Converting Oil Rigs to Idyllic Diving Resorts

SeaVentures Dive Resort

When you first discover the underwater wonderland of a thriving tropical coral reef, you will understand why people fly thousands and tens of thousands of miles for the experience. Off the east coast of Malaysian Borneo sits an abandoned oil rig that has been converted into a diving resort -- Seaventures. People come from Britain, Japan, China, and a few from the US.

"So far as we know, we're the only ones in the world using an oil rig as a hotel and diving platform," said Suzette Harris, the Singaporean owner. Her father-in-law, a regional Malaysian official, bought the rig in Singapore in 1988 (there, she said, "you can buy a used drilling platform just like you can buy a used boat."). He had it towed into Borneo waters.

No one would confuse the result with a luxury hotel. The 25 tiny guest rooms, although spotlessly clean, resemble those on a cruise ship that has seen better days. A visitor's room had a rusty metal locker without hangers to serve as a closet, and the reading lights and shower water heater didn't work. The air smelled from the oil powering the generators. For recreation, an employee band every few nights blasted rock music into the hours when one might have wanted to sleep. Meals were far from haute cuisine, although fresh and bounteous. A three-day, two-night scuba-diving package for $516, per-person double occupancy, includes room, meals, transfers, equipment rental and guarantees of a morning of three dives at Sipadan Island. _WSJ_via_ImpactLab

Not exactly luxury accomodations, but the surroundings should more than make up for the spartan lodgings.

Similar abandoned oil rigs sit idle around the world, when they could be put to very good use.

Underwater Paradise

For example, in the Gulf of Mexico off the US coast, there are many dozens of abandoned rigs that the Obama administration is demanding be dismantled and hauled away as trash. What a waste -- and by an administration that prides itself on its hope and change! Why not help to institute positive change, and turn the abandoned rigs into thriving ongoing concerns? It is easy to create artificial reefs which attract entire new ecosystems. Why not make it a part of an overall plan to rejuvenate the Gulf economy -- after the Obama Pelosi devastation and mismanagement following the BP oil spill?

Unfortunately, the O-P regime seems to be more concerned with destroying the ability of energy companies to make profits and stay in business, than it is with creating a thriving and prosperous nation. Too, too bad.