Decommissioning Insight 2018

DECOMMISSIONING INSIGHT 2018

PRACTITIONER PROFILE 5.2 Technology Experience may drive down costs, but innovation and technology have the potential to provide a step change in the final outcome. Decommissioning is a significant technical and operational challenge and represents an opportunity for supply chain companies and technology developers across the UK to build a global competitive advantage. The Oil & Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) was created in February 2017, through the Aberdeen City Region Deal, to exploit the technology opportunity and help make Vision 2035 a reality. Since then, in partnership with industry, the Centre is investing more than £50 million in almost 100 projects to take new technologies from concept through to deployment in the oil field. The OGTC delivers innovation through six solutions centres: asset integrity, wells, marginal developments, decommissioning, digital transformation and the recently added subsurface solutions centre. Thedecommissioning solutions centre focusses onknowledgeexchange, removal readiness, innovative removal and residual liability. There are currently five live decommissioning projects. There are also ten well decommissioning projects ongoing in the wells solutions centre. OGTC The Oil & Gas Technology Centre is working with Spirit Energy, Interwell and a host of major North Sea operators to trial a new well plugging and abandonment technology that could cut hundreds of millions of pounds from decommissioning for the oil and gas industry. The trial of the new approach to decommissioning – which uses thermite and a controlled chemical reaction in the well rather than the traditional cement plug – was performed for the first time in Europe by Spirit Energy in Caythorpe, Yorkshire, on an onshore gas well. The Caythorpe trial follows similar tests in Canada, and Spirit Energy is now continuing to work closely with Interwell, other operators and regulators to gain acceptance for the technology as a permanent barrier and identify further decommissioning projects which could benefit from its capabilities.

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