By Helen Campbell. Additional reporting by Rikki Stancich.

Project ‘bundling’ and multi-client approaches could offer significant savings in terms of time, scale and, crucially, money. All that is needed is for operators to take it up.
For larger companies in the Gulf of Mexico whose decommissioning programmes are well underway, internally bundling projects is the logical path forward.
“This is something [Chevron] does already – we currently remove multiple platforms and plug a number of wells each year. We have enough volume internally to campaign (to bundle like tasks together from multiple decommissioning projects into a campaign),” explains Win Thornton, Chevron’s decommissioning manager. “This is a very cost-effective strategy”, he notes.
While currently not much more than a concept in the North Sea, there is a strong business case for project bundling.
"Bundling decommissioning projects is something the industry is talking about more and more, and is certainly something BP is potentially interested in," said Richard Grant, political affairs manager at BP in Aberdeen.
Decom North Sea, the UK industry body established to build and maximise opportunities for the decommissioning contracting sector, is exploring in detail the concept of packaging individual projects into larger decommissioning programmes.
According to Decom North Sea’s chief executive, Brian Nixon, it is generally accepted that if it were possible for operators to package or combine a number of individual decommissioning projects into larger programmes of work, there could be benefits for the whole industry.
“Operators, major contractors and supply chain specialists share an appetite for this concept,” says Nixon.
 

Potential for knowledge transfer
The effects would reach further than just potentially lower decommissioning bills. According to Nixon, knowledge transfer and learning could be significantly enhanced and the efficiency of heavy marine vessels and equipment increased.
“Offshore decommissioning projects in the North Sea have generally been undertaken as single, discreet projects thus far, meaning that a relatively modest number of supply chain companies have actually gained first-hand experience,” Nixon says.
“There is therefore a need to cascade some of the experience from the next batch of projects to a much wider cross section of the industry, and to establish a bank of knowledge which will in turn support new techniques and ideas,” he adds.
From the perspective of industry suppliers, investment in skills and training, new equipment, and improving facilities could be spread over multiple projects. Instead of facing a dearth of practice, the industry as a whole could begin the process of ‘learning by doing’.
One example of exactly that is a project that commenced in August by Sarah, a specialist light well intervention vessel owned by Marine Subsea, that involved the plugging and abandonment (P&A) of a total of five subsea wells operated by a number of different offshore operators, including DNO, Bayerngas UK, and Tullow. This £2m multi-client operation is seen as a good testing ground for larger projects taking in more of the decommissioning process beyond wells.
“Generally, doing one well at a time isn’t cost-effective,” says Merv New, operations director at Marine Subsea. “In the past, clients were looking for day rates but they now look to agree a lump sum, so we look to get a number of clients together and apply a sliding scale of rates. Grouping clients like this allows us to carry out projects in the summer and mitigate the costs of bringing in subcontractors and so on.”
Potential costs savings arising from multi-client and/or bundling approaches vary from project to project, but Marine Subsea’s New says that anything ‘in excess of 10-15%’ is achievable. Although the operational scale of topsides and jacket removal is far removed from that of well P&A, the same economic models could potentially be applied, says New. “For decommissioning of fields, there is no reason why one company can’t take the lead and bring in others to get things moving.”
 

Economies of scale
The bundling concept becomes more attractive in cases where the facilities to be decommissioned have locational, water depth and field/facility type commonality. Keen to push such approaches but with the right commercial conditions, Decom North Sea recently made public the findings of a study it commissioned exploring the potential of project bundling.
“If it were possible for supply chain companies and contractors to spread any such investment over more than one project, it is likely that a better business case would result,” Nixon says. “So the concept of packaging, or clustering, individual decommissioning projects into larger programmes is being pursued as it offers potential benefits to all parties. This needs further research and promotion, and so it is hoped that some scenario planning will illustrate the benefits of such an approach.”
Operators such as BP are known to be considering project bundling as an approach. There is a long way between grouping together the plugging and abandonment of five or six wells and the bundled removal of five jackets and topsides for five different operators, but it is not an impossible scenario.

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