Portland Metal Trades workers convert spy ship into oil-drilling vessel

PORTLAND, OR -- A famous spy ship is being converted into a deep-water oil- drilling rig by union workers at Cascade General.

The Glomar Explorer landed at the Port of Portland on Swan Island Feb. 14 to be outfitted with 4.5 million pounds of steel to fill the "moon pool," an open area occupying the central third of the hull. It also will get new drilling equipment and paint job, plus an overhaul of the electrical, piping ventilation, shafts and steering systems.

Some 400 union shipyard workers under contract with the Portland Metal Trades Council recently cut back from working seven 12-hour days to seven 10s as they strive to complete the job by mid-July.

The Northwest Labor Press got a tour of the ship from Don Chandler, business manager of Boilermakers Local 72. Other crafts on the project are Machinists Lodge 63, Electrical Workers Local 48, Pipefitters Local 290, Operating Engineers Local 701, Painters Local 10, Shipwrights Local 611, Sheet Metal Workers Local 16, Laborers Local 296, Asbestos Workers Local 36 and Teamsters.

"We'll have almost a half-million man-hours on this job," said Alan Jones, project manager. "We're right on the money to get it released on its due date."

The Glomar conversion is the largest, most complex project in the history of the yard," said Andrew Rowe, executive vice president of Cascade General.

The primary challenge was to replace the retractable 200-foot gates under the moon pool with prefabricated double-bottom sections (350 tons each), leaving a 74 by 42-foot drilling well.

The ship was lifted in Dry Dock 4, where in a carefully orchestrated sequence the gate fittings were cut away, the gates lowered and the dock partially submerged. In a delicate operation using winches then tugs, the moon pool gates were hauled free. The new double-bottom modules were then moved by barge onto Dry Dock 3, floated off, maneuvered under the ship and into the aperture where they were attached to temporary suspension brackets. The ship was lifted again and floor welders quickly connected the new bottoms to the original plate.

"We had to put it in blind," said Jim Mattix, ship superintendent and former member of Local 72. "Divers were used to tell us how the fit was."

Crews also are overhauling five existing 2,000-horsepower, shaft-driven thrusters and adding four 3,000-horsepower units that operate electronically in 50 by 12.5-foot vertical tubes, allowing the ship to hold a position of 10 feet over a drill site 7,500 feet deep. The thrusters can be raised and inspected at deck level via a vertical rail system that is "true from top to bottom within a half-inch," said Mattix.

A critical maneuver off the dry dock was lifting out a pair of 150-ton trusses that were part of the Glomar Explorer's original 17-million-pound lifting capacity.

The heavy lift cleared the way for construction of new deck levels. Pedestals for two Seatrax cranes with boom lengths of 90-110 feet were then built over the original side decks. Before stripping the lead-based paint, workers had to encapsulate the entire ship and tarp the dry dock, then thoroughly clean it up before repainting, Mattix said.

The Glomar Explorer was built in 1973 for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by Howard Hughes' Global Marine Co. The CIA reportedly used it to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the ocean floor 700 miles northwest of Hawaii. Recovery of the submarine is credited with giving the CIA enough information to break Soviet military codes, helping to end the Cold War. After retrieving the sub, the ship worked only briefly -- from 1978 to 1980 -- to experiment with deep-ocean mining.

The Houston-based Global Marine Co. is leasing the ship back from the government for 30 years to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. After the conversion, the vessel will begin a five-year joint drilling project between Chevron and Texaco.