Jumbo has been awarded an offshore decommissioning project in the North Sea by TAQA Energy, involving the removal, transportation and disposal of three subsea protection domes and piles.
The removal operation will take place in the offshore series of fields located in the P15 block 35km North West of Hoek van Holland, Dutch North Sea, at a water depth of 26-28 meters.
The project is part of the emergent North Sea decommissioning program, where much of the offshore oil and gas infrastructure is reaching the end of its productive life and must be safely removed and disposed.
The Dutch shipping company will deploy its vessel MV Fairplayer to execute the project, which will start this year. The team will recover and transport three subsea protection domes, each with a dry weight of 150 tons, as well as removing nine piles. Furthermore, the pipelines and umbilicals at each dome will be buried with mattresses.
By removing and transporting the structures to shore on one heavy-lift crane vessel, Jumbo can provide ‘the ideal cost-efficient, reliable and safe decommissioning solution’, the company notes in a press release.
Decommissioning
The offshore decommissioning market could become an interesting market for heavy lift companies. And not just for companies like Allseas and Heerema. In fact, if the market comes into swing most of the work will consist of removing the subsea structures for which geared vessels with a lift capacity of up to 2.000 tons will be most cost-effective. Thus far, however, developments in the market have been slow.
Author: Tobias Pieffers E-mail
