The owners of a 17,000-tonne oil rig that has been stranded on the coast of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland for 10 days have told locals that salvage experts are not ready to refloat the vast structure.
The semi-submersible rig, Transocean Winner, ran aground close to Dalmore beach near Carloway on 8 August. It was being towed from Norway to Malta when its towline snapped in rough seas.
At a public meeting on Thursday evening, representatives of the oil firm said the salvage effort remained at the mercy of the poor weather and strong tides, and apologised to the local community.
Dave Walls, an operations director for Transocean, told islanders: “The other thing I would like to do is to apologise for the disruption to your daily lives.”
He said that although good progress was being made in the operation to refloat the structure, it remained “tricky to predict” when that might actually take place.
The 15-person salvage team now working aboard the rig have set up emergency generators, pumps and internal cameras. Compressors needed to provide buoyancy for the refloat are expected to arrive on the island by ferry on Friday.
Walls said: “We need to get ourselves in the position where we’re ready to float and we’re not there yet. Once we’re ready to float we then need the ideal conditions to float and that’s a suitable weather window – no wind, the right tide. Everything needs to be just right because we get one opportunity to do it right.”
He assured islanders that no trace of the rig would be left when the salvage operation – which will include a sweep of the seabed – was complete.
The platform was carrying 280 tonnes of diesel when it ran aground. Experts believe two of the four storage tanks were damaged when it hit rocks near Carloway, with a potential loss of 53 tonnes of fuel. But there has been no sign so far of an oil slick nor any reports of pollution.
Work to transfer the remaining diesel into undamaged tanks began on Thursday. On Friday morning the salvage team plans to test out procedures in the event of any fuel being spilled during the refloat, in order to ascertain how quickly equipment could be deployed from Carloway to other locations.
