality) rate per capita offshore at times exceeded that of our troops in Vietnam.
