Knife Free rig, rant

Will52100

Will52100

Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Messages
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:mad: Well not to long ago I left my old Offshore company and went to Transocean deep water and when I got on the rig they told me that I needed a locking knife which was a surprise as I'd come from Pride where knives were outlawed(everyone had one anyway) and I thought maybe this company had a little sense. Well we got word that Corporate has decided that for safty reasons we will no longer be allowed to carry knives. Funny thing is there has been very few knife related injuries, and most policy is due to a rash of injuries. This smacks of the anti, liberal crowed. The OIM said he could understand it as we don't realy need knives out here.

The alternate cutting tools that they are suppling just do not work. For example, they make a sack cutter with a protective plastic hock over a razor blade, the trouble is that after cutting a few sacks of gell or such it's cloged up and most get the plastic tips broken off and now you have 3/4" of razor blade sticking out and the cutters get left laying on beams in the hopper room.

I work on the crane crew and use a knife daily for a lot of jobs. I finaly got most of my crew converted to carring a knife and now they want to take them away. Won't happen as most everybody will still carry one. It's kind of funny as they are worried about a knife when there is so much out here and so many way to get killed or dismembered that the "company" won't trust us with a knife!

What kind of wishfullthinking, idotic, socker mom crap is this :mad: :mad: :mad: :barf:
 
Simply.....lazy on there part to pass such "standards" without being in your shoes to see what you have to go thru just to cut anything....much less yourself or the poor bastard that stole your beany weanies...
 
Upper management must be similar to the government. Passes rules without thinking first.
How stupid can you get!
You'd think they'd have your boss ask you guys how often you need to use a knife on the job before they decided you didn't need one.
 
It's the insurance companies 9 times out of 10 that "create" these types of rules. A friend was recently told by one of the insurance knumbnuts that their modular home, which is on a permanent foundation, is considered a "mobile" home by the Insurance Company since it was brought in on a truck and therefore in their opinion the home could be "stolen" by being hauled off in the night! :rolleyes: :( :rolleyes:
 
We were given a lock back Buck knife when we had to stay at the plant for Y2K coverage. (When everyone one thought that computers were going to shut off the world.) Everyone that was there got one.

Some bozo was flicking his open, it slipped out of his had and went into his buddy's thigh. Well all the safety people, management and the powers to be just went "nah-nah" over the "incident".

Needless to say, no more knives for awards, period. This was even before 911.

This country is ran by lawyers, bean counters, the EPA and OSHA.

CW
 
When I was in Nam 69 & 70 they took our frags away. I thought it was because of so many officers getting fraged from there own men. The real reason for that was so many of the officers would stand up and watch the frags go off and get hit by there own shrap. It seems to me we went for a few months without any.

The last few years I worked as a union carpenter some of the safty bull was nothing but bull. I thought at one time they would even take our hammer's away.....
 
The realy anoying thing is that most, not all, but most of the guys working out here are from small towns and have hunted and fished all there lives and grew up with knives.

Since I've been off shore I've only seen one knife injury, and it wasn't even rig crew. A supply boat crewman stabed himself in the arm with a clip point Buck hunting knife whilecutting tape off a cam-lock fitting and-you guessed it-cutting toward himself. Wrong tool for the job, if I was to use a larg fixed blade out here a blade designed for penitration would be my last choice.

I can almost understand the mentality, it's a two hour helo flight at the fastest to land and then no telling how long to a hospital. The thing is a knife wound is the least of my concerns out here, to much big heavy(like the top drive pulling a million pound string of pipe) stuff that can and has done so much more damage.

I do understand that some people don't know how to use a knife properly, but instead of banning them how about a little training, we get tons of training on everything else.

When all is said and done pretty much everyone will still carry a knife, but if you get cut there's a good chance of loosing your job for violating company policy. :rolleyes:
 
Will
We have the same problem with Nabors Drilling on land. We're issued safety scissors as alternative cutting devices for general work and a box cutter as a sack knife. Everyone, including the toolpushers, still carry their knives though. We just have to be careful not to pull them out when the safety man is around. ;)

Todd
 
Will,
My father was a company man for Sun Oil for many years. He started out as a roustabout, then roughnecked. He transferred to the Caplan field and went to night school and eventually became an engineer. He retired about 12 years ago and it sure has changed out there, mostly for the better but some of it has gotten to be a little "cs".

My next door neighbor works for AkerKvaerner, and we talk about the BS all the time but... how do you like this picture?

picture.JPG
 
ouch L@@K
Will , a freind of mine lost his leg on a rig, off shore from Texas some where about 10 years ago it's lucky that's all he lost.
I know what your talking about and they worry about a Knife :rolleyes:
 
That's one rig I'm glad I wasn't on C L, heck after 911 they won't even consider box cutters!

I guess when knives are outlawed I'll be an outlaw!
 
Will52100 said:
That's one rig I'm glad I wasn't on C L, heck after 911 they won't even consider box cutters!
Click to expand...

Yeah, that rig fire was started by a knife... :rolleyes:

Like in Mississippi, we all carry a knife of some sort in this part of the country. If someon has to borrow mine, I'll tell them, "Your big enough to carry your own now."

Most folks are carrying "Multitools" on to the rigs now. They seem to be "in vogue" offshore.

Craig
 
That burning rig was what they call a Jack Up, i.e. it sit in shallow water and they legs jack it up off bottom. It was offshore Egypt called the Adriatic area. I have more on it at work that I got from a friend that works offshore Asia for Unocal.

The oil field has changed tremendously since I started roughnecking in the Rocky Mountains in 1968. Back then the Hughes Tool bit salesman would show up about every couple of weeks with a bottle of Black Jack for the rig crew. All kinds of stuff showed up for the Toolpushers and company men. that would be shocking today.

I never saw OSHA on a drilling rig until the early 80's. Of course the rigs are easier to find in more civilized areas like Texas and the deep south and offshore they are stationary targets for parasites like OSHA. Safety is one thing, but it gets carried to the ridiculous. Many companies today have changed their safety departments to "Loss Control", whose job seems to be mostly containing the blame to the workers and keeping regulators in the dark on what really happened and why.
 
Actualy Steve that looks more like a production platform, though from personal experiance I'll definatly agree with you on the "loss control" vs. safty. Heck they've got us running around filling out "start cards" doing safty observations, and Pride wanted us to "observe" two unsafe acts a day. Still haven't figured out how that relates to keeping us safe. I figure just keep in mind everything out here is trying to kill you and you'll probably be ok, not to mention ignore the pusher jumping up and down screaming!
 
Will, I got a whole series of photos of the fire in an email from a friend working offshore Borneo-this one is off Egypt-I guess the photos are making the rounds. If you want, I will forward the email to you when I get back to work tomorrow. Let me know at <shgeo@sisna.com>.

The original email said it was a jack up. My career has been onshore, so I just took it at face value. The first photo has it still intact, just starting to go up. It looks like it burned to the water.

As for loss control, it is really more CYA than safety from my point of veiw. I'll bet the CYAs are flying thick and fast about that fire.
 
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