Oil drill rig Platforms.

SERTAO.

Anchored at Port Talbot in South Wales, U.K. this ship is surprisingly large for its work of oil exploration and awaits a new buyer? 

But since the Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolf has finally gone under and the lack of new construction of oil rigs Sertao  may soon be bought up for new work in the Artic ocean for fossil fuels?

She is a ship with everything I think one needs to experimentally drill and be serviced to other vessels with her own helicopter deck and various cranes and the like?

One needs to get down to Port Talbot Tata steel dock or the Aber Afan river to see her before she goes, perhaps never to be seen again?

Fracking!

Is it Dangerous?

We moan a lot here in the U.K. about Fracking and the consequences of it causing minor Earthquakes or damaging the water table? Yet the same machinery is used across the United States and is bringing in millions of dollars to the U.S. economy meaning that they are no longer at the mercy of OPEC and the Middle-East oil reserves?

Russia does the same thing, using the same drilling machines, but it has the advantage of being the largest landmass in the world and has many resources! It to has the largest of everything now, oil, coal, petroleum and gas at least for the next 3-400 years and trade with China will insure a reliable customer!

Environmentalists do not always have the best intentions on the cards for the general population of Britain over they wanting to live in their idyllic world?

Never seeing the light of Day. ONE.

Bores.

Boring machines come in various sizes and uses, we tend to associate them with tunnel construction as in the London Tubes, Channel Tunnel and the new London Cross rail project?

But there are as many used in a variety of roles from water well sinking to the present day need of fracking. Many of the surface drillers are set up for short-term workings, where as the boring machines are constructed under ground and when the jobs are completed they are buried or encased.

Smaller boring machines where developed for the mining industry to take men off the coal face, but today many are no longer used.

Despite computer or robotic automation, humans are still required to clear obstacles and this has lead to some very serious and devastating accidents in China, Russia and South-America.