Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 94, Greencastle, Putnam County, 22 December 1984 — Page 3

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VICE PRESIDENT BUSH Criticizes press Bush 'certain' shuttle story aided Soviets WASHINGTON (AP) Vice President George Bush says he is “absolutely certain” the Soviet Union benefited from The Washington Post’s decision to publish an article about an upcoming spy satellite launch although many newspaper editors dispute that it endangered national security. Bush is the highest-ranking Reagan administration official to criticize the newspaper for running a story about the satellite in its Wednesday editions. “I wish it hadn’t been printed because the story was not only inaccurate but it also did disclose some very sensitive information,” Bush said in an interview taped Friday with WRC-TV of Washington. “I am absolutely certain that they (Soviets) benefited from this disclosure and probably from subsequent disclosures...” the vice president said. Bush’s criticism follows Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s comment that the article was the “height of journalistic irresponsibility” and may have hurt national security. “Someone should give Cap Weinberger a tranquilizer,” said Leonard Pardue, the acting executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times in Kentucky. “He badly overreacted to the Post story,” Pardue said. “Nonsense,” the Tribune of Oakland, Calif., said of Weinberger in an editorial. “If that’s big news to the Soviets, they must have been hibernating in Siberia.” The story reported that the space shuttle next month will put into stationary orbit over the Soviet Union a satellite capable of intercepting radio, telephone and satellite communications. It was printed two days after the Air Force announced strict secrecy would surround the shuttle mission. In general, many editors, in an informal survey and on editorial pages, agreed with a view in the Los Angeles Times. “Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger called the Post’s decision ‘irresponsible.’ But if news agencies can figure out the nature of the payload, so can the Soviets,” said the paper. The Kansas City Times saw a broader issue in the controversy, namely the rights of the news media versus the government’s right to maintain secrecy. The Times said in an editorial that wrong motives are often inferred from government secrecy, with some claiming “censorship, intimidation,” and asking “what are they trying to hide? And anyway, everybody already knows that stuff, including the Russians.’” The paper asked why the military can “seldom be given the benefit of the doubt” and suggested the story hurt the nation’s security. After the Post ran its story, other news organizations carried ; their own. Some organizations, including The Associated Press and NBC News, obtained in early December the same information that the Post printed but voluntarily withheld it at the Pentagon’s request.

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90,000 barrels a day Tension leg platform, costing nearly $1 billion, has oil industry eyeing new depths beneath North Sea

c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service ABOARD THE HUTTON PLATFORM, North Sea - As one nestles down on the North Sea’s newest oil production platform following a two-hour helicopter flight from Aberdeen, Scotland, the platform differs little to the untutored eye from its neighbors dotting the horizon here in the productive East Shetlands basin. But unlike other platforms around the world, which rest on steel or concrete towers, Hutton is perched above a buoyant hull that is tethered to the seabed by long steel cables. The cables are stretched to hold the hull down in the water, limiting its horizontal movement and eliminating vertical bobbing. Conoco, the oil company that operates Hutton, is convinced that it represents a design breakthrough that will lead the oil industry into waters far deeper than can be tackled with existing structures. Hutton, which cost just under $1 billion, or one-third more than originally budgeted, has proved to be marginally more expensive than traditional designs would probably have been. But Conoco is convinced that its experience with the tension leg platform or TLP here in 485 feet of water, some 90 miles northeast of the Shetland Islands, will cut costs 15 percent and that the economics of designs in deeper water will be substantially better. “TLP will shine in the North Sea at depths of 600 feet to 3,000 feet,” said Thomas Marr, manager of the Hutton project. Numerous factors are involved in choosing platform designs, including the size and characteristics of the oilfield being tapped, the distance to land or other platforms with processing facilities, and sea and weather conditions. According to Offshore, an industry trade journal, there are 321 platforms under construction, planned or being studied worldwide. There are 85 projects in Southeast Asia and 75 each off the United States and in the North Sea. As a rule, oilmen do not see the TLP replacing conventional designs in benign waters, such as in the Gulf of Mexico or off the California coast, until they reach depths exceeding 1,000 feet. The world’s tallest platforms are fixed designs in about 1,100 feet of water off the Louisiana coast. Recent discoveries in the canyons of the continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico and drilling results in several other areas have stimulated the oil industry’s interest in finding ways to move beyond conventional designs. The sheer weight of the materials needed to exploit deep water finds with fixed platforms, the difficult conditions they would have to meet, the problems of assembly on such a scale and the costs of disposal have become daunting. Thanks to Hutton, TLP has emerged as the most likely candidate for drilling to greater depths. Like any North Sea offshore platform, it is a highly complex piece of engineering built to withstand numbingly hostile conditions. It has three utility systems, enough to power the city of Aberdeen. There are thousands of sensors and electronic monitoring devices 3,000 devoted solely to smoke and fire detection. There is also, however, a simplicity of design that allowed Conoco to start producing oil Aug. 6, a record 22 days after the TLP was first parked over the pre-drilled wells. With daily production at 80,000 barrels, valued at $2.25 million, and headed for 90,000 barrels as soon as full capacity is reached, every day saved was money for Conoco and its seven partners in the field. “The design is 80 percent to 90 percent proven right now,” said Larry Farmer, vice president and chief engineer for Brown & Root U.K. Ltd., which designed the platform. “Once it makes it through the first winter, everyone will be convinced.” That may be a bit optimistic. Engineers in the industry with no stake in TLP say they wanted to see how well the cables wore and how much it cost to replace them, which will take several years to determine. Nevertheless, Conoco is already planning on a simplified TLP for its Green Canyon field off Louisiana. Others are reported to be interested in using the design if commercial quantities of oil are discovered off the East Coast of the United States or in the Atlantic Ocean west of the Shetland Islands. The TLP has a long history. The United States Defense Department considered it as a basis for an early warning system off the California coast in World War 11. In the early 1970’5, a consortium of 13 oil companies (including Conoco) called Deep Oil Technology tested a one-third scale model, with a different tethering configuration off Santa Barbara, Calif. TLP’s are technically ships, complete with captains and ship’s bells. Because of the expense of fixed platforms, floating structures are coming in for increasing attention in offshore design. Some designers focus on adapting ships so that they can be attached to undersea wells and stay positioned over them long enough to fill up, almost as if they were oil-slurping hummingbirds. Other designers envision buoyant surface storage systems so that wells connected to them could produce con-

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Artist's sketch of buoyant oil platform tinuously The storage systems would be emptied by eon ventional oil tankers. The TLP is not the first oil-producing “ship.” Both the British Petroleum Company and Hamilton Brothers have anchored converted semisubmersible drilling rigs at small North Sea fields. B.P. said the conversion had been more complicated and expensive than expected, requiring everything from processing plants and diving facilities to new utility systems. The converted rigs share the TLP’s ability to unhook from the seabed and move when a field is exhausted, but they are not suited to large fields and cannot handle the variety of drilling, maintenance and processing operations found on the Hutton TLP. Designers are also looking at intermedate stages between conventional fixed platforms and TLP’s Materials costs were cut on Exxon’s Lena platform, installed in the Gulf of Mexico over 1,000 feet of water last year, by stabilizing it with twenty 3,000-foot guy wires angling out to the seabed around it Some industry engineers believe that the combination of improved undersea systems, pipelines and diving technology might allow the industry to leave the punishing sea surface behind in future deepwater projects. That is the goal, for instance, of the Poseidon research project financed by Norway’s Statoil and two French companies, the Institut Fran,caise du Petrole and Compagnie Francaise des Petroles. So far, undersea systems in deep water have been dependent on nearby “mother” platforms. Hutton’s TLP is designed to carry out such functions for 13 production wells and 11 injection wells. The latter are used to pump seawater into the oilfield nearly 10,009 feet below the sea to facilitate recovery by maintaining pressure. According to members of the 240-man crew, there is only one apparent shortcoming so far. ‘ You can’t play a decent game of billiards in the recreation room,” said one guide for a recent tour by journalists, as run-of-the-mill North Sea winds sent 30-to 40-foot waves smashing through the pontoons under the platform, creating a gentle slipping motion. “You get your opponent into a tough position and he just waits until everything shifts. I once pocketed most of the balls without shooting.”

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HUOAA held liable in fishermen's deaths

BOSTON (AP) The attorney for relatives of three lobstermen lost at sea in a violent 1980 storm predicts weather forecasting will be more accurate in the wake of a court ruling holding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration liable in the deaths. U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled Friday that the federal agency was negligent by failing for nearly three months to repair a buoy that could have provided an accurate forecast of the storm that produced 60-foot waves and 100 mph winds on remote Georges Bank. “It’s very significant because it’s the first case that the United States was held responsible for basically an inaccurate forecast,” said attorney Michael Latti, who represented the relatives. “I think we’ll see better maintenance of equipment and better forecasting from now on.” Tauro, who presided over a weeklong non-jury trial, must hold a second trial to assess damages. He scheduled a Jan. 28 pre-trial conference. “We’re obviously disappointed,” said Don Witten, public affairs officer for the National Weather Service in Silver Spring, Md. “I would assume that the agency will appeal, but that’s a decision that will ultimately be made by the Department of Justice.” Latti said judges have ruled that the weather service cannot be held responsible for a faulty forecast,“but here Tauro says there’s an exception to that rule when you don’t maintain your equipment properly.” The $3.2 million lawsuit was filed by the relatives of three fishermen presumed drowned Nov. 22,1980, a day after they set out in fair weather from Cape Cod for a

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December 22,1984, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic

week of lobster fishing on Georges Bank. According to testimony, the fierce storm surprised the men. William Garnos, 30, of Beverly; David Berry, 20, of Marblehead; and Robert Thayer, 22, of Hamilton disappeared when their boat, the Fairwind, sank. Another crew member, Ernest Hazard, 34, of Peabody, climbed onto a life raft and drifted for 48 hours before he was spotted by a Navy plane and rescued by the Coast Guard. Less than two hours after the Fairwind went under, Gary Brown, 25, of Plymouth, was swept overboard while trying to steer his Sea Fever.

Banner-Graphic "It Waves For All" USPS 142-020 Consolidation of |. The Oaily Banner Established 1850 The Herald The Dally Graphic Established 1883 Telephone 653-5151 Published daily except Sunday and holidays and twice on Tuesdays by LuMar Newspapers, Inc. at 100 North Jackson St.. Greencastle. Indiana 46135. Entered in the Post Office at Greencastle. Indiana, as 2nd class mail matter under Act of March 7,1878. Subscription Rates Per Week, by carrier ‘l.lO Per Month, by motor route ’4.95 Mail Subscription Rates R.R. in Rest of Rest of Putnam County Indiana U.S.A. 3 Months *15.75 *16.00 *17.25 6 Months *30.30 ‘30.80 *34.50 1 Year *59.80 *60.80 *69.00 Mail subscriptions payable in advance ... not accepted in town and where motor route service Is available. Member ol the Associated Press The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for republication of all the local news printed In this newspaper.

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