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Electronic Marketplace for Information on Decommissioning of Offshore Installations - EMIDOI

The EMIDOI project will lay the foundations and explore business opportunities for an electronic marketplace and portal site where users and providers of information & data of relevance to decommissioning of offshore installations, can meet, exchange data & information and develop business relationships.

The challenges for decommissioning of offshore installations

The availability of oil and natural gas has contributed major benefits to society. Oil and gas now contribute 63% of the world's total energy needs, energy that has fuelled 20th Century industrial development and is used for transportation and heating. Since the first oil was found in Pennsylvania, USA in 1859, the search for oil has expanded world-wide, the first offshore fields being discovered in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico in 1947. The North Sea became a significant offshore oil and gas producer when the first gas reserves were discovered in the 1960's. As production moved into the deeper and harsher environment of the Northern North Sea, the resulting technical challenges were awesome, but were overcome. The resulting offshore facilities were some of the most technically complex facilities ever constructed by mankind.

The offshore infrastructure supporting world-wide oil and gas production consists of more than 7,000 installations located on the continental shelf of 53 countries. About 4,000 of these are in the Gulf of Mexico, 1,000 in Asia, 700 in the Middle East, 500 in Africa, 350 in South-America and 600 in Europe.

There are many different types of installations, from fixed steel platforms and large concrete gravity structures, to a variety of floating production systems and subsea completions. This infrastructure is supported by many thousands of kilometres of pipelines at the seabed, which form a complex transmission network, transferring products between offshore facilities and shore-based reception facilities. The offshore production of oil and gas deals with inherently hazardous conditions resulting in potential risks to the safety of personnel working offshore and to the environment. Many of the offshore oil and gas facilities are now reaching the end of their productive phase and the questions relating to shutting down production, decommissioning the production facilities and removing the redundant structures is becoming an important area for consideration. There are number of inter-related factors that need to be addressed in developing a strategy for shutting down any specific offshore facility.

  • Technical Challenges
    The technical challenges faced in decommissioning an offshore oil and gas facility are equal to, and in some respects, more complex than those overcome in the initial construction and installation phase.
    Whereas the industry has considerable world-wide experience in removing steel structures, particular challenges are presented by some of the larger deep water structures of the North Sea.

  • Health and Safety Challenges
    Decommissioning and removal of a complex offshore oil and gas facility is a complex and potentially risky operation. Any proposed decommissioning operation must seek to minimise the associated hazards and risks to personnel to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable. Such operations will be subject to detailed safety analysis and summarised in the abandonment safety case approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities.
  • Environmental Challenges
    In undertaking and planning decommissioning, account has to be taken of the environmental impact of each phase of the operation. Results of the various options available will be compared to identify the option of least detriment to the environment.

  • Economic Challenges
    There are many economic decisions involved in planning a decommissioning operation. From defining the optimum time to shut down a producing facility and ensuring adequate financial security is in place to meet decommissioning liabilities, through to selecting the decommissioning option of least cost, which is compatible with technical feasibility, least risk to personnel and least impact on the environment.

  • Construction Challenges
    The process of decommissioning offshore oil and gas facilities raises many complex issues and choices. Because of these complexities and their inter-relation, it is essential that there is fully transparent and well informed debate between owners, government and all interested parties in society to define consensus solutions. Decommissioning strategies are not developed in an ad hoc fashion. The oil and gas industry is highly regulated through each phase of its development from exploration, building and installing processing facilities, operations and decommissioning. The freedom of National States to define their own abandonment regulatory regimes is constrained by a global framework of conventions, guidelines, and regional protocols, which together define international law.
    National governments will have specific laws governing decommissioning operations, which undoubtedly will seek protection from litigation by enforcing consistency between national and international laws.

  • Basic Obligation on States
    The 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention specifies the general obligations of states in a number of areas, including that of decommissioning.

  • Standards for Removal
    The general obligations of UNCLOS 92 relating to decommissioning are developed as a series of standards and guidelines for removal of offshore installations, and was published by the International Maritime Organisation.

  • Dumping of Waste at Sea
    The obligation on states to protect the marine environment by control of dumping of wastes is defined in the London Dumping Convention of 1972.

  • Regional Dumping of Wastes
    A number of regional conventions that take into account specific regional requirements have been developed to control dumping of wastes at sea. The North Sea and North East Atlantic is protected by the 1972 Oslo Convention and the 1974 Paris Convention, which were merged in 1992 into the New Oslo Paris Convention which came into affect in 1998. The new convention protects the marine environment by controlling disposal of waste at sea and discharge from land based sources

  • National Regulations
    National govemments licence all phases of oil and gas activities, including that of decommissioning. Both the UK and Norway have developed detailed standards for removal of offshore facilities as they have the world's largest installations in some of the deepest waters.

  • Compliance
    The process of developing and executing a decommissioning plan is extensive, requiring detailed engineering and planning to demonstrate that such plans comply with national govemment regulations and that the state's obligations under international law are met.

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    The target of EMIDOI is to create a portal site for decommissioning of offshore installations, that gives an overview of, and access to this wide range of relevant data & information resources and that brings together users and providers of decommissioning services.

    The EMIDOI project will:

    • investigate the feasibility, both organisationally, technically and economically
    • identify the most suitable implementation path and partnerships
    • assess the ultimate viability and cost effectiviness
    • ascertain the expected impact on user behaviour and business patterns of innovative and efficient models for commercial exploitation of public sector information
    In particular the project will focus upon new forms of public/private partnerships, meta-data and data collection. This should result in a well based business assessment, and if positive, in a well-defined exploitation & marketing strategy for further development and operation of the proposed service.

    Stimulating business development and new employment opportunities
    EMIDOI will not only be of relevance to marine environmental managers, but will also focus on industrial interests. The decommissioning market will be a new commercial opportunity for many offshore and onshore contractors, suppliers, and engineers. EMIDOI will provide a virtual marketplace for these organisations to gain for example up-to-date data & information on planned, on-going and executed decommissioning projects, factsheets images, and drawings with details on installations. It will also promote their capabilities, services & products by business directories to their clients, i.e. oil & gas companies. EMIDOI therefore seeks to contribute to better communication and information exchange between supply and demand in this specific market. By including business directory services and active involvement of end-users from oil & gas industry, enhanced consumer-supplier relationships will be activated. European companies will benefit from this initiative and will also increase their competitiveness on the world market for decommissioning. For the latter it is important that decommissioning of North Sea installations is recognised as one of the most difficult areas from the perspective of environmental and technological requirements. European companies, excelling in this area, will interest business partners from the global oil & gas industry for decommissioning projects in other sea areas. The EMIDOI service will contribute to promoting and marketing this specific interest on behalf of European companies and will contribute to creating new employment opportunities.