Encouraging oil and gas operators to find ways of reusing assets comes with its own challenges – economics being one of them
According to the Oil & Gas UK Economic Report 2013 (pdf), in the UK continental shelf – an area of the North Sea with large resources of hydrocarbons – some 475 installations, 10,000km of pipelines, 15 onshore terminals and 5,000 wells will eventually need to be decommissioned. Over the next 25 years, decommissioning costs are forecast to be in the region of £31.5bn. Prioritising smarter end-of-life approaches such as reuse, remanufacture and design for repairability could help to reduce some of this expenditure for a sector under pressure to cut the environmental impacts of its operations.
In Scotland, moves are under way to capitalise on this. Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) is working with a number of stakeholders to explore how circular economy principles can be applied in this field. Decom North Sea (DNS) is leading on much of this work through facilitating closer co-operation and collaboration between North Sea operators and the decommissioning supply chain.
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