Spirit Energy toasts decommissioning high with ‘busiest year-to-date’

It has been a landmark few months for Spirit Energy as the operator experiences its “busiest year-to-date” in decommissioning.

In 2023 the oil and gas company has embarked on offshore campaigns across the Central and Southern North Seas, as well as the East Irish Sea.

Most recently Spirit rounded off the final phase of work to remove the DP3 and DP4 installations in Morecambe Bay.

Completed by Allseas, using its mammoth Pioneering Spirit construction vessel, the campaign involved the removal of 9,000-tonnes of jacket structures in tandem.

They were loaded directly onto the Iron Lady barge to be transferred to Fife for recycling.

P&A in Central North Sea

Meanwhile in the Central North Sea, a 14-well plug and abandonment programme is being executed across four fields – Chestnut, Birch, Larch and Sycamore.

The work is being carried out from Aberdeen-headquartered Well-Safe Solutions’ Well-Safe Defender vessel.

So far well decommissioning has been completed at Chestnut, bringing to an end the field’s 15-year story.

© Supplied by Spirit Energy

The Hummingbird Spirit FPSO, which served the asset for more than a decade, arrived in the Cromarty Firth last year for an overhaul, before it is put to work on Ping Petroleum’s Avalon field.

Nicholas Riley, well operations manager at Spirit, said: “The Chestnut campaign has been delivered with exemplary safety and operational performance; this was our ultimate aim when we set out to select our partners for the CNS abandonment campaign. With this first milestone achieved we look forward to the remainder of the campaign.”

Half way there in Southern North Sea

Centrica-owned (LON: CNA) Spirit is also working to shut down part of its operations in the Southern North Sea.

During a single mobilisation Heerema Marine Contractors successfully removed three topsides and three jackets with the Thialf semi-submersible crane vessel.

Later this year DeepOcean will return to the area to recover subsea infrastructure from six assets.

Recycling of all the structures will be carried out by Thompsons of Prudhoe in the Port of Blyth, in a win for the UK supply chain.

© Supplied by Spirit Energy

Head of decommissioning and projects at Spirit, Donald Martin, commented: “Combining decommissioning programmes and supply chain opportunities at portfolio level has created significant economies of scale with our partners leveraging the capability of their assets. This has also helped create opportunities to share campaign management responsibilities, leading to a lean and agile team. The recent successful completion of the removals of the DP3 and DP4 jackets marks a significant milestone towards our longer-term transition plan for the Morecambe hub being converted into a world-class carbon storage cluster.”

© Supplied by Spirit Energy

Spirit’s chief executive Neil McCulloch added: “We are very proud of our efforts and achievements in decommissioning carried out by a first-class team of Spirit employees working collaboratively with the supply chain. Our team has thought strategically and formed long-term, high-value and high-trust relationships with our supply chain partners and we are very pleased to have achieved such a high level of local content and repeat business with UK and Netherlands based firms where our core business lies. Of course, we are also pleased to continually deliver industry leading decommissioning cost performance in line with our stewardship obligations from our regulators.”