The Offshore Decommissioning Conference 2018, run jointly by Decom North Sea and Oil & Gas UK, took place from 26 – 28 November at the Fairmont Hotel, St Andrews. Around 450 delegates gathered at the conference focused on the current challenges around shutting down oil and gas infrastructure together with exhibitions and keynote speeches by industry experts, and where the 2018 Decommissioning Insight Report was launched.

The report provides insight into the decommissioning market for the next ten years and provides context for operators in scheduling, forecasting and planning, and widens the scope for supply chain expertise and deployment of services.

In this blog we provide an overview of the key themes discussed in the report. Regular readers of the Claxton blog will recall Head of Brand & Marketing, Andy Norman’s piece: The Future of the UKCS Offshore Decommissioning Industry: 2017 Predictions, and we follow on to ascertain how the predictions have materialised from two years ago.

With rig day rates only increasing, operators are now placing more importance on finding alternative methods to decommission ageing assets to drive efficiency savings. Rigless abandonments are nothing new, in fact, Claxton performed the world’s first rigless platform well abandonment campaign on the Esmond, Forbes and Gordon field over 20 years ago. However, in recent years we have seen an increased demand for combined platform and jack-up lift barge (JULB) operations. This blog, which is part of our new decommissioning series, explains how a jack-up lift barge can be utilised to realise time and cost savings whilst increasing efficiency.

Claxton's decommissioning marine package gives the flexibility, tooling and resources to abandon wells either riglessly or rig-based by using multi-platform deployable equipment which utilises the client’s existing assets. The products, tooling and personnel supplied by Claxton, provide a cost-effective timely end to end solution for client’s decommissioning requirements.

In this infographic we explore the benefits and features of our products which we have developed over the past two decades.

As part of our decommissioning offering we will be publishing a series of exclusive thought leadership blogs throughout 2018. This channel allows us to communicate directly with our readers on challenges that may be facing the industry or wider and allows us to offer some of our ideas and provide innovative solutions. We invite you to comment, share, and be a part of the growing Claxton community. If there is a particular subject you would like us to cover, please let us know. To start the series, we thought we would provide you with Claxton’s decommissioning story so far and how our industry defining technology developments and services have defined rigless and rig-based decommissioning.

Decommissioning has become an integral part of the offshore industry over the past few years as operators seek to reduce their asset stock and remain profitable at the same time. To achieve this, it’s important that clients have a reliable and expert supply chain to rely on for guidance and support.

Responding to operator’s needs has led to the continuous investment in Claxton’s service offering. The company is now experienced in platform, subsea, rigless and vessel-based campaigns, and supports well decommissioning by providing risers, wellhead removal, conductor severance, well P&A and solutions to overcome integrity issues with platforms or ageing well infrastructure.

This blog gives an overview of three key projects, which demonstrate the capabilities of Claxton’s market leading decommissioning products, that have influenced their overall offering.