Skerry Alpha

Skerry Alpha is a former production platform 140 miles east of Aberdeen, and the first oil platform converted into an AI training rig. Haar Compute took it over in 2031 instead of decommissioning it.

From the air it looks almost exactly as it did when it pumped oil: the same yellow cranes, the same grey accommodation block, the same helideck with its faded H. The flare stack is gone, and where the process plant used to be there is a long low hall with no windows. Its drill floor became a switching and power distribution centre, its process deck battery storage, and its cranes deploy and recover the pods. Around it, in every direction except west, the turbines of the Skerry offshore wind farm stand in rows to the horizon. Hydrogen is stored in the depleted Skerry gas reservoir beneath it.

Sixty metres below the platform, in a ring around its legs, sit the pods: sixty at first, sixty-four by the first Christmas, each a sealed, nitrogen-filled pressure vessel about the size of a shipping container. The control room is on the third level of the old accommodation block, in what used to be the radio room.

The Long Calm

From 16 to 23 January 2034 a blocking high settled over the North Sea and the wind stopped. Skerry Alpha ran on batteries, then onshore pumped hydro, then hydrogen from its own reservoir, and for two hours exported power to the mainland, the first time the rig had supplied the shore since gas production ended. Seven days. Never stopped. Logged for the record. The pub quiz was won by the ROV team, who were insufferable about it.

Behind the scenes

Skerry Alpha appears throughout Oil Rigs to Training Rigs, by Charlotte Joanne at Blind Ant. The Long Calm is told in its operations log.