Triple34-25

Depleted oil wells have left a long, ugly trail of disused rigs along Europe’s northern shores—400 idle platforms in Northern Europe alone need to be decommissioned in the next 30 years. But how to dispose of them? Sinking them doesn’t win points with Greenpeace, and existing leveling techniques often force workers to hand-cut metal with a gas torch, which can stretch out the decommissioning process to three expensive years. Rusch, a Dutch crane-repair company, reduces much of the procedure to months with a monster demolition machine. The company created a hybrid beast that combines the girth of an excavation machine, the lightness of a telescopic crane and the stability of a crawler crane, for a 330-ton behemoth that looks like a brontosaurus on treads. TRIPLE34-25 made its debut at an oil graveyard near Haugesund, Norway, in August. Its boom has a reach equivalent to the height of a 12-story building, while its high-tensile steel jaws toss aside pieces as heavy as 2.5 tons. To keep the whole thing from toppling over, massive caterpillar tracks distribute the machine’s weight across a 969-square-foot area.
rusch.to