Deep sea diving/diving for the oil industry?

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,273
Hi all,
just thinking about jobs that might be interesting and this one came up! I remember seeing a program on Discovery years ago (maybe 10 years!) about a diving school off the Plymouth sound who were training divers, seemed very interesting.

I'm just wondering if there's anyone here that has done it for a living or has researched it? Working on oil rigs etc, is there a requirement for people to be highly educated (to uni level in engineering etc) in engineering/construction?

Cheers :).
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,273
Sirrel Squirrel said:
I reckon you'd have to know quite a bit about engineering, probably need a degree and experience on land and also be a very good diver.
Being a good diver and having experience is sort of a given but needing to be educated to degree level?
 
Suspended
Joined
30 Aug 2004
Posts
9,206
i thought to be a rigger you just need to be strong and stay out at sea for like 6months at a time (and earn £70k or about) oh and possibly die due to large fires or whatever
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Oct 2004
Posts
13,177
Location
South Shields
My friend is a Diver so I know abit about gettin qulifications etc.

If you are looking at doing sat diving they are a number of expenive courses you need to take to do it.

My mate did his initial deep diving in south africa for 3 months and cost him close to 10k iirc, that gave him his ticket to dive 60m on air and 180 on mixture (not sure about these number will ask him later)

But you cant do mixture diving in this country untill you have your sat diving ticket which can only be done in a few places, in this country the only one I know of is up near fort william.

Also to do diving on a rig it is a good idea to have some sort of trade, i.e. welding/plater etc.

KaHn
 
Associate
Joined
15 Oct 2005
Posts
1,979
Location
Edinburgh
Company I work for has a division for this type of thing, loads of huge ships all around the world servicing the platforms. Mostly its underwater surveying to make sure the platforms\pipes\etc are in good order so i'd imagine a good engineering degree would be required.

Dont know a huge amount about it since it's mostly based out of the gulf of mexico.
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Oct 2004
Posts
13,177
Location
South Shields
Sirrel Squirrel said:
I reckon you'd have to know quite a bit about engineering, probably need a degree and experience on land and also be a very good diver.

Yor kidding right? You'll never get an engineer doing sat diving :eek:

KaHn
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
5,550
Location
Liverpool
geeza said:
i thought to be a rigger you just need to be strong and stay out at sea for like 6months at a time (and earn £70k or about) oh and possibly die due to large fires or whatever

I think that most of the heavy labouring work has already been done as most of the rigs are just pumping stations these days.
A lot of people get into it via the Royal Navy were they are trained for free,almost
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2004
Posts
24,654
I think its a progression from diving. The best person to ask would be Sleepy, who is a very experienced technichal diver.

I'd imagine that a person would need a background in technihcal diving (technichal diving can roughly be defined as any dive whereby the diver couldn't immediately surface either for medical reasons or becasue of the environment e.g. if they were in a cave...) and then I think they would have to attend a commercial diving school.

If you really want to examine whether this is possible for you, you should get your backside down to a diving club and just try diving out. The more you learn, the more you will know whether you are willing or not to take this path. You can get trained up to technichal diving with relatively small financial committment, but commercial diving from there might be more expensive...
 
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
1,884
bwahaha i've met loads of these guys, none are engineers - as if an engineer *** want to do that..

Army prolly the best way forward 'cause its freeeee and u may be able to get some rebreather training too!

make sure u like diving though, maybe join BSAC - if there are some old fogies in your club they might be ex-mil or used the first gen gear ;) With BSAC you can do some deco diving (i've been told) but you can't with padi and padi are just money grabbers. then do some TDI courses, trimix and all that malarky

good luck, but it is dangerous - not worht it imo

maybe just become a scuba instructor ;)
 
Soldato
Joined
23 Nov 2002
Posts
16,167
Sparky__H said:
The mixes they use will knock about 30 years off your life.

There's nothing wrong with a helium mix.

spirit said:
bwahaha i've met loads of these guys, none are engineers - as if an engineer *** want to do that..

Army prolly the best way forward 'cause its freeeee and u may be able to get some rebreather training too!

make sure u like diving though, maybe join BSAC - if there are some old fogies in your club they might be ex-mil or used the first gen gear ;) With BSAC you can do some deco diving (i've been told) but you can't with padi and padi are just money grabbers. then do some TDI courses, trimix and all that malarky

good luck, but it is dangerous - not worht it imo

maybe just become a scuba instructor ;)

Pay another dolla in bruv! lol

Yeah I don't know why decos would be a problem with BSAC, two guys I know went to 50m, then had to do a 45min deco lol.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
1,884
pyro said:
There's nothing wrong with a helium mix.



Pay another dolla in bruv! lol

Yeah I don't know why decos would be a problem with BSAC, two guys I know went to 50m, then had to do a 45min deco lol.


thats nothing lol, he'll be looking at doing hours of deco haha :) crazy, plus you gotta trust your surface support people with ** life esp if its with a pipe or wahtever. one of the guys i met in egypt did it before becoming an instructor - he said the thing he was most scared about was them getting the water temp wrong (his suit had water warming system or something) and apparently the temp changes so someone has to monitor it - if they dont you could be burnt really badly

that and he said it was pretty ****ing dangerous and not worth it

Mr Joshua said:
Cheers for the replies, I've been looking at sat diving articles on google - it helps when you know the right terms :D.

have you actaully got any diving experience??
 
Permabanned
Joined
9 May 2005
Posts
20,834
Location
NE8
Just as long as you can prepare yourself for the long hours, hard work, isolation and rigorous anal sex associated with a life at sea, you should be okay.

*n
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2004
Posts
24,654
Mr Joshua said:
Not yet, I'm just seeing exactly what is required before I make any decisions :).

You should get down to a BSAC club. You may never become a commercial diver, but even so you might enjoy diving. Dont just dive on the promise of a career, otherwise it might be harder for you to overcome the cold, wet struggles that diving often entails...
 
Back
Top Bottom