Dismantling a Million Tons of North Sea Oil Rigs

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/business/energy-environment/oil-north-sea-shell.html

by tysone • 9 years ago

127 88 9 years ago

Tepix3• 9 years ago

Can't some of these oil rigs be reused as artificial islands? Is the Seasteading institute looking into this already? They should be all over it.

AnimalMuppet• 9 years ago

A seasteader would have to pay more than the rig's value as scrap (less the cost of scrapping it). That might turn out to be quite a bit of money.

Or, it might turn out to be zero. The article left it unclear whether they (the owners of the platforms) are making or losing money by doing this.

But there are two other concerns that would have to be addressed: Plugging the oil well, and navigational hazards. Neither seems to me to be insurmountable. Plugging the hole and leaving the platform there is easier than plugging the hole and removing the platform. And the navigational hazard has been there for decades. Leaving it changes nothing; an existing risk merely continues.

Tepix3• 9 years ago

Sure, you'd have to pay for the scrap value. But it's never [1] going to be cheaper than that anyway. I'm not sure what environmental hazards the (former) oil rigs themselves are.

-- [1] until we get self-assembling nanobots one day

briffle• 9 years ago

Plugging the hole and leaving the structure would also mean maintaining the structure. I can't imagine the costs of maintaining something that large.

fnordfnordfnord5• 9 years ago

These are production platforms, not drilling platforms. A production platform like the one mentioned in the article gathers oil and gas from dozens of wells connected by a system of piping laid on the sea floor. As such, they'd have no way to plug a well. Operators use mobile rigs to do a "P&A" (Plug and Abandon). There's no way that the permitting authority would allow the well operator to abandon any wellhead without plugging it, no matter who they'd sold the production platform to.

gozur887• 9 years ago

A seasteader would have to pay more than the rig's value as scrap (less the cost of scrapping it). That might turn out to be quite a bit of money.

I suspect that number is actually negative without the rig owner's input. Thus the bit about Shell "watching over" the process to make sure the breakers are dealing properly with chemicals and asbestos.

On of the reasons the US Navy has taken to sinking decommissioned warships is the various hazardous materials make the cost of breaking them up more than the value of the materials. Rigs can't be that different.

autokad• 9 years ago

"The oil companies do not want a repeat of the mid-1990s. Back then, Shell’s plan to sink a piece of Brent equipment, called Brent Spar, in the ocean depths caused a bruising fight with environmental groups led by Greenpeace and prompted stricter regulation."

luhn• 9 years ago

I don't see how that's relevant. Repurposing an old oil rig is a far cry from scuttling it.

mpweiher3• 9 years ago

The irony was that after all that, Greenpeace had to finally admit that the original plan of sinking the Brent Spar was actually the most environmentally friendly option.

Turns out that bacteria at the bottom of the ocean love the sludge that's so toxic on land.

So a big "yay" for PR and feelings over facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spar#Deep_sea_disposal

dflock2• 9 years ago

I don't think that the cold, grim, gray & very rough North Sea would be anyone's first choice to start a Seasteading habitat.

Tepix3• 9 years ago

Some of the oil rigs get transported to southeast asia before they are dismantled.

Check out the south Atlantic for a possible location, west of the Namibian coast. There are some shallow spots there like the Zubov Seamount, less than 50m deep and more than 200 miles from the coast.

jacquesm4• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

atupis• 9 years ago

How about server farm?

rolltack• 9 years ago

I didn't know there was a seasteading institute. That's pretty neat.

Getting stuck on one of these decrepit beasts in gnarly weather could be fun.

I figure those guys would have more fun on a sailboat surfing through waves.

Plus the mainland is always within reach and there are so many places to visit.

jacquesm4• 9 years ago

Plus the mainland is always within reach

If you have a fleet of helicopters or suppliers.

The North Sea can be pretty rough, there are times when the mainland might as well be on the moon.

hristov• 9 years ago

I don't think so. These rigs look massive and permanent, but in reality they are constantly deteriorating. Thus, they should not be compared to an island. Salt water is very bad for steel. And the ocean waves and winds constantly put stress on said steel.

If they get left without being dismantled for a while, they will get into a very dangerous state where they are about to fall apart and it is too dangerous to even approach them. Then dismantling them will be much more expensive.

Ntrails• 9 years ago

If they get left without being dismantled for a while, they will get into a very dangerous state where they are about to fall apart and it is too dangerous to even approach them. Then dismantling them will be much more expensive.

Once the Well itself is plugged, what are the realistic consequences of just letting the things rust into oblivion?

seb1204• 9 years ago

That is correct. The structural integrity of the platforms is only one aspect. How would you check/ensure that it is still fit for purpose?

Another aspect I read on this topic and remember from the Brent Spar [1] case is that the cavities and tanks of these platforms are sometimes filled with unknown and/or highly toxic undefined stuff. Unless you 'clean' this up it might not be liveable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spar

pjc50• 9 years ago

merraksh• 9 years ago

I was trying to find a pattern for the border between competence regions, and it's quite obvious that point (x,y) belongs to the nation closest to it, much as in a Voronoi diagram based on a continuum of points.

shard• 9 years ago

Seems a little more complicated than that. Germany's claim looks to have been reduced on both sides by the fields being operated by Netherlands and Denmark. I'm curious what kind of agreement was made between them such that Germany gave up the claims to the oil fields. In fact, it looks like Germany is not drilling for any oil at all. Maybe they just don't want to be in that line of business?

triggercut• 9 years ago

Also of interest in the same vein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea#Political_issues

germanier• 9 years ago

While it looks like Germany gave up some claims on first glance that is a bit misleading. That area is strangely shaped (coined Duck's Bill) to make Germany's area larger after a 1969 ICJ judgement[0]. They probably purposefully added areas without much oil leading to this shape.

Germany produces about 3% of its oil demand in own fields (with two of them being in the North Sea, Mittelplate[1] is largest).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Continental_Shelf_ca...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelplate

dx0342• 9 years ago

Germany has plans to use nearly all of their sea for offshore wind farms[1] (the areas free of wind farms are either for shipping or natural habitats). Probably more valuable in the future than oil rigs .

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_offshore_wind_...

ryanmarsh• 9 years ago

“We may well be at that critical point in history where people will say that this is the point where the oil industry reached its peak and began to decline.”

No article about the industry is complete without a reference to "peak oil".

Do people realize there's a much harder problem to solve than alternative sources of energy? Namely: How do we make all the other compounds essential to modern life which currently originate in an oil well?

We won't be able to quit oil for a long fucking time.

nerdponx• 9 years ago

Wait, isn't "peak oil" about running out of oil reserves? Or am I getting my hyperbolic predictions confused?

jacquesm4• 9 years ago

It's about the halfway mark where half of all the fossil oil that will (presumably) ever be produced has been produced.

The problem is that as the oil price goes up oil that was not economically viable in the past suddenly becomes viable and so peak oil will shift a little bit into the future.

Eventually it will run out though, it is a finite resource after all.

HCIdivision17• 9 years ago

It's the barrier point that we can't haul it out of the ground as fast as demand requires. It's sort of like how people were concerned we were going to hit peak food: we very well could, but we need a lot more people to hit that point.

There is also a finite amount of oil in the ground. It's stupendously useful and rich in chemistry. We still don't know where all the reserves are, and there is a lot of oil still in the ground. But that oil comes at a cost: inconvenient, excessively deep, politically untenable. But we'll be able to get oil for a long time (just at ever increasing costs).

fnordfnordfnord5• 9 years ago

It's running out of oil reserves that are easy to get at. There will always be more oil, but some portion of it will always cost more to extract than it is worth.

Mz• 9 years ago

Peak oil is about the fact that after you remove half or so of the oil from a particular oil well, removing what is left gets very expensive. We aren't running out of oil, but we are unlikely to ever again see oil that is as cheap as it once was. We are running out of cheap oil, and that is game changing.

Most reserves have already hit or passed that point. Most oil today is more expensive than it was, say, in the 70s because you have to inject water to force it to the surface and things like that. Just digging a hole and watching it gush skyward from internal pressure is a thing of the past, basically.

xkcd-sucks• 9 years ago

Are there any industrial feedstocks that aren't easily generated with the same processes (e.g. pyrolitic cracking) on natural products (e.g. heavy plant resins/oils) instead of crude oil/coal?

semi-extrinsic• 9 years ago

Lego plans to transition entirely to plant-based plastics by 2030 - they've spent $150 million on a new sustainable materials research center, and will employ 100 people to work on the problem. Add onto that a similar R&D effort among their suppliers, it hardly qualifies as "easily".

maxerickson3• 9 years ago

Plants. Or given sufficient energy just rip the atoms out of the atmosphere.

ekianjo3• 9 years ago

Both cases mean much more expensive plastics.

r00fus• 9 years ago

Bioplastics have existed for decades and can now be feasible for most plastic usages.

On another note, many things are plastic that should instead be glass, hemp, or other material.

ekianjo3• 9 years ago

'Bioplastics exist but are way more expensive to make on large scale than regular oil based plastics. How about fertilizers too ?

the8472• 9 years ago

Chemical feedstock is a much smaller fraction compared to heating and transportation. And they might not even release carbon into the atmosphere. Plastics for example don't release their carbon for a long time.

api• 9 years ago

Petrochemicals and plastics are only a small fraction of oil demand. The vast majority is used as fuel.

So no, we won't totally eliminate the need for oil for a long time. We also won't totally run out of oil for a very, very long time. But we can eliminate the need for 50-75% of current oil demand in this century, possibly the first half of this century.

bsder• 9 years ago

We won't be able to quit oil for a long fucking time.

That's true. But if you remove transportation as a consumer of oil, suddenly our oil stocks will for more than 3x the amount of time.

http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/articles/39/

Once you remove transportation from the mix, the affected industries have a lot more time to move themselves from petroleum as a feedstock.

azernik• 9 years ago

Peak Oil is not about quitting oil entirely; it's the point at which oil extraction stops rising and begins to decline. Yes, there will probably always be a place for oil as a source for chemicals, but without its use as a fuel that becomes a much smaller market.

gozur887• 9 years ago

It's axiomatic for a nonrenewable resource you're going to have a point in time in which you're extracting the most of that resource.

But then there's "Peak Oil" as an apocalyptic theory with imploding economies and starving billions. That's just... not going to happen.

pavement• 9 years ago

Plastics are pretty bad for the world, and not so much impossible to replace, as much as they are plentiful cruft that's merely incidentally practical.

Synthesizing organic compounds sounds pretty reasonable given our modern advanced awareness of chemistry, the liklihood that we'll be able to use renewable energy to offset the overhead of synthesis. Just so long as we don't write checks on these kinds of ideas before we can actually cash them.

yongjik• 9 years ago

Another way to look at it is that we have cheaply accessible, ready-made source of hydrocarbon compounds buried in the earth. And we dig it up and burn it off.

It's basically the same shortsightedness that led us into hunting whales to (near-)extinction for lamp oils. At least less animal cruelty is involved, I hope.

samstave• 9 years ago

Also, planned Obsolescence should be illegal - or at least thought of, socially, as immoral. The thing is, that the need for replacing vast majority of things that you use regularly do to the disposable nature of profit-only-driven markets is typically built around supporting components in a product which are made out of plastic - but the useful aspect of the item can often be a re-usable material.

Take Razors as a prime example... Overall plastic is bad, regardless of the ephemeral convenience it currently provides - i has stifled innovation, its short-sighted and its detrimental effects will last for generations...

HillaryBriss• 9 years ago

On the Southern California coast, they've dismantled some old oil rigs too. But they were allowed to leave a certain amount of the infrastructure intact, about 70 feet or so below the surface, because there was so much marine life clinging to them. They became artificial reefs.

In fact, there's enough interesting sea life there to support recreational diving trips to the sites.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/science/marine-life-thriv...

http://www.scubadiving.com/travel/pacific-western/southern-c...

rmchugh• 9 years ago

I've read that some environmental groups want to do something similar in the North Sea, seems like a good idea. Ocean fisheries need all the help they can get.

dboreham2• 9 years ago

Interesting to read this because as a kid I watched these rigs rise into the sky as they were built then floated out. They're building wind turbines in that shipyard now.

arethuza3• 9 years ago

I can remember watching one of the huge jackets for the Forties field being floated past the Moray coast in '74 or so.

A lot of people from fishing communities end up working offshore - either on the rigs themselves or on support vessels.

DrMonkFish• 9 years ago

Harland and Wolff?

Loic• 9 years ago

It could be Invergordon. I was there last summer and have seen quite some wind turbines ready to be dispatched for installation.

arethuza3• 9 years ago

Sounds like the old Highland Fabricators site at Nigg in Easter Ross, Scotland:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-3652...

dboreham2• 9 years ago

Methil, which built Brent A and at least three other large platforms. As others have noted there were several other yards involved at that time, such was the size of the North Sea fields development effort. Some historical info here : http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1976/mar/...

dpeck• 9 years ago

related, there are several old Navy towers off the coast of Georgia/South Carolina (USA) that were at one point going to be scrapped as well but with so much marine life around them last I heard they were transfered to the state gov't and just being left as is. They're quite a sight to see appearing on the horizon as you're moving towards one.

http://www.thehulltruth.com/florida-georgia/384438-navy-towe...

Dismantling a Million Tons of North Sea Oil Rigs

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