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Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

There was a really interesting article on HN a few months ago [1] about the biggest ship recycling yards and their environmental impact.

Anyone have any idea why these oil rigs are taken to different places to be scrapped? I would have assumed that Chittagong, Alang, Gadani, etc. would take care of the rigs too.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34905496

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Because Chittagong has no facilities for breaking oil rigs. When they break ships, they run them at full speed toward the shore to beach them. Can't do that with a rig.

You haven't not seen the bottom part of a rig then. In Alang, on high tide, the rigs are beached as close to the shoreline as possible. Please don't provide misinformation with assumptions.

Can you run a rig full speed onto a beach, like they do with the ships?

Turkey can take only a certain tonnage of vessels, anything which is above 10,000 LDT (Weight of ship in tonnes) is sent to the Sub-Continent. As ships grew bigger, ship recycling shifted from EU to Asia due to labor costs, ship size and environmental factors.

>Anyone have any idea why these oil rigs are taken to different places to be scrapped?

Optics. It's not a good look to have [insert oil / drilling rig company name here]'s rig being disassembled in places with no environmental or HSE controls.

As opposed to [insert oil company name here]'s tanker? Ok, they are sold to shell companies and renamed before their last voyage, but I guess with a little effort everyone can find the original owner...

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