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To: Mighty_Mezz who wrote (218)	10/30/1997 8:06:00 AM
From: O-MY-O	Respond to of 810

From Yahoo news - just in case the link expires yahoo.com Wednesday October 29 4:51 PM EST Millennium Computer Bug Could Shut N.Sea Platforms By Hans De Jongh ABERDEEN, Scotland (Reuters) - Major oil companies today rang the alarm bell, warning the so-called millennium computer bug could paralyze the offshore industry in the North Sea -- one of the world's biggest oil production areas. In a worst case scenario, oil platforms would be forced to shut down just over two years from now simply because automated systems fail to recognize the year 2000, industry experts told a conference here. The problem stems from short cuts taken by computer programmers in the past. To save memory space, they abbreviated dates to their last two digits, so that 1999 becomes 99. But unfortunately, computers will read 2000 as a meaningless 00 and may crash at the turn of the millennium. Companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell and British Petroleum said they realize they are sitting on a time bomb and are racing against the clock to check millions of microprocessors. But, they fear smaller firms have not yet fully grasped the threat to the oil industry. At the "Project 2000 in Oil and Gas" conference, industry suppliers and service providers were warned that time is running out and urged to act soon to prevent major upheaval. "Stop talking about it, but do it," said Ian Smailes, automation project engineer at Total Oil Marine. The oil industry faces a gargantuan task to fight the millennium bug, illustrated by the fact a single offshore oil platform may contain over 10,000 microprocessors. Some are deep below sea level, but all need to be checked. To put this into further perspective, there are over a 100 platforms in the North Sea alone. A taste of what might happen if computer systems fail to recognize a date came from New Zealand last year. There an aluminum smelter ground to a halt for several months because its production system could not deal with a leap year, said David Trim of Shell's year 2000 team. He told the conference that a worldwide "commercial meltdown" and "economic hardship" were real risks if worst came to worst. "We're talking about something akin to the aftermath of a war," Trim said. The total costs of getting rid of the millennium bug in Britain have been estimated at 31 billion pounds, while it might be $1.5 trillion for the world as whole. But Trim said these could be small sums compared with the far bigger investments needed to prop up economies if the problem was not addressed now.