We know the kind of weather forces were at work in the Seacor Power disaster, but what kind of economic forces may have contributed?
The Seacor Power is a liftboat.
Eric Smith, Associate Director of the Tulane Energy Institute describes her as “Essentially a flat bottom barge with engines and three legs so it can jack itself out of the water.”
Smith says a liftboat can only make about four knots an hour as they shuttle out to shallow water oil platforms and back.
And he says they’ve been prone to accidents: “[There’s] a long history of liftboat accidents as well, this is not the first time, we’ve had a problem with liftboats and bad weather. We’ve even had one turnover at the dock.”
But there’s a lot more to the odyssey of the Seacor Power. Who were the crew and why were they aboard a boat precariously heading out to sea on Tuesday?
Professor Smith says liftboats and the men who work on them were caught in the economic doldrums of the oil industry in the past few years.
Dropping oil prices meant less demand, exacerbated by Covid-19 epidemic when oil prices bottomed out.
As oil was dropping in price, shallow water platforms were not producing much oil and that meant a lowering demand for the kind of maintenance work performed by liftboats and their crews.
With the price of oil on the rise, renewed need for a liftboat to journey to a shallow water platform (anywhere from 20-to-100 feet depth) was probably a welcome return to service.
We’ve learned from the family of at least one missing mariner that he was taking a job on the Seacor Power because he needed to provide for his family.
We’ve also heard other media reports that another mariner came aboard the Seacor Power to work an extra shift on the platform with the same need to provide.
Smith says this is what life is like for liftboat mariner, work on demand that is infrequent due to the times.
“I think people are under the pressure of reduced operations and several report a low level of activity,” Smith points out. “Particularly in the shallow-water Gulf where the liftboats are operating.”
Smith says on-going job losses in the industry since 2014 and a bottoming out of oil prices due to the pandemic have made available work for liftboat crews scarce.
“That’s the pressure on the people on the shore where they’re operating in an environment where there’s not enough work and they would like to be employed,” Smith explains. “But that’s not the same motivation that the company has which is to maintain production.”
So when the Seacor Power put to sea many of her crew were said to be taking on extra work, and…”Liftboats being some of the smallest boats in the Gulf were hurt disproportionately by the decline in work overall. So for the people who operate those boats, it would be logical to pick up extra work and be happy to have it.”
