Malaysia is about to become a hive of activity in the decommissioning and abandonment space in the south-east Asia context.
The country’s decommissioning activity looks set to gather pace significantly during the 2027 to 2030 period as state oil company Petronas lets more contracts to industry in order to retire ageing infrastructure.
The Petronas Activity Outlook 2026-2028 outlines the expected growth in activity across strands of the group’s business, including decommissioning and abandonment.
According to the document, only a handful of contracts have been let so far, mainly for work in Sarawak, covering subsea and platform engineering, as well one in the Malaysian peninsula.
That is expected to climb substantially from next year.Petronas expects a total of 42 contracts in the three-year period from 2027, predominantly covering Sarawak, but also including some work in Sabah and the peninsula.
The number of contracts already let is listed at just four during 2025 and two so far in 2026.
Activity listed as ’not yet contracted’ in the outlook document for 2027 to 2030 is predominantly for work covering wellhead platforms and drilling platforms — representing 35 contracts in total.
The rest of the work covers decommissioning and abandonment for mobile offshore application barges and central processing platforms, as well as floating production, storage and offloading vessels and mobile offshore production units.
