Page 78: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Aug/Sep 2014)

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Sarah Parker Musarra examines decommissioning in the Gulf of

Eyebrow Production

Bringing

Mexico, and how these facilities can become ? xtures in the surrounding marine life.

decommissioning equirements on decommission- ing in the US Outer Continental

R

Shelf (OCS) have existed before to life any lease was ever signed for hydrocar- bon exploration in its federal waters.

Passed on 7 August 1953, the Outer

Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) de? nes the OCS as “submerged lands [under US jurisdiction] lying seaward of state coastal waters (3mi. offshore).”

The Secretary of the Interior was also made responsible for “the administra- tion of mineral [which is de? ned as oil, gas, sulphur and others] exploration and development of the OCS.”

In 1954, one year after the creation of the OCSLA, Lease OCS 0404, the ? rst lease ever to be issued in the US OCS, was granted for a ? ve-year lease on property off Louisiana in the US Gulf of Mexico.

At that time, the US Energy Information

Administration places total offshore oil production at 133,000bo/d. Then covered in Lease Section 6, the ljjessees had one year upon expiration or early termination of the lease to remove “all devices, works, and structures.” “As long as we’ve been leasing and installing facilities on the federal OCS we have had a decommissioning mandate on every single one of them,” T.J. Broussard, chief, Environmental Enforcement

Branch of the US Bureau of Safety and

Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), says, in terms of decommissioning regulations, last few years, with about 200-250 facili- how complex the project is down to the explaining that even minor structures not much else has changed since that ties due to be removed from the Gulf. working order of the tools. must abide by the same decommissioning time. Now covered under Lease Section “The rate varies because not only do “I’ve seen it be as quick as two days,” mandates. 22, lessees still have one year to remove you have operators whose leases are end- he says. “Or I have seen a four-pile struc- “We didn’t want taxpayers to be liable everything – “to pull the topside, remove ing under the regulatory timeframe of one ture can take a month because cutters for having to remove components that were the jacket assembly and remove any other year, but you have operators who choose weren’t working, or because the operator put in place by the operators, or by the obstructions on the seabed that could to remove platforms for ? nancial or other wanted to use explosives and animals people under Right-of-Use-and-Easement have occurred during your lease opera- reasons,” Broussard explains. wouldn’t leave area.” or Right-of-Way agreements,” he says. tions,” as Broussard explains. When it is a simple, standard decom- Another factor: water depth, and, most

US oil production rates have changed: missioning for even a four- or six-pile especially, the complexity of the projects

Decom in the GOM

It is about ten times what it was in 1954, jacketed facility in the shallower waters necessary to operate in such depths.

The Gulf of Mexico, which the US with the US EIA placing offshore oil pro- According to BSEE’s most recent data, on the OCS (300ft or less), decommis-

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) duction at 1.3MMbo/d in 2013. However, there are currently about 2600 facilities sioning can be made quick work, with identi? es as the world’s ninth-largest —from ? oaters and jacketed platforms Broussard saying that a project without body of water with a mean water depth down to caisson/well protectors—in the issues could be pulled out in a week or

Scan this page using the Actable

Gulf of Mexico. Based on the number two. of 1615m, is home to the world’s ultra- app on your smartphone to view a deepwater projects. As an example, what of permits received, Broussard expects Multiple factors in? uence how quickly photo gallery.

will be the world’s deepest production removal in 2014 to follow the trend of the the facility can be decommissioned, from

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