The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
‘Vast majority’ of decom will be carried out in UK
● Industry chief insists Britain has the facilities to do everything
The “vast majority” of UK offshore oil infrastructure will be decommissioned in the UK despite competition from Norwegian yards for the biggest jobs, a market expert said yesterday.
Will Rowley, interim chief executive at industry body Decom North Sea (DNS), insisted Britain has the facilities to do “everything”.
But Mr Rowley, who has 20 years’ experience in offshore market-led intelligence and strategic planning, acknowledged there will always be some work that cannot be done in the UK due to timing and capacity constraints.
He was speaking after a row broke out over Shell’s decision to take its Curlew floating production, storage and offloading vessel – currently in Dundee – to Norway for final cleaning, dismantling and scrapping.
North-east Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald said in parliament on Thursday he was “deeply disappointed” Scottish yards had missed out and asked ministers to explain what steps they had taken to stop the work going abroad.
Economy Secretary Fiona Hyslop responded that she was “determined” to secure decommissioning contracts for Scotland.
Mr Rowley said: “The UK has got decommissioning facilities that could do everything.
“But if we have a spike of certain types of activity at the same time, on paper you run out of capacity.
“It’s not just capacity in terms of physical yards. It may also be the support infrastructure for dealing with certain contaminants.”
He expected more than 90% of the infrastructure coming out of the UK North Sea to be dealt with in Britain, which he described as a world leader in
“hidden” decommissioning. A large proportion of decommissioning-related activities are “not easy to record and get ignored”, for example, when older pieces of equipment are replaced, he said.
He added: “A lot of really good decommissioning expertise and activities will never be recognised but they need to be.
“They’re important to maintain the sector and they’re the sort of skills outside the UK that people are asking us for.”