RIASSUNTO
Abstract
Decommissioning projects are rare in this region (South East Asia), thus opportunities for benefitting from firsthand experience are quite limited. According to The Offshore O&G Decommissioning Market 2013-2023, similarly throughout the North Sea, the Norwegian sector has limited experience with Decommissioning1.
As the Asia operators were focused on developing technologies to unlock and produce new reserves, they are still in an infancy stage when it comes to decommissioning.
Perhaps timing is the key to the development of decommissioning activities and knowledge in Asia. The timing of "Peak Oil" where numbers of ceased Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) are increasing and at the same time the operators are chasing extraction technologies to increase the ultimate recovery factors of oil and gas. The time is near where it is uneconomical for the Asian operators to continue to produce oil and gas and hence decommissioning of facilities is the only the next step. Bearing in mind that decommissioning of oil and gas fields is regulated by international law, the need for improving this capability is there. Evidently, it takes a big nudge from external stakeholders to shape the decommissioning industry, very similar to how energy demand shaped the oil price today.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Article 60(3), states that
"Any installations or structures which are abandoned or disused shall be removed to ensure safety of navigation, taking into account any generally accepted standards established in this regard by the competent international organisation. Such removal shall also have due regard to fishing, the protection of the marine environment and the rights and duties of other States. Appropriate publicity shall be given to the depth, position and dimensions of any installations or structures not entirely removed."
This paper aims to demonstrate how a reputable global upstream operator builds its capabilities from scratch through a collaboration of selected in-house experts, working together to establish in-house decommissioning capabilities in three (3) key domains; [1] Technical know-how; [2] Cost estimating models, and; [3] Standardization of Project Management System