WOOD Group has won a multi-million dollar contract to help Shell prepare the giant Brent Bravo platform to be removed from the North Sea.
Aberdeen-based Wood will prepare the platform to be hoisted off its legs as Shell continues work with what is the biggest decommissioning project undertaken off Scotland to date.
The Brent Delta platform was shipped to Hartlepool on a specially built vessel earlier this month in a move that marked the end of an era. Brent became one of the first North Sea fields to go into production in 1976. By the mid-1980s the four platforms on the field were producing more than 500,000 barrels oil daily.
Wood Group’s work on Brent Bravo will include structural strengthening and the installation of under deck lift points. The company will also modify the platform so it can operate on minimum manning mode.
Wood provided similar services prior to the removal of Brent Delta.
The contract win provides a fillip for Wood Group at a time when oil services firms are jockeying for position in the emerging decommissioning market.
With hundreds of North Sea facilities likely to reach the end of their useful lives in coming decades there will be huge amounts of decommissioning work to be won. Exploration and production work will dwindle as fields dry up.
While the market is in its infancy ,the crude price slump has added urgency to the competition for decommissioning work.
Services firms have faced deep cuts in spending by oil and gas firms on exploration and production facilities.
Wood Group chief executive Robin Watson said last week he saw no signs of recovery in the North Sea, in spite of the rise in crude prices since the first quarter of last year.
Mr Watson highlighted the appeal of the planned £2.2 billion takeover of Amec Foster Wheeler which will help Wood to reduce its reliance on the North Sea.
The head of the Wood business that will complete the Brent Bravo decommissioning work, Dave Stewart, noted the group has been working on the field for more than 40 years.
He said: “We will leverage our learnings from the delivery of the Brent Delta decommissioning scope.”
The Brent Bravo and Alpha platforms will be taken to Hartlepool. Brent Charlie is expected to remain in production for several years.
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