A £40 million decommissioning campaign in the North Sea has completed the plugging and abandonment of three subsea wells.
The work, carried out by Spirit between April and July, removed more than 234 tonnes of infrastructure for reuse or recycling.
It covered the Seven Seas and Grove G5 production wells and the Grove Deep exploration well, located between East Yorkshire and Norfolk.
Matt Browell-Hook, Director of Energy Transition, Decommissioning and Projects at Spirit, said: “It’s particularly pleasing that we are on course to recycle or reuse 100 per cent of the subsea materials recovered with the work to be carried out in UK yards.
“The campaign has been a great example of how operators and contracting companies can work together, and its success is testament to the hard work and expertise that exists right across the UK supply chain.”
More than 30 UK supply chain companies were involved, with specialist vessels and a jack-up rig used to remove subsea equipment and safely abandon the wells.
At Seven Seas, 60km off the East Yorkshire coast, a 100-tonne wellhead protection structure was removed. Work then continued at Grove G5, around 131km east of the Norfolk coast.
The wells produced a combined 56 billion cubic feet of gas between 2008 and 2024, enough to heat more than 2.5 million homes for a year.
The campaign involved more than 114,000 hours of work, showing the UK industry’s commitment to decommissioning subsea wells which are no longer safe and cost effective.
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