The Olympic Challenger subsea vessel will arrive in Aberdeen next month ahead of a multi-operator well decommissioning campaign thought to be one of the largest in the UK North Sea in a decade.
Mermaid Subsea Services (MSS) UK and international energy services company Exceed jointly announced the award of the landmark contract in June.
It will see the two firms carry out a vessel-based well plugging and abandonment (P&A) campaign on behalf of four undisclosed North Sea operators.
A total of 10 UK North Sea wells targeted
The campaign will be carried out from Reach Subsea’s Olympic Challenger, which is due to arrive in Aberdeen for mobilisation within a few weeks.
The scope of work will comprise P&A activities on 10 exploration and appraisal wells across the northern, central and southern UK North Sea.
Olympic Challenger is 347ft long, and equipped with a 250-tonne crane and two work-class Oceaneering remotely operated vehicles in an enclosed hangar. The vessel can accommodate up to 100 people.
Mermaid’s North Sea debut
The contract award marked the entry of MSS – a subsidiary of Thai group Mermaid Maritime – into the North Sea market.
This has already necessitated a move to larger offices in Westhill, Aberdeenshire, while the MSS UK team is expected to grow to up to 50 people by the end of 2022.
MSS UK and Exceed said their partnership was founded on providing an integrated approach to multi-operator P&A which “typifies the future of cost-effective, environmentally sustainable decommissioning best practice”.
Speaking in June, MSS UK operations director Scott Cormack said: “New contracting models are critical to achieving the decommissioning cost reduction target set by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).
“NSTA reported in 2021 that these models were yet to become the norm, and that a lack of collaboration was, in part, responsible.
“Our aim is to help address that situation, not only through our own collaboration with well management leaders Exceed, but also by encouraging operators to consider the benefits of a lump sum, campaign approach to decommissioning.
“That this has been the precise outcome of our first campaign is testament to the clear appetite for this approach amongst the operator community.”
Exceed commercial director John Anderson said: “Our well decommissioning experts have worked on some of the sector’s highest profile abandonment campaigns, and it’s clear to us that this partnership brings something unique to the sector.”
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