A thirty day public consultation on plans to begin decommissioning of the Brent oil and gas field in the North Sea will start mid-February.
The field has produced around 10% of all UK North Sea oil and gas and generated more than £20bn of tax revenue for the UK since production began in 1976.
The decommissioning programme, submitted by Shell, for the Brent Delta platform (one of four installations located in the field) recommends that the 23,500 tonne ’topside’ of the platform is removed in one piece by a heavy-lift vessel ‘Pieter Schelte’ that arrived in Rotterdam in January .
The second decommissioning programme for the remaining infrastructure in the Brent field, including Brent Delta’s legs, three other sets of topsides and legs, 140 wells and 28 pipelines, will be submitted when Shell is confident the proposals are safe, technically achievable, environmentally sound and financially responsible. It will be subject to a separate consultation, Shell informed.
Brent Delta stopped production in 2011 and Brent Alpha and Bravo ceased in November 2014. Production from the field continues through Brent Charlie.
Image: Shell
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