I thought you might find this interesting b/c it tells a little about number of platforms, offshore workers...



Houston Chronicle
Families mourn those killed in La. chopper crash
By CAIN BURDEAU Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
Jan. 6, 2009, 5:42PM
NEW ORLEANS — Randy Tarpley came from a family of hardworking and fearless police officers and Navy veterans. It wasn't in his nature to think twice about the dangers of working far offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
Tarpley, a 53-year-old oilfield welder, was among eight men killed Sunday when a helicopter en route to a platform in the Gulf plunged into the a southern Louisiana marsh. It was one of the worst accidents ever to hit the offshore industry.
"You think about it, you don't ponder on it. You do it and go on," his brother, Jeff Tarpley, said in a telephone interview Tuesday from the family home in Jonesville, La., in central part of the state.
"In the South, you pretty much serve God and your country," Tarpley said. "Hey! We're not scared of work."
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are reviewing maintenance recorders, a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder to find out what caused the Sikorsky S-76C to crash. There was no warning from the pilots that something was wrong. The chopper crashed about seven minutes after takeoff.
The crash site in a swamp near Gibson, La., was a disturbing scene.
"It's in a million pieces, so something bad happened," said Charlie Hammonds, a pilot who flew over the crash site Monday. "It hit the marsh so hard that it disintegrated."
Steve Yelton of Floresville, Texas, survived the accident. He was listed in critical condition Tuesday.
The helicopter company, Lafayette-based PHI Inc., declined to discuss the accident.
The seven offshore workers were contract workers for the Shell Oil Co. They were relieving crews repairing the company's Cougar oil platform.
The accident is probably one of the worst in offshore history, said Allan Pulsipher, executive director of the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University.
"I don't have a memory of anything coming that close," he said.
Using helicopters has become common as petroleum production platforms have moved farther offshore.
"Because we are further offshore than we used to be, it's about the only way to get crews out there," said Tom Frey, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore trade group. "Otherwise, you're spending all your time getting people out there and back."
The traffic is constant: offshore employees typically work two weeks on a platform or a drilling rig, then return to shore for two weeks off. There are about 4,000 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, which according to federal officials, includes just under 700 that are staffed.
While smaller platforms may only have a handful of workers, the large deepwater platforms can have 50 to 100 employees.
"They have to be moved every two weeks," Frey said.
Flying to and from work is one of the more dangerous aspects of the offshore worker's job, Pulsipher said. Overall, though, studies have shown that the offshore industry is safe.
"Working offshore is about as risky as a construction job," Pulsipher said.
In Louisiana, the risks of oil and gas production are taken for granted. "A lot of kids have gone to college on offshore work, I'll tell you that," Pulsipher said.
In the past three years, 25 workers were killed offshore, according to Minerals Management Service figures. That data does not include deaths during trips to and from platforms by sea or by air. A review of MMS data dating to 1996 shows a similar fatality rate, between 3 and 14 deaths a year in the Gulf's offshore industry.
Helicopter rides have been a source of consternation for oilfield workers for decades, said Lillian Miller, a retired oilfield worker. She was among the first women to work offshore in the 1970s, moving up from galley-hand to roustabout, or deckhand.
"You wouldn't believe how many helicopters went down," she said. "Back in the day, you had these pilots who had just gotten back from Vietnam and they were not paid much."
At least one of the men killed aboard the PHI helicopter found the chopper rides to work unpleasant, his wife said.
"It always made him nervous," said Britain Boudreaux, the 20-year-old wife of Allen Boudreaux Jr., told The Courier newspaper in Houma.
Allen Boudreaux, 23, like Tarpley, worked for Dynamic Industries, a company that manufactures oil rigs and parts for oil refineries.