Rig Up Report

I can't go into many details here, so I will give you an abridged version to bring you all up to date: the Geolog crew arrived in Jakarta on December 2nd, and then travelled to Balikpapan the day after. I met them at the airport, took them to lunch and packed them off to the staff house where they settled in by going on a drinking session at the Blue Sky Hotel. The day after (Saturday, December 4th) we took a 2-hour ferry boat out to the Saipem 10,000, which was anchored a kilometre off the coast (immediately opposite the Geolog office).

By the time we had boarded and undergone the safety induction the day was spent. I split the crew into two groups and took each out to recon the drillship so they could get the lay of the land (or would "lay of the deck" be more suitable? The next day, and all the days after that we worked +12 hour days to get as much done as possible because on Wednesday (December 8th) we were getting booted off the rig because of visa issues which prevented us from staying on baord during the sail to East Timor, so the job was cut short by 5 days.

It was back to Balikpapan where I had to contend with an unruly rig-up crew who were fed up with the staff house and Balikpapan in general, and do my day job as an operations manager. I'll be blunt - my spritis were low at the point and I came very close to throwing in the towel and giving up on Geolog all-together. My senior manager back in Amsterdam gave me a pep talk and I stepped away from the ledge. Luckily the hotel I moved them to and three crates of beer I provided them (coupled with a relaxing day at the pool/excursions to the local "zoo"/shopping trips to traditional markets) put the riot to rest.

The second phase of the rig-up is scheduled to resume in Darwin, where I am at this moment (see pics above) after a couple of hours looking around Kuta in Bali, while the drillship is in harbour loading up supplies and equipment for the East Timor well. We are due to go onboard tomorrow, by boat again, and continue where we left off. We have approximately 4 or 5 days to complete the job. My next blog post will likely announce the outcome.