One installation. Dozens of roles. Pay scales that barely overlap. A roughneck and a chief engineer on the same platform got there through completely different careers and the money reflects that. Here is what the actual numbers look like.
Maritime Roles on Floating Units
North Sea monthly figures for active operations. These are contract rates, meaning you earn them while you are working. The weeks you are home, you are not earning.
Third Officer on a semi-submersible or FPSO: $4,000 to $6,500 Second Officer: $5,500 to $9,000 Chief Officer: $8,000 to $13,000 Master: $11,000 to $17,000
Third Engineer: $4,500 to $7,000 Second Engineer: $7,000 to $11,000 Chief Engineer: $10,000 to $16,000 DP Officers on drilling rigs at senior level: $7,000 to $12,000
These are the people running the vessel systems. STCW certificates, maritime career history, maritime regulations. Different world from the drilling and production crews sharing the same installation.
Drilling
Not maritime. Completely separate career. But the same structure and the pay context matters.
Roughneck at entry: $3,000 to $5,000. The starting point in drilling. Long hours, physical work, steep learning curve. Nobody who stays in drilling long term describes the early years as easy. The career goes somewhere from here but the beginning is not comfortable.
Floorhand sits at roughly the same level as roughneck.
Driller: $6,000 to $10,000. Operating the drilling equipment, controlling what happens at the bit. Takes years to get here. The gap between roughneck and driller is experience that cannot be shortcut.
Toolpusher or Senior Driller: $8,000 to $14,000. The drilling supervisor. Drillers report here.
Offshore Installation Manager: $15,000 to $25,000. Runs everything. Safety, operations, every department on the installation. Fifteen to twenty years minimum to reach this level for most people. A small number of people get here. Most do not.
Production and Maintenance
Production Operator: $4,000 to $7,000. Monitoring and running the hydrocarbon processing systems. The people the platform actually exists to support.
Instrument Technician: $5,000 to $9,000 Electrical Technician: $5,000 to $9,000 Mechanical Technician: $4,500 to $8,000
The Annual Reality
Two weeks on, two weeks off. Standard North Sea practice. Every figure above is monthly while working. Annual income is roughly half of twelve times the monthly rate. Not all of it. Half.
OIM at $20,000 per month: around $120,000 per year. Master at $14,000: $84,000 per year. Roughneck at $4,000: $24,000 per year.
That roughneck figure. $24,000 annually, entry level, offshore environment, physically demanding, away from home on rotation. Not comfortable money for someone with a family and a mortgage. The career builds from there but it builds slowly and the early years require genuine financial tolerance.
The OIM at $120,000 is at the far end of twenty years of that building. The figures in between are not a ladder with even rungs. Some gaps are small. Some are large. Where you sit on the journey determines which number applies to you right now.
Before tax. All of it. Tax treatment varies enormously depending on nationality, country of residence and how offshore time is classified under the tax rules that apply to you specifically. Some nationalities working offshore pay minimal tax or none at all on these earnings. Others pay standard income tax rates. The difference between those two situations on a $100,000 annual income is not marginal. Find out which applies to you before comparing offers or making financial plans based on the gross figures.