Europe

Leading energy services provider, Expro, has successfully completed the plug and abandonment of Ireland’s first indigenous gas wells.

Expro provided the delivery of integrated subsea and well test services over an eight-month period to intervene, plug and abandon subsea wells from a mobile offshore drilling unit located in the Celtic Sea.

The intervention scope utilised Expro’s ELSA (Expro Landing String Assemblies) system, supported by a complete backup system and direct hydraulic topside and subsea controls package.

Achieving more than 3,000 successful operations globally, ELSA is Expro’s industry-leading subsea well access technology, providing clients with a safe and environmentally secure operating system for commissioning and decommissioning subsea wells.

Expro’s Vice President of Subsea Well Access, Graham Cheyne, said, “With ten wells successfully intervened and abandoned one after another in a short timeframe, the reliability of the system was proven with 100% operational uptime and zero NPT, improving the efficiency of Expro and our client’s subsea operations over the extended operational period.

“This project not only enhances our already established subsea well access experience and track record, but it also demonstrates our strong position to deliver value and extraordinary performance in the integrated decommissioning and plug and abandonment market.”

AF Gruppen, a leading contracting and industrial group, has been awarded a contract from TotalEnergies EP Nederland B.V. for the removal and recycling platforms in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.

The contract includes engineering, preparatory works, removal, transportation, recycling and disposal (EPRD) of 10 platforms with a combined weight of 17,000 tons.

AF Gruppen has developed the technology to be able to treat and recycle up to 80% of materials that otherwise would have been sent to a disposal site, pioneering itself as an industry leader in environmental solutions.

The project will start immediately after contract signing and is planned to be completed by the end of 2025. The platforms will be transported to the AF Environment Base Vats for recycling.

Boaty McBoatface, a robot submarine lovingly named through an Internet poll gone awry, is being utilised by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) to conduct research on end-of-life oil fields off the coast of the Shetland Islands, North Sea.

The robot will be exploring several oil and gas structures in a bid to revolutionise the way marine surveys are conducted and ultimately protect the marine environment while helping the industry transition towards net-zero.

The Autonomous Techniques for infraStructure Ecological Assessment (AT-SEA) project, led by the NOC will trial the concept of using submarines like Boaty for high-tech, low-impact monitoring to pick up any potential environmental impacts at these industrial sites. This may eventually replace the current approach for environmental monitoring for decommissioning that requires dedicated ships and teams of people offshore.

The robots used will gather data on the water, pollutants and currents, as well as taking images of the sea floor. The team will test whether these robotic systems can gather equivalent information to the surveys currently done using ships. In doing so, emissions, risks and the cost of these operations will be significantly reduced in the future, thanks to the automated technology being developed at the NOC.

Project Lead for AT-SEA, Daniel Jones from the National Oceanography Centre, explained, “The overall goal of the project is to improve the environmental protection of the North Sea at a reduced cost and impact to the environment. We aim to demonstrate how this leading robotic technology from the NOC could be used worldwide to support this crucial ocean monitoring.”

There are currently thousands of oil and gas structures in the sea that are approaching the end of their lives – in UK waters alone there are nearly 500. As part of decommissioning, they typically need to be removed and the environment returned to a safe state. To ensure that no harmful effects will occur to the marine environment, decommissioning operations need to be supported by an environmental assessment and subsequent monitoring.

Dr Jones continued, “This technology has the potential to change the way marine surveys are carried out in the future. Autonomous submarines could offer many advantages over current approaches; improving the quality and quantity of environmental information while cutting the cost and environmental impact for a survey ship and its crew. The AT-SEA project will test this concept in UK waters and carry out the first fully autonomous environmental assessment of multiple decommissioning sites.”

As well as the decommissioned sites, the robot will visit a special marine protected area that is known to have natural leaks of gas, to check the robot can reliably detect a leak should one occur in the future.

Neptune Energy has announced the award of a US$30mn decommissioning contract to Well-Safe Solutions, for a campaign covering more than 20 wells located across eight Dutch and UK North Sea fields.

It is the first multi-region, multi-well decommissioning campaign award by Neptune to a single rig contractor.

Well-Safe Solutions’ Well-Safe Protector jack-up rig will carry out the plug and abandonment of a minimum of four subsea and 17 platform wells located in Dutch and UK waters.

Neptune Energy’s Managing Director in the Netherlands, Lex de Groot, said, “Safely decommissioning assets at the end of their economic producing lives is an important part of our work. We plug and abandon wells, taking everything with us and leaving the seabed in a clean state. That is our responsibility and we don’t take it lightly.”

“Working with a single rig contractor for this extensive, cross-border decommissioning campaign is an innovative way to reduce time and cost.”

Duncan Morison, Rig Manager of the Well-Safe Protector, commented, “The Well-Safe Protector boasts a large volume of deck space for tubing, casing and conductor recovery, allowing effective batch operations and will help Neptune Energy realise considerable operational savings.”

The Well-Safe Protector is scheduled to mobilise in Q1 2023 to the Dutch and UK sectors for P&A operations in the fields.

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) has given its consent for Aker BP to use the mobile drilling facility AKOFS Seafarer for well intervention activities on the Skarv field.

The AKOFS Seafarer is owned by AKFOS Offshore which undertakes well intervention and subsea installations in Norway as well as internationally.

Located in the Norwegian Sea, the Skarv field has been developed with a floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) with five subsea templates with 15 wells. Work is ongoing to evaluate the potential of infill wells and other prospects in the area due to a decline in production.

Pioneering Spirit, the world’s largest construction vessel, has removed the West Alpha and East Alpha structures from the North Sea’s Tyra field and will deliver them for recycling at Frederikshavn, Denmark.

The removal of the jackets concludes Allseas involvement in the Tyra Redevelopment Project. In total, Pioneering Spirit has removed more than 35,000 tonnes of offshore facilities from the field. The redeveloped Tyra II will continue the production of natural gas with 30% less CO2 emissions contributing to the energy security for Denmark and Europe.

2022 saw a record year for Pioneering Spirit. The vessel has lifted and transported approximately 115,000 tonnes of new and decommissioned facilities for the offshore energy industry.

Allseas’ role in the project covered engineering, preparation, removal and transportation to specialist dismantling yards of the complete East Alpha and West Alpha platforms, flare jackets, IPF and monopole.

Allseas has been awarded a major decommissioning contract by TAQA UK for the removal and disposal of multiple northern North Sea facilities.

The engineering, preparation, removal, and disposal (EPRD) contract comprises TAQA’s Eider Alpha, Tern Alpha, North Cormorant and Cormorant Alpha platforms. The combined weight of the topsides and jackets to be removed is around 114,000 tonnes, making this the largest single offshore UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) decommissioning contract scope to date.

Allseas’ task is to remove four platform topsides, three steel supporting jackets and transport them to a suitable onshore yard facility for dismantling. It is hoped that at least 95% of the materials from the facilities will be reused or recycled.

The platforms are located close to each other, approximately 100 kilometres north-east of Shetland, in water depths ranging from 150 to 167 metres.

All structures will be lifted and removed to shore as single units using Allseas’ heavy lift vessel Pioneering Spirit.

Platform removals are planned post 2025.

Independent drilling contractors, Stena Drilling, has introduced a new well delivery and decommissioning service, Stena Wells, with the aim of combining the renowned drilling contractors with an experienced team of well delivery experts with promises of consistently providing their clients with safe, cost-effective and predictable outcomes.

The vision laid out by the company is to join forces with a pre-constructed team to deliver and execute all client expectations. Previously, operators will source external well construction and decommissioning activities, with the team having to familiarise themselves with the rig and the internal operations. By having a team already formed with the predetermined understanding of how operations are delivered, Stena Wells wants to remove that learning curve to enable a focused approach to operations.

In a video posted on their LinkedIn, director of Stena Wells, Dillan Perras, said, “Stena Wells comprises of two main elements; these are the building blocks of what we are trying to do. The first building block is Stena Drilling, a well renowned, international drilling contractor. The second part of the offering is the Stena Wells engineering team that brings a wealth of experience, knowledge, capabilities and competence. Stena Wells will provide the planning, the permitting, engineering, notification, construction or decommissioning of any well stock.”