A port in Fife has taken delivery of two Spirit Energy platforms for decommissioning.
In its first trip to mainland Scotland, the giant Pioneering Spirit heavy lift vessel delivered the DP3 and DP4 platforms to Cesscon Decom’s Energy Park Fife facility in Methil.
Both installations were previously used for the Morecambe Bay gas fields in the East Irish Sea.
The two Spirit Energy topsides were delivered to the Fife port by the Pioneering Spirit and transferred to the Iron Lady barge in the River Forth before being offloaded across the quay to the decommissioning area.
Johan Paauwe, project manager at Allseas, said: “It’s the first time we’ve delivered assets to a yard in mainland Scotland for recycling. The first-class communication and synergy from all parties facilitated a safe and seamless load-in to the CessCon yard.”
Cesscon Decom has a contract to decommission and recycle the assets, which means processing up to 23,000 tonnes of material at the yard in Fife, with the aim to reuse or recycle of 98% of the material.
This is the maiden contract for Cesscon, which it clinched back in January.
The firm said at the time it expected the project to create between 30 and 50 jobs at Energy Park Fife.
CEO Lee Hanlon said: “Bringing the Pioneering Spirit to mainland Scotland for the first time was a significant achievement, the meticulous planning and engineering by all parties ensured that the offload and set-down was executed safely, and on schedule.”
The DP3 and DP4 platforms first produced gas in 1985 when Morecambe Bay first came online.
Despite their removal, the area continues to produce enough gas to heat one million UK homes every day thanks to production from the Central Morecambe, North Morecambe, DP6 and DP8 platforms.
Donald Martin, decommissioning projects manager at Spirit Energy, said: “With some of the infrastructure in Morecambe Bay having been built by Scottish fabrication yards, it feels fitting that the first platforms to be removed from the East Irish Sea will now be decommissioned and dismantled by a new yard in Fife.
“It has been a collaborative effort from Spirit, Allseas, CessCon and all of our supply chain partners to get to this point, and we look forward to seeing CessCon’s team at work as they recycle or reuse the vast majority of material from these two platforms.”
CessCon Decom is a subsidiary of CessCon Ltd, headquartered in Livingston and owned by chief executive Lee Hanlon and project and operations director Frank Braaten.
Both men used to work for Norwegian firm AF Gruppen’s decommissioning business.
Recommended for you
