Offshore oil drilling
The main offshore fields today are in the North Sea. Off the coast of Brazil are the Campos and Santos Basins. The Gulf of Mexico, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are also well known fields. The West African coast countries, Nigeria and Angola, as well in South East Asia are all drilling for oil. Searching for oil and gas in the sea is more difficult compared to land-based installations. To overcome these difficulties, manned facilities need to be kept above sea-level. To accomplish this, gigantic legs made of concrete, are anchored to the sea bed. The largest man-made structure ever to be moved is the Troll platform, what has a height of 472 meters. There are of course floating platforms, these are also anchored to the bottom of the sea. Extra security measures are needed for these two methods and they also need some sort of mechanism to reduce the movement of the platform due to enormous waves. I personally have experienced the movement these incredible waves can produce. Working on an offshore oil platform is not as difficult as most people think.In fact after you finished your 12 hour shift, there are plenty of things to do. It can be a nice experience for the beginners. There is very nice sleeping quarters, there’s usually a cinema and a training studio, if you like that sort of thing, and the food is good and plentiful. Because they are sitting down most of the shift, the office personnel can quickly add to their waistline if they are not careful. When working in the North Sea, you are transported out to the rigs by helicopter, in my case from Stavanger airport to the Ekofisk field. There you work for two weeks and then home for three weeks. I haven’t worked offshore for many years so conditions probably have changed since that time. This is a picture of the Ekofisk field 
Offshore oil drilling and Home
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