An Aberdeen meeting attracted some of the North Sea’s biggest companies yesterday to discuss how to abandon oil and gas wells safely at the end of their productive lives.
The fourth European well-abandonment seminar and exhibition followed recent estimates putting decommissioning spending as high as £1billion a year by 2015.
Firms including Shell, BP, Talisman and Apache took part in presentations and working groups on developments in “plug-and-abandonment” technologies and new regulations. Paul Dymond, recently retired operations director of trade body Oil and Gas UK, presented the organisation’s guidance on meeting new rules.
He said: “As well as ensuring safe practices, there are also significant business efficiency advantages to be gained from adhering to the high levels of technical competency which our guidance promotes.”
Seminar chairman Graeme Rae, a senior engineer at Chevron Upstream Europe, said: “In recent years we have seen service providers develop . . . new technologies to improve safety and efficiency, particularly in light of the 2010 Macondo incident.”
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