Safety first during complex decommissioning

The field was discovered in the 1980’s, with production beginning roughly 10 years later. In the mid 2000’s, the field reached the end of its economic life. When the platform was producing power it was supplied by gas turbines that were included in the first phase of decommissioning.

The customer needed a solution to provide transitional power to allow the shutdown and decommissioning of the platform turbines, and to International Oil and Gas Major North Sea Oil and Gas provide ongoing continuous power to allow the remaining decommissioning programme to continue.

Power generation is one of the most important considerations when operating an offshore platform and its reliability is closely linked to the safety of the personnel on the platform. The client needed a reliable provider with dependable equipment to come up with a solution.

Aggreko provided three 1250 kVA DNV 2.7.1 Rig safe diesel generator sets, one 20ft containerised low voltage switch room and four external stand-alone fire detection and suppression panels. This bespoke package allowed the synchronisation of the three generators, giving the platform the redundancy required to carry out planned or unplanned maintenance activities without losing essential power.

All equipment was subject to a rigorous 5-day factory acceptance test at Aggreko’s Dumbarton facility prior to shipping offshore. The duration of the project was originally expected to be around 3-4 years from a shipping date of August 2009. They were finally removed eight years later in August 2017.

During this time, permanent platform personnel completed daily/weekly upkeep on the equipment, and Aggreko technicians undertook more complex technical maintenance during planned quarterly visits.

As a proactive measure, due to the extension of the hire period, Aggreko swapped the generators out in 2014, to maintain the consistent levels of reliability that the package delivered.

Our reliable power allowed the customer to carry out the complex and challenging decommissioning in the knowledge that power supply and equipment were taken care of.

From the 5-day testing before installation to the weekly and monthly checks of equipment, we could guarantee that our client could devote themselves to their task at hand, while we took care of backing them with our brand of mobile, modular equipment and our expert people on site.