By Will Rowley, interim managing director, Decom North Sea
In common with some other industry events, we took the decision to keep Decom Offshore in the calendar. Despite the difficulties wrought by the global pandemic, decommissioning has been in the headlines a number of times over the past six months. Decommissioning of offshore assets is inevitable and seismic market shifts as we’ve all recently encountered serve as a catalyst for further conversation around the timing and approach.
A contractor has downplayed an incident which took place during work to dismantle what’s left of the Buchan Alpha oil rig after footage appeared online.
I’m baffled by the Curlew decommissioning saga that will now see the life-expired FPSO be dismantled in Norway rather than via the original arrangement whereby it was to be prepped in Dundee prior to being towed to Turkey for chopping up.
Data is key to good decision making in all sectors of industry and society and the Technology Leadership Board Digital Technology Theme highlights the truly disruptive potential of digital technologies. As we move towards a net zero economy, only through exploiting cross sectoral data can we achieve the potential of digital technologies, thereby aiding a smooth and sustainable energy transition. Combining data from the oil and gas and the renewables sectors with the nascent hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) industries will provide a platform for the best decision making. At the National Decommissioning Centre (NDC) we are initiating several projects which will help deliver this.
A host of north and north-east companies and projects have been given cash injections through the Scottish Government’s decommissioning challenge fund (DCF).
Fast-tracked North Sea decommissioning projects should be used as a “skills bridge” to get hundreds of oil workers over the current job-cuts crisis and into green energy roles, a new report said.
Against the backdrop of current circumstances in the oil market, it is increasingly hard to predict what the future holds for the decommissioning industry. The oil price will have a significant effect on depleted and marginal fields and may push already conservative profit-making operations into the red. This, combined with COVID-19, has created more of an impasse for the market than arguably seen before.
Aberdeenshire start-up company Legasea has been announced as the winner of Subsea Company of the Year in the UK Enterprise Awards, awarded by SME News magazine.
Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) bosses have said they are “pretty confident” a revolutionary new contraption for recovering platform jackets will grace the North Sea despite one of the firms behind it going bust.
The “vast majority” of UK offshore oil infrastructure will be decommissioned in Britain despite competition from Norwegian yards for the biggest jobs, a market expert claimed.