An Oil Rig Made From Matches
“Finding your way round the Brent Bravo oil rig is a surprisingly bewildering business, even with a retired rig engineer called David Reynolds as your guide. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit cluttered,’ says David. ‘But that’s how oil rigs are.’ There’s the main body of the rig itself, supported by three enormous circular buttresses, littered with cranes, lifeboats and a helipad marked with an ‘H’. Then there’s what’s called the platform – almost as big as the rig itself and designed to bob about to one side on an enormous floating pontoon. ‘So this is your drilling platform,’ he continues. ‘With the drill floor, pipes, crane housing… That’s the derrick – where the oil comes in. And there’s an oil tanker – look! It’s impossible not to look. Not least because, rather than marching round a rain-lashed oil rig in the middle of the North Sea and shouting at the tops of our voices to be heard over the wind, David and I are several miles inland, in a very quiet museum in a little village called Bursledon, on the outskirts of Southampton. Oh yes, and the entire oil rig – buttresses, cranes, derricks, even the oil tanker – is made out of matchsticks. A staggering 4,075,000 matchsticks, to be precise – all individually whittled to size and glued together by David over the past 15 years.” w/ photos
