Dutch heavy lift player joins decommissioning consortium

A global decommissioning services consortium has added a specialist heavy lift vessel operator to its ranks.

Dutch offshore services provider OOS International has joined the consortium, alongside Lloyd’s Register and Worley, providing operators with fully managed end-to-end decommissioning, from late-life through to post-removal monitoring.

The consortium is pooling its resources, global footprint, and now heavy lift capabilities to reduce operators’ decommissioning burden, risk, and cost.

An estimated £67 billion ($84.8Bn) is expected to be spent on decommissioning globally over the next decade, according to Wood Mackenzie, with approximately £14 billion ($17.7Bn) in potential decommissioning commitments over the next five years across Northwest Europe alone, costs which industry and the regulator have pledged to reduce.

“Decommissioning, for many, remains an uncertain cost burden, potentially even more so in the current climate”, says Julie Copland, LR’s Decommissioning lead.

“What is certain is that, with our combined expertise, unique ability to take well operatorship and duty holdership, and now ready access to heavy lift assets, our consortium can help operators across the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Asia Pacific reduce the risk and cost of decommissioning whilst safeguarding their reputation”.

OOS’ fleet comprises of semi-submersible dual crane vessels, the OOS Serooskerke and the OOS Walcheren. Each has an accommodation capacity of 750 POB and a lifting capacity of 4,400 tons in waters up to 3,000 meters depth.

The OOS Serooskerke has recently been completed at a shipyard in China and both offshore mast cranes have been installed on the OOS Walcheren vessel.

In addition, the TBB OOS Zeelandia is equipped with two cranes with an impressive lifting capacity of 12,500T per crane.

Léon Overdulve, OOS CEO, said: “We already provide full turnkey decommissioning services. Now, as part of the consortium, we can provide economies of scale, reduce duplication of effort, adopt campaign approaches and enable schedule flexibility, further reducing cost uncertainty and scope for operators”.

John Cox, Global Decommissioning Lead, Worley [Intecsea], says: “As a consortium, we have completed successive offshore decommissioning projects, globally, from the Middle East and Asia Pacific to North America”.

Cox added: “Operators see the value of our combined expertise across the full decommissioning lifecycle, because it works”.