Bullwinkle was a tall, pile-supported fixed steel

oil platform An oil platform (also called an oil rig, offshore platform, oil production platform, etc.) is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms w ...

in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

. Installed in 1988, the total weight of the platform was 77,000 tons, of which the steel jacket comprises 49,375 tons. At the time of its construction it was the third tallest freestanding structure ever builtshorter than only the

CN Tower The CN Tower () is a communications and observation tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Completed in 1976, it is located in downtown Toronto, built on the former Railway Lands. Its name "CN" referred to Canadian National, the railway co ...

and the

Ostankino Tower Ostankino Tower () is a television and radio tower in Moscow, Russia, owned by the Moscow branch of unitary enterprise Russian TV and Radio Broadcasting Network. Standing , it was designed by Nikolai Nikitin. , it is the tallest free-standin ...

and the tallest in the United States, being taller than the pinnacle of the

Sears Tower The Willis Tower, formerly and still commonly referred to as the Sears Tower, is a 110- story, skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan ...

. Of the total height, are below the

waterline The waterline is the line where the hull of a ship meets the surface of the water. A waterline can also refer to any line on a ship's hull that is parallel to the water's surface when the ship is afloat in a level trimmed position. Hence, wate ...

. It is located in Green Canyon Block 65, approximately southwest of

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

. Bullwinkle currently is operated by QuarterNorth Energy, LLC. The total field development construction cost was according to some sources. The jacket, i.e. the mainly submerged part of the platform, was built by Gulf Marine Fabricators in 1985–1988 at the North Yard location in Ingleside, Texas, at the intersection of the Corpus Christi Ship Channel and the Intracoastal Waterway in Port Aransas, east of Corpus Christi. The platform was shipped using a barge and installed by

Heerema Marine Contractors Heerema Marine Contractors (HMC) is a contractor headquartered in the Netherlands most notable for operation of three of the largest crane vessels in the offshore industry. History Heerema Marine Contractors was formed in 1948 by Pieter Schelte ...

. The jacket, which is some 1,400 feet tall, is the second tallest object ever to be moved to another position (relative to the surface of the Earth), after the

Troll A platform The Troll A platform is a Condeep gravity-based structure offshore natural gas platform in the Troll gas field off the west coast of Norway. Built from reinforced concrete, , it was the tallest structure that has ever been moved to another pos ...

. The Bullwinkle platform was the third tallest freestanding structure built in water after the

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Britannica.com. (; ; ; s ...

and Baldpate

Compliant Tower A compliant tower (CT) is a fixed rig structure normally used for the offshore production of oil or gas. The rig consists of narrow, flexible (''compliant'') towers and a piled foundation supporting a conventional deck for drilling and producti ...

s, but it was the tallest of these that could be built on land as is without any modifications. In 2010, Superior Energy Services took ownership of the platform and planned to decommission it at the end of its economic life.

External links

Info on offshore-technology.com

Towing Largest Oil Rig in History
installation and construction video *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bullwinkle (Oil Platform) Energy infrastructure completed in 1988 Oil platforms off the United States Petroleum industry in the Gulf of Mexico Energy infrastructure in Louisiana 1988 establishments in Louisiana

See also

External links

References