Saw this being towed up the Tees today…

https://www.ft.com/content/dd99f69c-2f5a-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a

Quite impressive.

Anyone worked on it?

Sadly I’m not an FT subscriber so can’t view the link.
What’s the rig called ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-39778301

I’ve worked on it and the surrounding seabed infrastructure quite a bit. The area surrounding it is covered in a small mountain of horrible caustic drill mud that makes a divers life misery if it gets inside your suit or welly boots. Dredging down through meters of the stuff to expose pipeline flanges and tie-ins isn’t one of my happiest memories. There doesn’t seem to be any appetite to remove much of anything below the surface. IE out of sight and mind. Apparently leaving thousands of tons of scrap and chemicals on the seabed is the “safest” option. It coincidentally may also be the cheapest for those with the responsibility for clearing up the mess. I’ve seen clearly the damage that’s been done to the marine habitat around these structures. Those who have profited should be made to restore the seabed to its pristine original condition before the extraction process began.

Well said davesport- it strikes me of cost saving now they are ‘finished’ with the well.

Full disclosure here is that I work in the oil industry in the North Sea. The subsea systems will be cleaned as much as possible but it is impossible to clean such things 100% so yes leaving a lot of it in place is the least bad environmental option especially for a concrete structure like Brent delta. The steel jacket style platforms will be easier to remove, I think.

As for those who profited most from the extraction, well that would be the UK government. The tax take on production from this, and many other fields, was set between 70-80% over the years. That is why the U.K. taxpayer is on the hook for 70-80% of the decommissioning costs and why last year (or maybe the year before) there was a net flow of North Sea tax revenue from the Government to the oil industry.

Do you still want it returned to a pristine state with all the associated risks and costs?

Best thing to do with steel is to leave it, so long as it isn’t a hazard for shipping. Steel is environmentally friendly as it corrodes away to iron dust and over the decades it takes to do that provides a thriving habitat for wild life. A few years as a recreational diver I dived many a wreck, most sunk as a result of accidents or war but some sunk deliberately to create a habitat for undersea life. They were all thriving with life.

As davesport said, it’s not really the structure themselves that are the main issue.

Historically, it’s a lot of the nasty chemicals that were used. Even crude oil is naturally occurring substance.

They have been debating the decom business for years, there are marine biologists on both sides, some arguing for 100% removal, others argue that the structures are marine habitats and the removal will do more damage.

The money is massive. They are forecast to spend £50 billion this year alone.

All of the decommissioning projects I’ve been engaged on have removed everything apart from trenched in pipelines and umbilicals. All piles cut off a metre below natural seabed. A representative from the fishing industry always present to see for himself that nothing was left.

Any Jacket, structure or well will be surrounded by varying amounts of drillmud and debris. There are literally mountains of this covering some of the older drill templates under these early platforms. The oldest mud and the stuff that’s hardest to get to being the absolute worst.

Going back even ten years ago the idea that much of the hardware would simply be left in place simply did not exist in the hearts or minds of anyone in the industry. As time has progressed and decommissioning has become a reality the attitudes of those in the industry with a responsibility has changed. Like a lot of things offshore, a safety case has been made and it’s now it’s simply ok to leave the legacy of a massively profitable industry laying around in the North Sea. When all of this infrastructure was installed if anyone had stood up and said at a meeting that the end of life planning was simply abandonment they’d have been laughed out of the oak panelled conference room.

Do you still want it returned to a pristine state with all the associated risks and costs?

I’m afraid reading that I see us a different sides of a very wide divide. My answer is an emphatic yes. If this were an opencast mine next to your home you may feel differently. The industry and the UK government have a responsibility to go the extra mile to make sure all of this mess is removed. The vast majority have no idea what’s down there. Operators very often don’t have any information available in their risk assessment for diver intervention on exactly what chemicals are on the seabed.

The marine habitat is never going to be the same unless responsibilities are taken more seriously than they are now.

(Sorry about the brevity of my reply. Going riding in the hills :D)

£0.02

Dave, what makes the drill mud “horribly caustic”?

Interesting article in the Guardian yesterday: Where oil rigs go to die

I’m afraid reading that I see us a different sides of a very wide divide. My answer is an emphatic yes. If this were an opencast mine next to your home you may feel differently. The industry and the UK government have a responsibility to go the extra mile to make sure all of this mess is removed.

The problem is over the years successive governments have taken revenue and changed various taxes within the life of fields. This makes any serious decom planning pretty much impossible. It also gets bigger companies to shift this to smaller companies… e.g. Forties was sold to Apache for 1/2B (can’t remember if it was £/$ but it was 512M from memory)
Apache have since produced that x10.. after lifting costs but still have the decom liability they inherited from BP.

If you look at other countries (like Denmark) the tax is set for the field life. This means companies can actually plan decom and build in costs.

The DUC are doing this right now with Tyra …. but that would be impossible with the way it is taxed in the UK.

Was just about to post the same. Absolutely brilliant article.

Actually yes!

I worked on some design work for the Pioneering Spirit in my first proper job after graduation – this would have been 2008-2009. It was called the Pieter Schelte back then.

We redesigned the support bogies for the topside lift system.

Yonks ago people I worked with did a mud & cuttings survey close to a platform. The stuff had built up into a low mound under and around the platform. Mixed in it was galley gash, stuff like carrot peelings were still recognisable, preserved by the lack of oxygen.

It’s not an area I know much about, but I fear that disturbing this stuff, letting it mix into the water column, may be a bigger hazard than leaving it. It might be betterer to spend the money elsewhere, artificial reefs, perhaps.

@ stoner – drilling mud is/was made alkalai*, I forget why if I ever knew. I’ll guess keeping the clay as a fluid with the right properties: those for viscosity and keeping cuttings in suspension, sealing the hole, cooling and lubing the bit, and probably lots more.

*(edit) I think they added a sodium salt into the mix.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/02/where-oil-rigs-go-to-die

slowly working my way through this.

I appreciate it’s a lot more complicated than I’m making it but I’ll say it anyway:

Throughout the life of the North Sea oil and gas industry, corners have been cut with H&S and environmental issues to maximise profit. The industry has improved more recently but I think that’s a fair statement. All industries do this.

Now it’s come to decommissioning, those same issues that at one stage were not previously considered very important are being wheeled out to avoid certain aspects of decommissioning being carried out.

If there’s a good reason for leaving bits in, then fine, I’m not an engineer. But use the money saved to fund marine conservation efforts rather than lining the shareholders pockets again. And pay to monitor the sites where you are leaving stuff in – “it’ll be fine” isn’t good enough.

Applies to private firms and the government.

That Grauniad article is as big as the platform.

I’m afraid reading that I see us a different sides of a very wide divide. My answer is an emphatic yes.

Probably not as different as you might think. In an ideal world I’d agree with you but the world we live in isn’t an ideal one and in situations like this there are many competing and contradictory risks that must be balanced against each other. For example leaving the legs of a structure like this does present an environmental hazard at this location but moving the structure transfers this environmental risk to another location. That other location is likely to be some sort of estuary or at the very least shallower water where the same amount of oil/chemical spill is likely to have a bigger effect.

Then there is the issue of money and where it would be best spent. Bearing in mind that the majority of the cost of decommissioning this platform will be borne by the tax payer. Would this money be better spent improving the air quality in our cities?

I appreciate that these do all look a bit like straw men arguments but they are the sort of things that need to be considered when making an informed decision about this sort of thing. I also don’t think that every decommissioning project will come to the same conclusion. Removing a 40 year old 300,000 tonne concrete structure that contains significant residual quantities of oil represents a much higher risk than a relatively light and modern steel jacket would.

You bring up the point of an open cast mine and I think that this argument works against you. Human nature being what it is, the population as a whole only really cares about what they can see and what affects them. With these installations being out of sight and effectively out of mind I don’t think there will be the same drive to clean up the area that say nuclear plants get.

I spent probably 3-4 months or so of my life on the Delta spread through 2006-2008 ish. Highlights included hotdogs for lunch on the weekend while watching Soccer AM on the tv. The impressive amounts of pr0n on the communal computers. Being fogged on for days on end. Copious amounts of passive smoking in the dirty boot room. Wind speeds like I have never witnessed anywhere else. Cones and barrier tape cordoning off holes rusted through parts of the deck.

There was also a disconcerting amount of movement for something that was supposed to be fixed to the seabed. Apparently a level of ‘compliance’ was required for the concrete leg structure. Without exaggeration I have seen water slosh out of the fishtank in the TV room and soak the guy sitting next to it.

All in all, I quite enjoyed my time there.

Remembering how big the Platform was/is makes the scale of the Pioneering spirt seem incredible.

amazing article in the Guardian, I then clicked through some of its links.

Astonishing.

I guess post Brexit and free of the shackles of EU H&S and environmental legislation we will be able to start running our ships and oil rigs onto the beaches below the white cliffs and taking back control of their dismembering ourselves. Before moving the steel to be reused in our reinvigorated steel industry.

Hurrah!

Worth noting that the Guardian article applies to Drill Rigs which float, the Brent Delta was a production platform designed to be in place permanently and as such held up on concrete legs.

Info on the Brents:
Shell Brents Decommissioning

I guess post Brexit and free of the shackles of EU H&S and environmental legislation we will be able to start running our ships and oil rigs onto the beaches below the white cliffs and taking back control of their dismembering ourselves. Before moving the steel to be reused in our reinvigorated steel industry

Hurrah indeed – think of the employment opportunities!!

Hurrah indeed – think of the employment opportunities!!

Yep. Tory wet dream, low wage, low skill economy run for the benefit of a few billionaires!

@stoner

Dave, what makes the drill mud “horribly caustic”?

When turning up at a new worksite, the client IE the oil company paying the bill for subsea intervention has to provide a no holds barred risk assessment of all known risks and hazards on the site. As one of the diving crew I was never privy to the actual document, but a condensed version which has been studied at length and risk assessed by the the contractor (my employer) One of the big questions was always “what’s the drill mud like?” A long list of chemicals including caustic was the most information I was ever given. “Enhanced diving procedures” were blanket measures put in place to mitigate the risk. I have personally suffered burns on my arms, hands legs & the 1% we can’t talk about due to the above mud and its contents. This came back to haunt me in the form of photosensitivity in the skin on my hands and arms. I wasn’t alone either and definitely not the worst affected.

The answer to your question, Caustic was all it ever said on the risk assessment. Older drill mud was under no/less legislation and there were chemicals used in the making of it which weren’t under any form of control during the time it was in use. Anywhere I’ve been working where drill mud was present was completely devoid of any living thing. It’s a feature of drilling activity in the NS that it was routinely dumped on the seabed. Ask yourself why it wasn’t recovered whilst it was in use. Horrible stuff to leave in the marine environment.

@gonefishin

You bring up the point of an open cast mine and I think that this argument works against you. Human nature being what it is, the population as a whole only really cares about what they can see and what affects them. With these installations being out of sight and effectively out of mind I don’t think there will be the same drive to clean up the area that say nuclear plants get.

My point exactly. It’s not on anyone’s radar. Does that mean we simply ignore what’s about to happen. Every single one of us on here has benefited from and continues to benefit from oil production. You’ll know yourself that we are surrounded by it and its by-products.

We bear a responsibility to put right the damage we alone have created. This isn’t some sort of legacy problem handed to us by another generation, but it could turn into one if not correctly dealt with by those of us us who have helped create it. Piper Alpha is still there. I’ve dived there too. It’s teeming with fish and sharks. Does that mean anything in real terms? What it means to me is that we’ve dumped a load of scrap on the seabed and fish are attracted. The only parts of Piper A recovered were those containing human remains. The rest put in the “Too difficult/expensive” box and left.

Hurrah indeed – think of the employment opportunities!!

That picture! Every single person in the oil consuming world has blood on their hands to a lesser or greater extent. Taking end of life tonnage to places like India & Turkey is only the tip of a very big iceberg. Leaving the subsea infrastructure of the NS to rot on the seabed over the next few centuries will not result in an environmental disaster. But that doesn’t make it right. Nobody wants to be faced with the costs of the cleanup, oil majors, governments or tax payers. That’s life, but it looks and smells to me me like there could be plenty of scope for shirking of responsibility, shortcuts financial and otherwise in the name of protecting stakeholders over the environment.

Oil and its extraction are transitory in nature. Short term & big profits. Once the hand wringing is over I probably won’t be here to see the end result. I’d hate for there to be some form of legacy for future generations to live through or clean up.

Back to cycling 😀

cheers dave/slowoldgit. schoolday for me 🙂

@stoner +1 interesting insight there.