SCOTLAND’S ALCATRAZ?
Redundant rigs could be turned into jails, hotels or nightclubs as part of radical recycling proposals
SCOTLAND’S oil rigs could be recycled into hotels, nightclubs and even prisons under radical plans to deal with the decline of the North Sea oil industry.
Nearly half a million tons of offshore oil and gas equipment is set to be removed from Scottish waters before 2023.
Decommissioning work worth billions is expected to be carried out by 2040 – and an official report has now detailed 186 potential uses for redundant rigs.
These include prisons, schools, health centres, hotels, mobile breweries, Arctic research bases and distilleries.
Experts say rigs, platforms and support vessels are built to withstand tough conditions so would be valuable in a range of industries.
The report was compiled by Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).
ZWS is overseeing an £18million investment pot, some of which will be used to help businesses recycle rigs – and the quango is challenging Scots to come up with innovative ways to reuse the equipment.
ZWS head of circular economy Louise McGregor said: ‘Components used on oil and gas platforms have to last quite a long time. They are built to withstand salt and spray and winds so are, generally, highquality engineered and manufactured assemblies and components.
‘What we’re talking about is better than recycling – it’s reusing structures we’ve invested effort and energy in.’ The report states 40 platforms were decommissioned between 2013 and 2017, at an estimated annual cost of £1.8 billion.
Most of the heaviest materials are recycled back into raw material, with only a fraction of parts used in another way.
But experts believe reusing more, instead of only recycling, would make it up to seven times more valuable and boost the economy.
The report says: ‘Over the period to 2023, almost 500,000 tons of end of life assets will be removed from the UK Continental Shelf. Total decommissioning spend is forecast to reach £46 billion in real terms, and average £1.8 billion per year for the remainder of the decade.
‘Investment in topside and substructure removal has been estimated at £280 million per year in the period to 2023.
‘This offers significant potential for Scotland to capture a share of emerging reuse activity.’
Ideas for how components might be reused include the ‘removal, reconditioning and reuse of accommodation blocks... in construction, disaster relief, prison, education or renewable energy industries’.
Other suggestions include support vessels becoming hotels, tanks in the whisky industry and anchor chains as anti-terrorist barriers.
One rig has already been transformed into a hotel in Malaysia, while a Norwegian firm plans to convert platforms into fish farms.
Mrs McGregor said: ‘If somebody came to us with an idea to use one of these oil and gas support vessels as a restaurant or nightclub, we’d certainly look at that seriously.
‘Nobody’s come forward with a proposal for a prison yet but we’d be delighted to hear about it.’
A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: ‘I can categorically state that we would rule that out as a possibility.’
A spokesman for Sodexo, which runs HMP Addiewell, one of Scotland’s two privately operated prisons, said: ‘It’s not on our radar.’
The Scotch Whisky Association said: ‘The industry is committed to the environment and sustainability, but we’d need to know more about the proposals to consider this.’