The Cut

The Cut covers the latest news and updates in decommissioning, as well as a digest of the work of the Decom Mission team as we inform and independently represent decommissioning across the energy sector.

Welcome to The Cut.

As with all sectors, there is an element of community and network in the decommissioning world. These are end of life activities, where safe and cost-effective solutions are primary deliverables and we regularly see collaboration between member companies or even support between competitors. In part I think this reflects a shared mindset, as well as an area in which experience counts and resources are tight.

Like most of our members, the Decom Mission team has had a hectic start to the year and those that we have visited or spent time with so far continue to underline both challenges and opportunities in the current marketplace, and those which appears to be emerging for the medium term.

I will call out three recent experiences to underline these points;

• Subsea Pressure Controls invited us to visit its Aberdeen premises to discuss the latest revisions to its Universal Wellhead Retrieval Clamp. This is a simple, Fit For Purpose solution of the kind that it is often requested by asset owners and project executioners. As a diverless design, without any hydraulic or other controls and being suited to numerous wellhead configurations and manufacturers, this tool has applications throughout the global subsea market. Driven by an enthusiastic team, some of whom are new to oil and gas decommissioning, SPC underlines that specialist providers are a key part of a healthy supply chain

• Working in collaboration with the Nuclear Industries Association, (NIA) and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Decom Mission jointly delivered a cross industry workshop in Glasgow in January. Entitled “Same Problems, Different Industries”, this session brought together supply chain companies, asset owners and the respective trade associations to share engineering and project challenges. Most intriguingly, whilst the engineering problems shared were notable and interesting, conversation time and again referred to soft issues such as project controls, access to capital and resource constraints as the strongest barriers to success. The NIA, NDA and Decom Mission plan to follow up on these learnings throughout 2024

• Underlining all of the projects we jointly plan and execute are the people who do the work. As such we were really proud to host our first ever Burns Night. Held at Union Kirk in Aberdeen this was deliberately offered as a social event, with partners invited, too. And whilst we may work in a niche area it was fantastic to see people in a social context, be they colleagues, competitors or just friends. Thanks go to Ashtead Technologies for sponsoring this event – and I assure you we will be back for another Burns Night in January 2025.

Meanwhile, we continue to prepare for Decom Week 2024, to be held as usual in May. Our specialist event is focussed solely on the practicalities of decommissioning, both in the offshore market and in onshore activities across the energy sector. Themes for this year include the role of technology and the emerging relevance of AI (as evidenced by most of our recent meetings with members), the transferability of learnings from our past and, I suspect most importantly, how to manage change – or the lack of it in what we do.

We owe sincere thanks to those of you who have already taken a sponsorship, booked an exhibition space or submitted papers for inclusion. The level of support handily enables me to close this piece by returning to the point regarding community, with both members and non-members keenly showing their interest in this event. We look forward to seeing you at this and other events across the year and continue to welcome your involvement in everything we do. At the end of the day our role is to represent what is good in decommissioning and where it needs get to.

Regards,

Sam Long

Decom Mission CEO