Offshore Exclusive: Safe decommissioning requires the right mindset, the right skills

Ian Sharp, Fairfield Decom

This past August, a forecast from Oil & Gas UK estimated that spending on decommissioning work in the North Sea would be cut by some £500 million over the next two years as the impact of COVID-19 saw more work deferred.

In the same month, the Scottish Government announced the award of grants totalling £1.84 million for the decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure in the region. The Decommissioning Challenge Fund grants are intended to accelerate decommissioning projects – to helping improve the skills of the Scottish workforce and supporting further growth opportunities for the Scottish supply chain in a sector that is seen as key to delivering long term strategic economic recovery from COVID-19.

While the Scottish Government’s support has been welcomed, at a time when many operators are deferring decommissioning, the industry must look further into the issue of skills and the supply chain and ask the question: Is the North Sea decommissioning sector going to be able to retain the specific skills and mindsets needed to ensure safety and efficiency on these projects?

At Decom Offshore 2020, among the various presentations and roundtable discussions, there was a somber note struck by Shell’s Brent decommissioning project director, William Lindsay, and one echoed by Steve Rae, executive director of industry group, Step Change in Safety, as they discussed a series of fatalities and serious injuries that have occurred on decommissioning projects in the past two years.

Naturally, I share the concerns expressed and would like to take a moment here to look at some of the reasons that might lie behind these incidents – and what we can do to ensure that in the future we make decommissioning as safe as possible.

This industry veteran has been in the North Sea E&P business for over 40 years, and there have been many lessons learned. But in my current role at Fairfield Decom, I’ve learned one more thing: today there are only a few people in the industry that truly understand the intricacies and systems of our aging offshore assets. And yet, during this downturn and pandemic, it appears that our industry is losing far too many of these skilled and knowledgeable workers through no fault or desire of their own.

This is a very serious issue, and one we need to address. For one thing, the costs incurred during decommissioning can rise considerably if the team does not have in-depth knowledge of the asset. Even more importantly, serious safety issues can arise if that experience and knowledge are absent.

To reverse this trend, there is a need to create the appropriate mindsets and capabilities in people who are able to decommission efficiently and safely. And key to this will be creating entities solely focused on decommissioning that can retain skilled workers who truly understand the risks and integrity issues associated with decommissioning aging assets.

Significantly, many of the risks, such as those associated with complex lifts or managing integrity issues, will only increase the longer we leave aging assets in situ. The truth is that deferring decommissioning (as many operators prefer to do now) will not only make it more expensive in the future, but also more dangerous.

So, as an industry, we need to encourage and support taking the necessary steps to ensure that E&P operators can access a skilled workforce that is prepared to undertake decommissioning projects now and in the future. Central to this will be establishing decommissioning entities with an absolute commitment to recognizing and managing those unique decommissioning health and safety risks.

There are two pillars to creating a safety-first decommissioning culture in the North Sea, or indeed anywhere in the world – and that’s the right mindsets and the right skills.

First, we need to establish the appropriate mindsets in people who are able to decommission well. This is not business as usual; this is being focused on a particular end point. Decommissioning is about bringing the life of an asset successfully, safely and responsibly to a conclusion. It is about figuring out what “we don’t need to do” and that’s a very particular management mindset, one that is very different from previous decades.

The key to establishing the right mindsets is first to ensure that we have a sufficient pipeline of projects to generate and support a functioning decommissioning supply chain. A supply chain that can provide skilled decommissioning leaders who are able to work in conjunction with a relatively small number of core crew on each installation, and who can also motivate them to ensure we are able to decommission the asset safely and successfully. 

Second, we need the right skills to execute the work. At its simplest level, with some aging assets, there really are only a few people who fully understand their modus operandi.  Whether it’s the intricacies of the old control systems or old electrical distribution systems, the industry needs people who know how these assets and systems work to be able to inform the decision making process that delivers successful decommissioning.

And the same goes for more significant operations – from plugging wells to the heavy lifts required for the removal of infrastructure. In the first instance, moving up from the bottom of the hole to the top means working the casing pulling equipment much more aggressively than ever before. So, then crew fatigue will become a huge issue, since many of these derricks are manual. And unless the operator is familiar with the equipment, then there is an increased risk of overlooking the impact that such aggressive use can have after 40 long years. 

Simply put, aging equipment is being used in ways that it hasn’t been since the very first wells were drilled. The same goes for the deck cranes that after years of routine work are having to work infinitely harder, and often on much bigger and more complex lifts. It becomes vitally important that the industry retains the people who not only understand the equipment, but who also understand the risks and issues that come with such work. 

Indeed, unless familiar with the assets and equipment, it becomes very difficult to understand the complexities from an HSE perspective of managing a decommissioning project successfully. And that’s why it is so vital to establish the right mindset and retain the right skills. This will not only be critical to our long-term success as an industry, but, more importantly, to the health and safety of our people and our decommissioning partners.