Steel from the Shell Curlew FPSO are to be reused as part of a new city hall and activities park in Oslo.
The vessel, which served the UK North Sea field for more than 20 years, is currently being decommissioned at the Vats yard in Rogaland, Norway by AF Offshore Decom.
Parts of the 235-metre-long production ship are due to get a second lease on life as part of AF’s 97% recycling target.
Around 20 tonnes of steel plates will be upcycled and reused for roof structures of the Loren Multipurpose Hall in Oslo through a deal with circular economy consortium Nordic Circles.
© Supplied by AF Offshore DecomThe Loren activity park and multi-purpose hall is a new-build project for children and young people in Oslo’s Grunerloka district, which will also act as a meeting place and area to facilitate city life in green areas.
It will include facilities for sports, offices and meeting rooms over its two floors – with the build-out having targets around use of recycled and environmentally-friendly materials.
“This marks the first concrete delivery of steel recycling from AF Miljobase Vats,” said Johannes Thrane, chief sustainability officer at AF Offshore Decom.
“Until now, we have recycled steel recovered as raw material for items like reinforcing bars or tunnel bolts through remelting. In this case, the metal is used directly with minor adjustments—a process known as ‘circularity’ in industry jargon.”
© Supplied by Oslo MunicipalityJohn Jacobsen, managing director of Nordic Circles, said: “The potential of recycling 25 percent of the maritime steel from decommissioned structures in Norway alone would yield over 20,000 tons of steel annually.
“Our goal is to make steel circularity so valuable that Norwegian shipyards can secure more contracts.”
The Loren facility is expected to complete construction in spring 2025.
Shell Curlew decommissioning
Curlew produced oil and gas from its namesake field, about 130 miles south-east of Aberdeen, where it was deployed in 1997.
Shell bought the FPSO in 2013 before submitting draft decommissioning plans to the UK Government around five years later.
The London-listed supermajor had originally planned to transport Curlew to Turkey for decommissioning, once it had undergone cleaning by Augean in Dundee.
It arrived in the Scottish city in June 2019, but Energy Voice broke the news a few months later that the waste management service was unable to complete the work.
Parts of the FPSO could not be cleaned without first being dismantled, but Dundee did not have dedicated ship-recycling facilities.
Shell then launched a second round of competitive tendering for a single yard solution.
Work to dismantle the Curlew FPSO started in Norway in November 2022.