News / Lerwick to become decommissioning hub
SHETLAND is set to become the Scottish hub for decommissioning redundant oil and gas platforms from the North Sea, creating up to 150 jobs over the next two or three decades.
This week Lerwick Port Authority signed an exclusivity agreement with Norwegian-owned firm AF Decom Offshore UK Ltd, one of the most active companies in the North Sea decommissioning industry.
The deal will see the two businesses working together to develop a deepwater quay and decommissioning plant at Dales Voe, north of Lerwick, to handle the largest offshore installations as they come off stream in the northern North Sea.
The Norwegian parent body AF Gruppen has just spent £50 million completing the newest decommissioning plant in Europe at Vats, on Norway’s west coast, where it employs between 80 and 150 people.
Yesterday Robert Haugen, executive president of parent company AF Gruppen ASA, said that they had visited ports throughout Scotland’s east coast and decided Dales Voe was best suited to the task.
“We think the market will be for big lift vessels that need a lot of depth to load and unload material from the North Sea and Dales Voe is the only place that has the possibility to develop a deepwater site like the one we have in Norway,” Mr Haugen said.
“We have been looking for it for a long time and been up and down the coast looking for the best site and we have landed at Lerwick.”
Mr Haugen said that there were 550 platforms in the North Sea, with the biggest ones in the northern area that needed large cranes to dismantle them.
“The industry will be there for the next 20 or 30 years and I think it will start in about two or three years, and in Lerwick I hope we will employ between 50 and 150 people. The numbers will go up and down,” he said.
AF Decom Offshore UK and Lerwick Port Authority will now start drawing up plans to build the new facility.
Port chief executive Sandra Laurenson said initial designs had been prepared last September and now it would be a case of the Norwegian firm drumming up the business offshore while the port obtained the necessary consents to build the centre.
“We think it is fantastic for the port to have attracted such a significant decommissioning company to Lerwick,” she said.
“They are probably the most active decommissioning company in the North Sea at the moment. They are very successfully carrying out a number of decommissioning projects in Norway and are looking to expand into the UK.
“We will be working with them to develop and to market the site. The initial plan is that we will build something for them to lease from us, however we are just at the beginning of these discussions.”
The attraction of Lerwick was the depth of the water, with 20 metres water depth in the approaches to the base and a depth of 12.5 metres alongside the 52 metre quay. Within the harbour limits there are depths of 50 metres.
Work has already started to expand the laydown area around the Dales Voe base to accommodate the new operation.
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