Decom North Sea staged its first major conference last week, at Dunblane, in partnership with UK Oil and Gas to a capacity audience.
So far, about 30 offshore facilities, including 20 platforms, mainly in the southern North Sea, have been decommissioned or redeployed, involving less than 10% of UK continental shelf fields.
Industry analysts agree that the main programme is no longer being deferred and that a steady increase in the number of decommissioning projects can be expected over the coming years.
Annual spending on decommissioning has averaged £200-£300million in recent years and is forecast to rise to about £1billion a year within five years.
Mr Nixon took up the reins as chief executive at Decom – which is based in Aberdeen but has more than 90 members nationwide plus two in Norway and one in the Netherlands – at the start of this year.
It was soon after an industry-led steering group identified the urgent need for such a focused body, distinct from existing organisations.
He joined after a high-profile eight years in the Granite City building up the energy team at Scottish Enterprise, having always intended to return to the private sector.
His career before Decom could not have been better suited to his present role, with an engineering and business-development background in the energy industry, coupled with experience in the public sector.
Mr Nixon was brought up at Bearsden, near Glasgow, and after leaving Bearsden Academy started an apprenticeship with Babcock and Wilcox, winning an apprentice of the year award along the way.
He studied at Clydebank Technical College for an HNC and then went into third year of an engineering degree course at Strathclyde University. After gaining his BSc in mechanical engineering he went back to Babcock for a couple of years then to Motherwell Bridge where he stayed for 15 years. He ended up as a director and senior project manager.
It was then he was involved in the first “load-in” in the UK for one of the North Sea’s early fields that he had his first taste of decommissioning work.
Motherwell Bridge was building large parts of the jacket structures, and the operator ordered a temporary work deck to handle piles being driven in but did not need it because the team offshore found it could drive in piles from a barge, so the deck came back and lay for two years before being decommissioned.
Mr Nixon said: “I guess there’s a fair chance it was the first decommissioning project in the North Sea.”
He then moved to Atlantic Power and Gas, and from there to AOC International, where the remit was initially for onshore business development but soon developed to cover the whole business.
He said: “I knew business development was where I wanted to be.
“I had the clear understanding that the average person in the oil and gas industry doesn’t want to talk to a salesman; engineers want to talk to engineers. When I went into business development, I knew I could talk the same language as the people I was dealing with.”
Then he became Wood Group Engineering’s sales and marketing director and his career took a turn that resulted in a move to the public sector.
Mr Nixon said: “At that time, we were working to sustain business opportunities in the North Sea, but also trying to identify and break into new international markets.
“We were looking as part of that at west Africa. I was asked by UK Trade and Invest as it was then to sit on an advisory board for Angola and the conclusion was that an industry secondment into the UK embassy in Luanda was needed.”
The work included developing a market strategy for Angola that helped UK companies of all sizes and established a database of Angolan firms with capability to help UK companies. The promotion of UK oil and gas industry expertise with senior ministers and state oil company officials was a particularly important role.
Mr Nixon was approached by Scottish Enterprise (SE) on the conclusion of this secondment because of his mix of UK and international experience.
He said: “I thought after all the practical industrial experience it would be good to extend what I’d done in Angola. When I first became director of the energy team at SE in 2001 it became apparent that, outwith Aberdeen, energy wasn’t on SE’s radar.
“It just wasn’t recognised for its contribution to the Scottish economy.
“The energy team consisted of about eight people and together we took a conscious decision that we were going to lift energy on to the agenda. We were able to identify the enormous potential and so we set out a strategy for SE to provide support for emerging marine energies, clean coal, carbon capture, wind, international growth in oil and gas, etcetera.
“These are highly topical now, but at the time they hadn’t been identified as being important.
“We eventually got the attention of the board in 2004 and secured approval for our energy strategy and it’s been firmly on the radar since.
“The Decom North Sea job was a great progression at an opportune time,” said Mr Nixon, now 62.
“Early retirement was an option but I’m just nowhere near ready for that. Decom North Sea has started at the right time, there’s serious work to do and I am really enjoying it, but it is certainly not less time-consuming or stressful.”
From a standing start, the ambition is to reach 200 members and self-sustainability within two years.
Mr Nixon said: “We’re nine months in and growing steadily with good support from both private and public sectors. The North Sea is facing a vibrant, long-term but changing future.
“In addition, the UK and Scottish governments are committed to a major programme of offshore wind-energy developments.
“Behind that will come the emergence of commercial wave and tidal-energy developments and in parallel we have the significant oil and gas decommissioning work required to take place.
“Resources will be stretched for sure.
“To date, offshore decommissioning projects in the North Sea have generally been undertaken as single, discrete pieces of work meaning that a relatively modest number of supply-chain companies have actually gained first-hand experience.
“We need to cascade that experience to a wider cross-section of the industry and establish a bank of knowledge that will in turn support new techniques and ideas.
“One of the concepts we are looking at is to package individual projects into larger decommissioning programmes and we have found operators, major contractors and supply-chain specialists are very interested in this.”
Mr Nixon’s life outside work revolves around wife Marion, their three daughters and three grandsons.
He is hoping new clubs he received recently will help him to pick up golf again and he also enjoys walking and gardening.
Until recently, he sang bass baritone in the Aberdeen section of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. Over 25 years, he was one of 200 singers who performed regularly at large venues all over the country, including during the Proms at the Albert Hall.
He inherited his love of music from his parents, in particular his mother, Tryphena, who was made an MBE for services to music.
All three of his daughters have inherited this love of music and Laura, the youngest, graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and is now in the Central Band of the Royal Air Force playing bass trombone.
She is also in the highly acclaimed RAF swing band, Squadronaires, travelling the country and the world as a result.
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