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My photojournalism associate McCracken McCracken and I were lounging around on the top of Signal Hill, waiting for a war to break out or for the gangsters to fall from the trees; whichever came first.
Being a photojournalist is not such an easy gig. Opportunity is fickle, and seldom knocks. In many ways, it's similar to a shooting star. If you don't stare at the sky, you'll never see one.
Or something like that.
"What the hell is that?" asked McCracken McCracken, cracking a beer and pointing towards the harbour and a blaze of light parked hard up against the city. "A Christmas tree?"
"Nah," I replied, digging around for a smoke. "It's the FPSO Dalia. Gunnar Horpestad's tracked it from Korea to Norway and has thirteen albums covering its building and fitting. Amazing stuff. He shot it all with a Canon EOS 300D. It's a 6.3 megapixel SLR. Makes me feel a pauper."
I felt dejected. But McCracken McCracken felt nothing. "Shut up, you fool," she snorted. "It's not the size of your camera that counts. It's what you do with it that matters. What's that thing called?"
My spirits rose. "FPSO Dalia. It's spectacular, but most Capetonians haven't even seen it. They're asleep."
"You're telling me. I thought we had an energy crisis. That thing's lit up like Times Square."
"It gives the terrorists a target," I muttered, finding a Forum, lighting it and taking a drag. I decided I would ask Gunnar if he had a second-hand job lying around. Norwegians are rich. I should know. Amé lives there.
The mountain was quiet. I couldn't see the gangsters pitching.
"So, what is it?" asked McCracken McCracken, her tone displaying an unwillingness to voice ignorance. "The FPSO Dalia, I mean?"
"It's a Floating Production System Offshore," I answered. "A petroleum and gas refinery. This one belongs to Total and it's headed for Block 17, a deep-sea oil concession and oil field 135 kilometers off Angola, to pillage the last of Africa's oil while the people starve. They're scagging about 250,000bbd from 1,500 meters down. It's a rich folk's game. They buy these things."
"How'd you mean?"
"Well, they cost. But there are plenty of people with money. They have armies working for them and can afford these things. They buy FPSOs like we do used cars. That thing — the Dalia — is 300 meters long, 60 meters wide and a couple of hundred feet high. Its superstructure of 30,000 tons is dumped on a 55,000 ton hull, it can process a quarter million barrels of crude a day, and can store 2,000,000 barrels. With Esso, BP, Statoil, and Norsk Hydro, Total have 34 wells and two rigs up there, so the Dalia will be busy."
"How do you know all this stuff?" McCracken McCracken eyed me suspiciously.
"It's my job," I answered off-handedly. "I am, after all, a professional photo-journalist."
I paused, taking it all in. I don't like what's going on. All this fits my thesis, developed some years ago, that South Africa will one day serve as an American base of some sort. Forget tankers docking in the Bight. We'll see a U.S. Navy base on Sao Tome or Principe before long. And U.S. carriers in Table Bay.
"Now that Peak Oil is a reality, the rich pigs need portable refineries capable of moving here, there and everywhere to exploit increasingly small pockets of wealth."
"Okay, so they cost. How much?"
"That's over a billion dollars worth. The work is outsourced to countries like Korea. The Koreans build the thing and it's then sent to Angola and Brazil to take what oil's left. It's built to last 20 years, when the oil runs out, and it'll end up littering the sands of Chittagong or, as we like to put it, the Breaker's Yard."
"So if it's such big business, that's why these guys all work together, e.g. the EU and the States with their Black Hole prisons and such?"
"You got it. And they have navies to protect their assets."
"So how come this thing's in Cape Town?"
"We're trying to make ourselves attractive as an all-purpose repair and fitment centre," I answered. "That's why the SEDCO 709, a massive Transocean drilling rig, is over on the Waterfront side. Three South African companies, DORBYL Marine, Globe Engineering and SA Five, have a ZAR130 million contract to refit and repair her."
We gazed down at the rig, its lights a busy but smaller equivalent of the Dalia's. I imagined the welding and banging and lifting going on in that corner of the harbour.
"They just appeared," mused McCracken McCracken. "Out of nowhere. And they're off to nowhere."
She's the romantic. "The rig's going to be around a while yet," I told her. "The Dalia will soon be off to Angola for its first assignment."
"It's amazing to think there are these things out there," McCracken McCracken said quietly. "We can no longer see ourselves raping our reserves."
"Yeah. Just like the First World's sweatshops. There are more than 100 of these FPSOs in operation, mainly off Angola, Nigeria and Brazil. But the Brits have quite a few operating off the Shetlands. What intrigues me is that they're lumpen. On their own, they're useless."
"Eh?" Knocking back the last of her beer and scrabbling for another, McCracken McCracken looked interested. "How'd you mean, lumpen."
"They can't power themselves and have to be towed or carried everywhere. Y'see that freighter-looking thing next to the Dalia?"
McCracken McCracken peered down on the lights of Cape Town. "Vaguely," she muttered.
"it's not a freighter. It's one of Fairmount's super tugs. Two of the buggers will tow the refinery up to Angolan waters."
"Pretty big tugs," McCracken McCracken agreed.
"Yeah, but how's about the Gavea Lifter, carrying the rig?" I asked her. "I mean, one doesn't think of rigs being loaded on a ship and carted about like so much cargo. Or using a ship as a dry dock. But the Gavea Lifter, towed by the Smit Amandla, hauled the Sedco 709 down from Saldahna Bay."
"There's a ship under that rig?"
"It's basically a barge. And it's also owned by Fairmount. There's something fishy about that. Anyway, these things are new, partly submersible, and everywhere. It demonstrates a 'can-do approach' in all its ugliness."
"Shit, there's a lot going on that we just don't get to see."
"Yeah, you're telling me. Look, nothing's going to happen up here, so let's go down and get a better view."
Which we did. Harbour security is tight, but I've been developing my contacts. We were soon sucking in the scent of the sea while marvelling at man's monstrous hubris. I spoke to a South African who's doing six months on the Dalia, and he explained something of its function.
These weapons of mass pillage are going to grow in number over the next five years. But the rig was cool; a lot of work going on and everything on a scale unimaginable until seen up close. As a kid, I sailed past one after a couple of weeks at sea, and was awed by the encounter. Silent, immutable, and looking like Kubrick's monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, it dwarfed the surrounding ocean.
Hoisted atop a barge, it's still pretty damned impressive. But I've grown used to these things and, today, it's the harbour itself that fascinates me. It is here that people gather to do whatever it is they do. Whereas land-based commerce has been reduced to the electronic flow of unseen ciphers, down on the waterfront people continue to wheel, deal, and make the decisions that matter. No matter the size of their toys.
Note: Beware the harbor, all ye new to the age of the camera. Prone to experimenting (and finding that, while shots of well-lit subjects are best left to 'auto or night settings with flash' and less well-lit shots can be successful juggling aperture and exposure—the color and lighting are better though camera shake is a big factor), I was constantly cleaning the camera's lens.
No matter how romantic the harbor air, it is filled with diesel, gas, and other petrochemicals that settle like snow on a lens. What these things do to our lungs, I really don't know.
But that's not my concern. Because you can't see whether a shot's been buggered by these unseen hazards stolen from deep in the heart of the Earth, the best thing to do is zoom in on the LCD display of each shot and scour it for discoloration. If you find any specks, clean it with either cotton or a 'lens pencil', a piece of static-free cloth attached to a flanged nipple that fits neatly into the lens' corners, backed on the end by a brush.
I told Niek (he and Shelley — both professional photographers and fine bloggers to boot — have given me encouragement), I find people extremely difficult to shoot. I'm adding night shots to the list. That said, when they do work (and the exposure and aperture settings sing in harmony), the hard work is justified.
