Page 32: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2019)

No More Miller

BP’s Miller platform was made fast work of by Petrofac and Saipem.

By Elaine Maslin

Two years ago, the Miller platform stood complete in the ended in 2007, but the facility was maintained, for plugging central North Sea 270km north east of Aberdeen. Today, and abandonment operations and to support a search and res- there’s nothing there to see. cue helicopter operations base.

After six months’ platform removal preparation, 15 heavy The decommissioning programme was approved in 2013, lifts and three extended lifts, over 150 nautical miles each, in then, in 2016, after the facility was no longer needed, BP the hook of the heavy lift vessel Saipem 7000, the facilities are “listened to the industry” and awarded Petrofac a duty holder largely removed. contract, so that it could over management of the platform and

The topsides, weighing some 28,200-tonne, were removed the decommissioning programme, says Blacklaws. Petrofac in 12 lifts over six weeks while the main 11,500-tonne sec- then worked with engineering, prepare, removal and disposal tion of the jacket was cut while in the heavy lift vessel crane (EPRD) contractor Saipem. hooks and removed in three pieces and taken in an extended Stephen Diplock, operations manager, Petrofac, says a differ- lift to shore, over a period of two weeks offshore and then ent mindset is needed for decommissioning. “You’re moving three weeks onshore for removal. from an operations domain to a projects domain. Operations is

The result was a US$2500/tonne removal cost, a ? gure sig- status quo and dealing with deviations from the norm. These ni? cantly lower than the industry benchmark, according to complex (decommissioning) projects are all about change.

Jim Blacklaws, decommissioning project manager, BP. These are also not green? eld sites, you can remove hazards

The story goes back a little longer than that, however, and, and operate very differently. We created a ? exible team good signi? cantly, it involved BP putting a service company in at dealing with ambiguity. How to deal with what you ? nd is charge. Miller, discovered in 1983, came on stream in 1992, where you can get a lot of ef? ciency.” producing some 345 MMboe over its life time. Production The result was, following a drone survey, among other pre-

Left: Saipem’s S7000 lifting the accommodation module from BP’s Miller platform.

Below: Saipem’s S7000 using the “lift and carry” method.

Right: The derrick being lifted off the Miller platform.

Image from BP

Image from BP

Image from BP

March 2019

MTR 32

MTR #2 (18-33).indd 32 3/11/2019 11:13:10 AM