Decom North Sea (DNS), the offshore oil & gas decommissioning forum, is driving forward an initiative aimed at developing standard procedures for decommissioning projects.

Chief Executive Brian Nixon said: “Many of the North Sea’s near future oil and gas decommissioning projects will be the first to be undertaken by their respective operators. The very detailed decommissioning plans that have to be prepared in advance by each operator require very considerable research into design considerations, options appraisal, environmental impact assessments, risk identification and mitigation, technical and safety management, and many other aspects.

“Currently each operator is interpreting the requirements for these decommissioning plans in their own way, with previous documents having ranged from 180 to 430 pages in length. This clearly is inefficient for operators and regulators alike.’’

In order to improve the situation, Decom North Sea will be facilitating a workshop with its member companies on Thursday, January 12, 2012, at the Palm Court in Aberdeen to establish how best to develop a standard template for such hugely important documents.

The initiative is attracting strong backing from Decom North Sea’s operator members, and also from the Department for Energy and Climate Change which is responsible for processing and approving the increasing number of decommissioning plans over coming months and years.

Operators and supply chain companies not currently members of Decom North Sea, but who are interested in this initiative, are invited to make contact via www.decomnorthsea.com

Decom North Sea has grown since its inception in 2010, to have more than 160 members drawn from operators, major contractors, service specialists and technology developers. With annual decommissioning expenditure in the North Sea forecast to top £1billion within a few years, the organisation is working to tackle the main areas of weakness, which are inhibiting decommissioning supply-chain capability.

Tags: Decom North Sea