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Thunder Horse Site Visit

May 14th, 2005 by James

Yesterday, members of the team I work with made a one-day site visit to the Thunder Horse platform. For those that are not familiar, this facility is the biggest offshore oil and gas platform in the world. It floats in >6,000′ of water with subsea wells and anchors on the bottom, and two pipelines that deliver the oil and gas to points downstream. The day we visited, the platform is being moored in place by the Balder, the Union Manta, with the RSV Innovator providing some ROV support.

We caught an S-76 helicopter out of the New Orleans Lois Armstrong airport and flew to the platform in the morning. We inspected the areas on the platform where we will be working, and met with the platform’s Hookup and Commissioning Team. We were lucky to be there for lunch on Friday - seafood day - so we got to indulge in boiled shrimp, fried shrimp, and crawfish etouffe…:-)

For our flight back, the helicopter pilots took us straight up the Mississippi River, from South Pass up to the Huey P. Long Bridge, and then to the airport. This was a GREAT opportunity to get some creative shots of the wetlands and industry below.