Decommissioning Insight 2018

8.8 Topsides and Substructure Recycling and Disposal Once topsides and substructures are transported to shore they are managed under the waste hierarchy, considering re-use, recycling or disposal. 10 Owners of oil and gas infrastructure have a duty of care which enforces the responsible handling of infrastructure from construction to final disposal. Due to the nature of oil and gas production, some of the materials and fluids in a facility being decommissioned may be contaminated. Normally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) and Low Specific Activity (LSA) scale are amongst the contaminants

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commonly encountered during decommissioning. Therefore licences, controls, mitigations, handling and disposal methods have been established to manage and dispose of such wastes. Once the infrastructure is onshore, the disassembling and processing takes place on specialist licensed sites in accordance with an approved waste management system.

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The forecast total weight of topsides and substructure material being taken to shore for recycling over the next ten years amounts to almost 850,000 tonnes.

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The onshore dismantling portion of the work scope accounts for some £326 million or 2.1 per cent of overall expenditure over the period.

The current method of collating cost data only breaks down the onshore decommissioning costs associated with the onshore dismantling of the substructure and topsides, which make up the reported 2.1 per cent. Although substructure and topsides are usually the largest infrastructure items to be recovered, there are elements of the decommissioning process – such as well decommissioning, topsides preparation and subsea infrastructure decommissioning – which require elements of onshore disposal. Therefore, the real cost of the onshore disposal element may be larger than reported in this document.

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10 http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/framework/

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