Reclaiming Oil Rigs As Oceanic Eco-Resorts

Mike writes "Here's an innovative reuse for those old abandoned oil rigs littering the ocean — convert them into eco resorts. Morris Architects' Oil Rig Platform Resort and Spa makes use of one of 4,000 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and transforms it into a beacon of sustainability, re-imagining an iconic source of dirty energy as an eco-haven that generates all of its power from renewable sources."

Comments

Don't forget the guns!

[XxtraLarGe]

They'll probably need to employ a pretty good sized security force if they want to ward off pirates--and yes, I'm being serious.

Re:Don't forget the guns!

[ArcadeX]

I work for the maritime administration in the gulf, pirate aren't really a concern here. Too busy of a shipping lane, with too many patrols from the coast gaurd and navy. Most of these would be just outside US internation waters, pirates would have to be based inside the US to hit them in short range craft more commonly used.

Re:Don't forget the guns!

[meringuoid]

Most of these would be just outside US internation waters, pirates would have to be based inside the US to hit them in short range craft more commonly used.

The Somali pirates have been getting bolder lately. Nowadays they set out in large ships with long range, and deploy short-range fast craft from that mothership to launch the actual attack. The Sirius Star was halfway to Madagascar when it was taken.

Still, the reason pirates flourish in Somalia is that it is an anarchy close to a major shipping route. Although there are plenty of nations in the region with weak governments, I don't think there's any outright anarchic state in the Caribbean that might form a pirate haven. And, as you say, it would be a bold pirate who operated in the back yard of the US Navy. The Gulf of Aden isn't any great power's particular patch, and hasn't been since the fall of the Empire; the same cannot be said for the Caribbean. So far the Somali pirates haven't upset any major power badly enough for a serious effort to be made to eradicate them; even so, it's clear that the Indians in particular are near the limit of their patience, and many other nations have been sending warships to the region.

Re:Or a private micro-nation strong hold!

[oodaloop]

Yeah, TPB wanted to buy it, but Sealand was asking for a fortune. The glitch, aside from it being way too much money, is that you can't sell a nation. Besides, no one has recognized Sealand as a nation. A passport from them, which you can buy, wouldn't be worth the paper on which it was printed.

Lists of Rigs

[Archon-X]

As an avid 'urban explorer' - an oil rig has long since been a hot target.
Are there maintained lists of abandoned rigs?

Anyone in the know?

Re:Or a private micro-nation strong hold!

[hardburn]

Taking the assumption that Sealand is a legitimate nation (for the sake of argument), I'm afraid you can no longer replicate that success on with an oil rig. The first problem is that nations have extended their territories into international waters a lot farther since Sealand was founded. If Sealand hadn't already been claimed, it would be in England's territory today.

Secondly, a 1982 international law forbids artifical structures from being made into countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_Sealand#Territorial_limits
According to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, there is no transitional law and no possibility to consent to the existence of a construction which was previously approved or built by a neighbouring state. This means that artificial islands may no longer be constructed and then claimed as sovereign states, or as state territories, for the purposes of extension of an exclusive economic zone or of territorial waters.

Note that this means that Sealand's claim must be legitimate prior to 1982 in order to be grandfathered in.

Re:Or a private micro-nation strong hold!

[meringuoid]

Did anyone do anything about it though? If not, you could at least get away with semi-independant nation status, where you were independant unless you provoked a nearby real nation to do something.

Sealand has never quite provoked Britain badly enough to be invaded. The military cost of annexing Sealand would be trivial; the problem would be the legal situation. It could be argued that Britain has implicitly recognised Sealand in the past; for a start, there was a court decision in 1968 that Sealand was outside British jurisdiction, which was cited ten years later by the British government as a reason to do nothing about a German being held prisoner in Sealand after a failed coup d'etat.

It would take months to sort out, and be the most spectacular media circus in the meantime. Awfully embarrassing. And then there's the PR end of things. You'd need sound propaganda to paint the Sealanders as, oh, a bunch of crazed armed thugs on an old sea fort with a habit of taking pot shots at passing ships - otherwise you'd look the most awful bully, sending the SBS or someone to take over the smallest country in the world.

If shooting at the Royal Navy didn't do it, I doubt running a pirate BitTorrent tracker service out of Sealand would be sufficient provocation for a British invasion to go ahead. After all, the place was founded by a pirate radio operator in the first place, it would only be in keeping with proud Sealand tradition. I suspect British policy is simply to quietly ignore the entire thing and wait for Prince Roy to die, or at least grow old enough to want to live somewhere slightly more comfortable - and then demolish the place once it's abandoned.