9 Days Falling, Volume I k-5 Page 5

  The pipelines were the arteries carrying the life blood of the developed world. They headed east to China, north to Russia, and along the Trans-Caspian Consortium route under the Caspian Sea to Baku before crossing Turkey to Ceyhan on the Eastern Med. What could not be sent by pipeline was also loaded directly onto shallow draft tankers and also moved to Baku, which had once again regained the great strategic prominence that it had in the 1940s when Hitler so coveted the oil there.

  “Crap,” Flack said aloud. “Look at this goddamned wire on the Gulf situation. That’s going to make my life miserable. With Thunder Horse down, my ass is in the sling now for production. How am I supposed to move the damn oil with the locals threatening to raise hell out here?”

  Here we just get our teeth into this field and the damn Chinese have to go and get a hair up their ass over these damn little islands, he thought. Sure it was for the oil survey rights, but how many barrels could there be? It would be years before they’d pump anything, but this little squabble was going to cause a headache for all the big producers too. Now every goddamned militant group from the Khazars to the PKK thinks they need to get in on the act here. Damn inconvenient to have Russian troops up north where they could swing down and cause some real mischief. If home office thinks a little shortfall of 20,000 barrels per day is a bother now, wait until the Russkies get here.

  Chevron tried for a piece of the Caspian reserves in 2007, and failed much farther south. Then the company managed to sign a lucrative development contract in the thick of things up north at Kashagan in 2018. The Company’s slim profit margin was depending on the field’s production, and Ben Flack was the man in the chair when things started to heat up on the global stage. It was just his luck, and he ticked off his production numbers noting that the shortfall was becoming harder and harder to cover.

  They were already 20,000 barrels off the pace because of the goddamned bunker busting, he mused. That was a term the locals used to describe their illegal sampling of oil from the ubiquitous pipelines crisscrossing the Caspian basin. Smugglers and militant groups, and even government controlled raiding parties would slip up to a line with a lighter full of empty barrels at sea or a truck with the same on land. Then they’d drill a hole and feed in some plastic tubing to milk the line. Just last week the Caspian District Police had a shootout with oil bandits, killing several militants, but that was old news in the region. As much as 10% of all the oil Chevron and other trans-nationals pulled out of the area ended up getting siphoned off by smugglers, the local mosquitoes sucking at the veins of the oil industry with their damned bunker busting.

  So Ben’s numbers were off this month, and he had crews working all the rigs associated with Medusa very hard tonight, in the hopes of making up for some of the enormous losses expected in the Gulf of Mexico with this odd late season hurricane. Pumping light was just not an option for him now. He had mid-level managers on the phone from headquarters in San Ramon, the Bollinger Canyon Boys as he called them, and the pressure was ratcheting up.

  With plenty of well pressure from the competition, the Bollinger boys wanted to know why the numbers were down again from the Caspian? Ben Flack hated the thought of another long conversation about the lack of security for ongoing operations, the slow response time of the Kazakh Police in the region, let alone their military.

  KAZPOL, the Mobile Police that patrolled the region in shallow drafted boats, was never there when you needed them, and never really reliable when they did manage to arrive on the scene in a timely manner. It was bad for numbers, and numbers were something Ben Flack understood all too well.

  He was thankful that the US viewing TV audience had such a short attention span, for it kept the real world news off the radar screen for most Americans. While they were all busy dialed in to singers and chefs and job seekers on the Voice, the Taste, the Job, and dancing with the stars or wondering how they’d fare if they were washed up on some deserted island with a chance for a big payoff if they played the game right, Ben Flack dealt with the real world, the very real and compelling problem that he stared at every night and every morning in his production tables. How to keep those numbers up, nudge them yet higher, and keep the folks all nice and warm back home this winter? That was reality as he knew it, and it made for some particularly uncomfortable nights on his rig, worrying over feeds and flows and well pressure and tanker traffic to the two big terminals on the coast—not to mention the pipelines.

  Numbers were numbers, a cold hard reality that could not be remedied by going to a commercial break. He was on his own little island out here in the region, on a hulking metal platform in the middle of a shallow oil drenched sea. While the folks back home watched Survivor, he was the one with his butt in the chair so they could keep their thumbs busy on the remote. But things weren’t so good on his little island tonight. Ben’s numbers were down again, and if the situation got any worse in the next few days, with militants threatening to launch another major protest or two, he just might have to take the precaution of shutting Medusa down. That would take another 100,000 barrels off his production list for each day he was down—bad news for him, if not FOX or CNN. Bad news for the boys back in Bollinger Canyon, and bad news for the folks back home, though they would probably never hear much about it…Until their next trip to a gas station.

  The worst of it all was the big shipment scheduled for this very weekend, an old rig from Baku that had been refurbished for operations. It was due to be set up tonight, and Crowley & Company, a highly specialized transport outfit, was already on the scene, moving in equipment they would need for the job. Crowley was able to get the platform all loaded on submersible barges and carefully prepared for the long tow job from Baku. Once on site, they would have no more than 48 hours to remove the sea fastenings and get the equipment shifted to the off shore shallows over the production site. Most of the work was scheduled for tomorrow night, at the dark of the moon. There was no sense inflaming the passions of the locals with a daylight move. Government officials had been paid off, a little KAZPOL security was in place, but with military units on heightened alert these last few weeks Ben was still worried.

  Tempers were running at a fever pitch due to a new round of government operations in the sensitive northern border region. The Kazakh army was staging maneuvers, hoping to discourage any Russian movement south. Their 36th Air Assault Brigade had arrived from Astana to take up blocking positions on the few roads and rail lines leading into the production zone. If the Russians pulled some military muscle out of Astrakhan, Volgograd, Saratov or Samsara they might just mount a major overland offensive that could sweep down to the North Caspian and seize the whole of the super-giant Kashagan field. That was the nightmare scenario that had bedeviled Western military planners for the last decade. How in the world could they defend the place? It was more vulnerable than Saudi Arabia had been when Saddam Hussein had gobbled up Kuwait.

  Flack set his lukewarm coffee down on the desk and leaned back in his swivel chair. He was squinting out the Plexi window, watching a few wildcatters making adjustments to one of the platform well feeds. The platform itself was like the head of an octopus, well named as a great Medusa where new directional drilling technology allowed umbilicals to snake off in all directions and exploit sites three to five miles away. Medusa served as a collection point and flow station, surrounded by shallow grey green waters and shoals about ten kilometers north of the company bases at Buzachi and Fort Shevchenko. It was one of ten facilities Chevron had in the region, and a good number of them were under Ben Flack’s watch tonight.

  Ben was a short, burly man, with thinning grey hair offset by an equally close cropped grey beard. His forties had fattened him out a bit in the gut, but the extra weight only seemed to add more presence to his stocky frame. He removed his wire frame glasses, rubbing a sore spot on the bridge of his wide nose, and reached for a cheesecloth he kept in the desk drawer. With a careful motion, he cleaned the lenses as he craned his neck to look for Mudman.

>   “Hey Eddie,” he said matter of factly. “Any word from Baylor on Kalamakas?” Arkol and Kalamakas were two other Chevron platforms in the region, along with Medusa.

  Ed Murdoch was making an adjustment on his flow monitors, a computer controlled system running Honeywell-PlantScape and Allen Bradley's Monitoring system on Wonderware MMI. He had come up through the ranks, working landside operations as a Mud Systems Specialist years ago. Now he was the Control Systems Engineer for Medusa, though everyone still called him “Mudman” for an easy handle.

  “Not a peep,” he said.

  “Well, he was supposed to call in over an hour ago.”

  “Probably still sleeping,” said Mudman as he bit off the end of a granola bar and tossed the wrapping paper into his round file. The early morning light off the sea reflected through the Plexiglas storm windows and glinted on his hair gel. Eddie was the polar opposite of Ben Flack, a wiry, round shouldered man who kept his thin, dark hair slick and tight on his knobby head. Earplugs from his new Apple iPhone dangled from his lean face, and gave the impression that he was permanently plugged in to his system monitors—an engineer Goth, complete with a vampire tattoo on his exposed left shoulder

  “I don’t like this,” said Flak. He was rocking in his chair now, moving his bulk this way and that, and for all the oil in the North Caspian there was just not enough to prevent an annoying squeak each time he moved, which only added to the strain in his head right now.

  “You worried about the locals again, or the Russians?” Mudman still seemed more interested in his granola bar than anything bothering Flack.

  “It’s that damn, Kazakh militia again,” said Flack, venting his frustration. “Didn’t they round up the ringleaders back in August when we had to shut down?”

  “Yup. Asshole called for the destruction of all Western Petroleum interests, or something like that. But that’s what got the locals all shit mouthed—they picked up one of their ring leaders and accused him of treason. Then the locals go ape shit and start taking it out on the oil companies.”

  “Well, why the hell do they have to pick on my platforms?” Ben complained. “I got numbers to meet, here, and we’ve got an installation this weekend. What is it this time? What’s eatin’ those lard ass locals now?”

  “Who knows,” said Mudman. “Could be those damn Khazar clansmen. Could be this talk of war and all. Remember, we’re east of Suez out here, Flakie. We’re sitting right on the frontiers of the Eurasian Alliance—SinoPac.”

  “Yeah, right. Look at this shit on the wire.”

  Flack was holding a Reuters news feed, where a statement from the Caspian Region People's Volunteer Force, or CRPVF for short. It was looking very threatening again. He put his eyeglasses back on and read aloud.

  “We will unleash upon the government and its cohorts, violence and mayhem never before reported in the history of the Kazakh state. We will kill every iota of oil operations in the Caspian Region. We will destroy anything and everything. We herein order that all staff, property and operations in the Caspian Region be totally evacuated in the next 48 hours. Shell, Chevron, Mobil, Total and others should take note. Their installations will not be spared. We will come after everything, living and not living. Failure to comply will result in death, grave sabotage and every other unthinkable vice.”

  “They’re coming after everything—living or not living?” Mudman had a sarcastic grin on his face. “Failure to comply will result in every other unthinkable vice? Such eloquence. This guy sounds like he went to college!”

  “Can you believe that shit?” Ben could think of a few vices he would like to revisit, but the threat implicit in this latest press release was rather pointed, and he reached for a bottle of chewable aspirin instead. “Forty-eight hours, they say, and I’ve got an installation to worry about now. Better get on the phone to Baylor,” he concluded. “I want to make sure he knows about this.”

  “Think we ought to call KAZPOL first? I mean, it took them hours to get here in August.”

  Flack’s anger and frustration ticked up another notch. “Christ, this is the last fucking thing I need this weekend, Mudman. I got Crowley off shore in six hours, and then we’ve got to move some heavy duty facilities inshore and get them anchored so the engineers can start setup first thing tomorrow. This is really the last fucking thing I need!”

  “Right,” said Mudman, adjusting his iPhone headset. “I’ll call Baylor.” He reached for the phone, but it rang before he could lift the receiver.

  “Now what?” said Flak with a frown. He had a deep misgiving that things were going to go from bad to worse, and he was right.

  Chapter 5

  If he thought Thunder Horse was bad, the news coming in now would make matters even worse. Mudman gave him a sheepish look, gesturing to the phone, as if afraid to touch it. Ben waved him off and picked up the receiver.

  “Flack,” he said, his voice flat as though he expected bad news. He was not to be disappointed.

  “Ben? We’ve got another problem,” came a voice. It was Wade Hanson, his Crowley representative supervising the big rig set operation inshore that night. Flack looked at his watch, mentally calculating where the rig should be by now, a full 24 hours after the move was started by the American Salvor and her escort of tugs.

  Earlier that night, three Invader Class high-powered tugs made their way north to the field site. With engine for only a 150,000 pound pull, the Invaders were on the scene for steerage and positioning more than anything else. The real work was to be done by a much bigger vessel, an American Salvor class boat, capable of handling a 600,000 pound pull. The lighter boats would keep the cargo stabilized until it could be properly positioned at the production site. Then they would wait until the platform feet settled nicely on the silted bottom. The submersible barge would be floated out from underneath the platform, and Crowley would whisk its tugs south again, hopefully before daylight, well on their way back to Baku. The locals would awaken to see another massive, hulking metal shape deftly positioned by the tugs, another de facto occupation of turf, there to secure control of the oil and gas beneath it.

  They would be another six weeks getting the platform up and running, retrofitting, repairing and positioning pipeline feeds. But, with any luck, the beachhead of this next invasion would be secured within 48 hours. That was the news the Bollinger Boys were really waiting on. The bothersome calls from middle-managers haggling with Bennie Flack over his pump numbers were only reflex. Ben knew the drill, and the drilling that went with it.

  “They taking pot shots at you again?” he said to Hanson on the phone. There had been two separate incidents already, small arms fire from what looked to be a fishing trawler near the coast. Thankfully no one had been hurt, though one of the Invader class tugs would be needing a new paint job and side window pane after the operation was complete.

  “Forget about that for now. Haven’t you heard yet?” The voice on the line was more urgent. “They hit the pipeline again.”

  That was just what he needed now, thought Flack, another pipeline explosion, with all the bad press, not to mention the cleanup. “Another bunker bust?” he asked. The constant pipeline attacks by smugglers on the landward side near the terminals often caused minor explosions and fires along the line. They were a nuisance, like the smugglers themselves, but seldom fatal to his flow chart numbers.

  “Worse than that,” said Hanson. “They hit the BTC line in Turkey. Pretty good rip, from what I hear. I just got word myself on the radio.”

  That got Flack’s attention immediately. The BTC line was his main artery from Baku through Turkey to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast. There were supposed to be tankers waiting there in 24 hours to receive a long stream of black gold bound for US ports. If the BTC line went down, oil could not get to Ceyhan.

  Hanson spelled out the details. The PKK, a Kurdish militant group that had a long history of targeting oil and gas operations to press its political agenda, had mounted a major operation at a key junctu
re in the long pipeline route, at Erzurum. They blew up a mile of pipeline and the oil road to Ceyhan was suddenly closed. Now the oil had only one way out if it was to ever reach a Western Alliance controlled port. It had to go all the way across Georgia to the Supsa terminal on the Black Sea Coast, and from there it would need tankers to get it down through the Bosporus and into the Aegean for ports serving either Europe or a long journey to the United States. Ben Flack was going to be a very busy man that night.

  “Christ almighty,” said Flack, clearly disturbed. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know, Ben. Word is that this will take down the BTC line for at least two weeks, maybe even a month.”

  “A Month? It was that bad? Look, I’ve got a big shipment I have to get on the deep water and headed stateside, and soon. Now I’ll have to route the damn thing through the Black Sea out of Supsa. You know what kind of a headache that will be with all this crap on the news about Russia and China? The Black Sea is a goddamn Russian lake!”

  “I hear your pain, my friend,” Hanson tried to sound sympathetic, but he had worries of his own. “Just be glad you aren’t inshore like I am with these local running around with AK-47s.”

  “Well I hope to God you’re still on schedule with this rig delivery. Will we get that done tonight?”

  “We’re starting our set now. Bottom looks good and we’ll be lowering the barge in a few hours. Should have that puppy floated out from under your baby by six PM. That is if we don’t get any more trouble from the militants. Anyone starts shooting at us and I’m pulling my people out. Home office got wind of that pipeline blow and gave me an earful. That’s why I thought I’d better call you first.”