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The Ocean Horizon….A Retired Oil Rig Turned Museum…

We consider ourselves environmentally friendly when possible and certainly a proponent of renewable, green energy but we also like to know as much as possible about all aspects of energy production. Visiting museums like the Ocean Star allows us to see what the best foot forward is for the oil industry. Our nephew Stephen is employed as a chemical engineer for Phillips 66 in New Orleans and has a lot of good things to say about the industry, its focus on safety, and its own push for renewable energy.

This picture was captured from the International Space Station, Since this event , Serious changes have been made in the oil rigging business to avoid this type of calamity. With that said the associated risk are an inherit part of the business.
When the rig was retired it was towed here to Galviston, Texas to become the museum it is today.
Safety first is not too humorous but…..
A quick history of the place.
This is the contraption used to hoist rig workers and their belongings up from the ocean to the deck. Could not imagine!
The escape pod was very rarely used but the stories we read regarding it said it was the absolute “best” place to be when it was necessary to use it,
We thought this was an amazing graphic! What goes on under a rig like this has a scale of a city like NY.
Cool heliport!

The column in the background is one of three that keep the rig grounded to the ocean floor. The entire rig can be lowered or raised using those holes depending on the wave heights.
A happy tourist looks on from outside the porthole.
This tower is what holds all the pipe and casing that keep the oil pumping.
Holy crap that is a lot of pipeline!
Many of these sections were connected to reach the seafloor. The one on the right is the casing that keeps the pipe on the “straight and narrow”.
In this day of technowonders we found it interesting to see the manual levers used to drill for oil in the slightly older days.

Here are a few shots of some of the machinery on display:

A model of a ship that digs trenches and lays pipe on the sea floor.
We took some up close pictures of these pelicans on the walkway over to the museum.

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