The managing director of a new Aberdeenshire-based decommissioning business has said he has already received interest from south-east Asia in the weeks-old venture.
Fairfield Decom, a partnership between Westhill-based Decom Energy, Dutch heavy-lift crane vessel owner Heerema Marine Contractors and AF Offshore Decom, a subsidiary of Norway’s AF Gruppen, was established last month.
The business model involves taking over operatorship of fields in their final years of production and guiding them through to decommissioning.
Although initially focussed on the UK North Sea,Graeme Fergusson said there is no reason it could not be exported in years to come.
Speaking last week, he said: “Our right to do business is in the UK, definitely for the next couple of projects.
“We now have the financial backing to take this to a much bigger scale.
“We don’t see why the model wouldn’t be scalable. I’ve had offers and approaches in the last ten days from south-east Asia, where they are now all coming and going and building their own regulations and gaining an understanding of how they’ll go about this.”
Mr Fergusson said other regions, such as Brazil and South East Asia, are looking to the North Sea as they prepare for decommissioning, which could bring opportunities in around “five to 10 years”.
However, the firm is focussed on its next projects being in the UK, with the “aspirational” target of achieving a first contract in six months.
As these deals are “more akin” to a mergers and acquisition (M&A) transaction, it could be further away.
The company said there is potential for “several hundred” jobs to be created through the venture, depending on contract awards.
Mr Fergusson added: “The next project and probably the one after that have to be UKCS.
“There is absolutely enough around and to play for in terms of the opportunities because what we’re trying to do is take control of the assets a number of years before COP.
“We want to have something in the bag in the next six months. That would be aspirational; we want to have that done.
“The harsh reality is what we’re trying to do is take on big, big projects. It’s more akin to M&A-type transactions than a contract award, so you see how long some of these transactions take to complete.
“It’s probably about six to 12 months away for us but there’s enough in the pipeline for us to take the big step that we did.”