Decom North Sea’s chief executive, Tom Leeson, said yesterday that the growing north-east decommissioning sector has “got to make sure that we’re ready for projects” if it is to capitalise on what could be a boom in North Sea work.
Speaking during a Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) lecture at Aberdeen University, Mr Leeson warned of previous announcements in the 1990s and early 2000s of a North Sea decommissioning explosion, and questioned whether one might take off now.
He said: “We’re seeing a burgeoning cohort coming into the decommissioning industry, but in an industry that is still evolving, no one has all the answers. Some people are talking about an explosion again, but is one coming? Who knows.”
Mr Leeson also warned that the north-east must equip itself with the necessary knowledge and skills needed to support growth in North Sea decommissioning if it’s going to make the best out of the situation.
He said: “If we’re talking about being strategic, what we’ve also got to do is we’ve got to make sure that we’re ready for projects. The average performance for decommissioning projects in the North Sea, until recently, was a cost overrun of about 80%. We want to get the cost down, and it is getting better.
“But being ready for the projects , having the right things in place, doing the right things and understanding the data, having access to data and knowing what data you don’t have and what its impact is, is really important.
“Getting with the regulator, engaging with the and understanding what their expectations are and not getting any surprises later on in the project is really important. Understanding what your philosophies are before you start doing some engineering, is really important.
“Engaging with the stakeholders, so that they understand what it is you’re expecting to do, and they understand your philosophies and your reason behind choosing that as a scope of work, that is really important.”
Mr Leeson also warned that the oil and gas sector will need to ensure that it has the right skills and experience to take on any decommissioning boom, saying that the North Sea is good at putting in rigs but has less experience of removing them.
He said: “We’ve got to be realistic, we don’t have that many people who have done that many decommissioning jobs. We’ve got very competent engineering functions that are very good at drilling and maintaining wells, very good at designing facilities and putting them in, but we don’t have a lot of experience of taking them all out again. We need to realise that we’ve got experience and we need to work on it.”
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