TWMA has become a member of Decom North Sea (DNS), the offshore oil & gas decommissioning forum.
DNS has grown since its inception in 2009, to have over 160 members drawn from operators, major contractors, service specialists and technology developers. With annual decommissioning expenditure in the North Sea forecast to top £4 billion within a few years, DNS was set up to tackle the main areas of weakness, which are inhibiting decommissioning supply-chain capability.
DNS aims to enhance knowledge transfer and facilitate collaborative activities to ensure the supply chain can capture maximum economic benefit from the £30billion-plus decommissioning workload facing theNorth Seaover the next few decades.
Brian Henderson, Environmental Services Division Manager, TWMA said: “ Achieving DNS membership is very important for TWMA’s continued growth in the global decommissioning sector. We have recently completed another subsea decommissioning project for ExxonMobil and are currently involved on a recovery and repair programme for Maersk Oil North Sea UK Limited.
“The ExxonMobil decommissioning programme for the Linnhe field was TWMA’s first decommissioning project handling subsea structures, although we had previously carried out decommissioning work that involved cutting and recycling subsea equipment such as pipelines and umbilicals.
“The one-year contract with ExxonMobil was carried out north-east of Aberdeen in the UK North Sea. Our scope in the project involved cutting the structures transported ashore, on land transportation of material for cleaning, reuse, recycling or disposal and managing all onshore logistics. Work was completed on time, and without major incident or disruption to the marine environment.
“TWMA employs a reuse and recycle strategy throughout all of its onshore and offshore operations and we are happy to report that 95% of the recovered subsea material was either reused or recycled, which drastically cut the amount of waste going to landfill.
“We experienced similar success on the Maersk recovery and repair programme which included the handling and disposal of subsea structures and equipment damaged during the Gryphon FPSO storm incident earlier in the year.” With the project entering its final phase we are delighted to report 98% of material has been recycled/reused to date.
TWMA offer comprehensive waste management solutions for offshore decommissioning projects including platforms, subsea infrastructure, well abandonment and drill cutting piles.
One important aspect of the services is the ability to treat drill cuttings piles from seabed once brought to the surface. They mobilise their technology and systems on location and either process the drill cuttings onsite through the TCC RotoMill, or transport the drill cuttings to shore using CCDS bulk transfer service for processing at one of the onshore facilities.
The extensive knowledge and experience in the handling and processing of various oil and gas waste management streams, combined with in house engineering services division, allow TWMA to offer the client a complete waste management solution for oil and gas decommissioning projects.
[mappress] Subsea World News Staff , January 11, 2012; Image: TWMA