Word: rig
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...problem began as workers were performing maintenance operations on a well at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s Platform Bravo, a stilt-legged rig some 280 kilometers (175 miles) southwest of Norway. Usually crews conduct these periodic "workovers" by closing the valves on the "Christmas tree," or top part of the well, pumping heavy mud down the well shaft to force the oil back to its underground reservoir, and then sealing the well with a cap called a blowout preventer. This time, as the crew worked to fasten the blowout preventer, pressure in the well unexpectedly built up and blew...
...acceptable cost-economic or environmental. A court injunction has restrained federal leasing of drilling sites in the Baltimore Canyon until a fuller ecological study is completed, and Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus is holding off on other leases. Meanwhile, the blowout on the Phillips Petroleum rig in Norway's Ekofisk field in the North Sea (see ENVIRONMENT) is certain to buttress environmentalists' arguments about the dangers of offshore drilling...
...aftermath of the election, Ved Mahta, an Indian journalist, wrote in the New Yorker that a dictator should never call elections unless he has taken care to rig the results. But Gandhi miscalculated in calling for parliamentary elections. Now India has 81-year-old Morarji Desai as Prime Minister, and Gandhi returns to private life after 11 years in power...
Life for the roughly 60 men aboard each drilling rig is a strict routine of twelve hours on duty and twelve off during seven days at sea. The center of the rig's activities is the mud-slicked drill floor, where half a dozen roughnecks struggle day and night with heavy chains and power-driven winches to shove 90-ft.-long pieces of drill pipe into the narrow hole. During the twelve hours off, the roustabouts spend most of their time sleeping, although they can also fish for baby sharks and sand trout or watch the latest porno movie...
...since other oil teams under Egyptian contracts are also working there. Israeli naval crews last fall shot at equipment owned by Amoco to keep that American company from working in the Gulf of Suez just off El Tur. Then in December, Israel set up its own costly offshore drilling rig, manned mainly by American roughnecks. Two weeks ago the Israelis began sinking another hole on the shore at El Tur, slant-drilling into the waters whose ownership it disputes...