The Truth, The whole truth, and nothing but the truth

Black stuff floating on the water suspiciously near a riser but definitely not oil

The above is one of a series of photographs I took from a DSV in Cameroon  around 2 January 2010,  I had previously posted it on this blog, but it was taken down for reasons of expediency. There is quite and interesting story behind the photograph.  We were on board a DSV ( Diving Support Vessel) about to start work on an adjacent riser, In fact we had been issued a work permit to start diving ( to the right of the shot is the edge of the dive basket that would have lowered the diver to the job). When we noticed the rapid spread across the surface of the dark substance that the oil company assured us was not oil.  This was the dark stuff that the oil company was sucking up from a well and pumping though pipelines, but was we were assured not oil, and even if it was oil it was less than 15 litters and therefore not reportable. In fact the head of the field came out and stood on deck and assured us that there was nothing in the water, when i showed him the picture above ( on my camera) he said that  I must have photoshoped it ( on my camera!?!) I was extremely flattered by his estimation of my graphics abilities,  and especially by the way that I had managed to superimpose it on  the 3d medium of the sea that was lapping up and down a few meters behind him. Now I might have been deluded, it might have been a psychic occurrence imposing itself on my camera, or it might have been the fact that this was a frenchman in Africa, far away from the scrutiny of the North Sea and Greenpeace and he quite frankly didn't give a damn, after all it was only going to wash up on the beaches and fishing villages aof a bunch of africans and not the pristine sands of Biarritz.

Perhaps that is unfairly cynical of me,  to suspect that Oil producers might operate different standards in third world countries. I did previously publish this photograph under the title " Lies, damned lies and down right hypocrisy" but i was informed of the error of my ways ( by the oil company) and now stand corrected so you will be pleased to see I have corrected the title to " The truth , The whole truth  and nothing but the truth", I hope this meets with greater approval and it will be seen that I have amended my ways, I have also purchased a new camera, because it was quite clearly a fault with my camera that caused the black stain across that image, and all the other photos I took facing that structure.

I was also also quite clearly wrong in my assessment of the French Oil Company Official, and I should not have doubted his assertion that the mysterious black slick round the platform was nothing  to do with the platform , that it was not oil and had drifted in from somewhere else.  I am now enjoying my new found state of enlightenment and understanding.

the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King

Any one who reads this blog will have noticed that a number of posts were recently  removed. This was because my previous employers were concerned about them. In this current era of the Levenson enquiry and the debate over freedom of speech it may be some what ironic that rather than investigate the comments posted ( backed up as you may recall by photographic evidence) it was preferred that they were removed.  It was perhaps a good thing that I left when I did because the publication of my next novel draws near. I wrote this novel before I started working for them though I was working on their assets in West Africa ( as a freelance sub contractor of a subcontractor) at the time and as the novel deals with corruption in the oil industry, and I must stress it is a NOVEL, that is fiction and as in all the movies I will stress that none of the characters are meant in any way to resemble real or living characters, but it was inspired and coloured by my observations working in Africa and the Middle east in the oil industry, any way I don't think they  would have liked it, if this blog was enough to cause waves the publication of the book would have caused a tsunami.


I hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Of course none of it is true, and that is a small fact  that may comfort them these things could not possibly happen, not in the highly regulated industry in which we work, with ethics departments, accountability traceability and all those other buzz words with which they ( the industry ) pepper their platitudes, but a large part of the novel concerns the kidnapping of a group of oil workers in West Africa and postulates the, of course, entirely fictional machinery behind that kidnapping and looks into the areas of who really benefited and who really orchestrated it. But it is, as I must repeat, fiction. Though I was actually kidnapped, and this is  matter of public record, and the AK 47s had real bullets in them and they  militants were well funded which i s also well established nothing else should be inferred from the novel.

Astute readers  or those who know me we'll may recal that my masters degree was writen about Hamlet, and  it s from that work that I took the title of this post;

the play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King