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Final iconic Shell Brent platform topsides removed
One of the North Sea’s most iconic and biggest decommissioning projects has passed a major milestone with the final topsides removed from large production platforms
Allseas safely removed the topsides from the Brent Charlie platform in the UK sector of the northern North Sea in July, bringing the end to a project that has been planned for more than 10 years.
Its heavy-lift vessel Pioneering Spirit lifted 31,000 tonnes of topsides in a single lift on 9 July and transported this to a decommissioning and recycling yard in northeast England.
This means topsides from all four production platforms from the Brent oil field, which in its prime produced more than 0.5M barrels of oil per day, have been removed leaving only three sets of concrete towers in the sea.
Allseas said lifting the Brent Charlie topsides was “the heaviest offshore lift ever performed, and concludes years of engineering and planning.”
The former production facilities have been delivered to Able UK’s Seaton Port facility in Hartlepool for dismantling and recycling. It is expected more than 97% of the materials will be recycled.
Pioneering Spirit removed topsides from Brent Alpha in 2020, Bravo in 2019 and Delta in 2017, transporting almost 100,000 tonnes of topsides to Able UK Seaton Port, where Able UK has recycled 98% of all materials.
Allseas chairman Edward Heerema said this project started in 2013 when Shell awarded the contract to Allseas for the engineering, preparation and removal of its four Brent platforms.
He said developing the design, construction and completion of Pioneering Spirit was a 20-year project.
“At the time [2013], the vessel was still under construction, but Shell’s belief in Allseas gave us the opportunity to showcase our single-lift technology,” said Mr Heerema.
He added that the Brent decommissioning project was unique in its scale and complexity.
Pioneering Spirit was built to install and remove offshore platforms in a single lift using an advanced motion-compensation system. It is capable of lifting entire topsides up to 48,000 tonnes, which will be increased to 60,000 tonnes through an ongoing upgrade, and jackets up to 20,000 tonnes.
This reduces the amount of offshore work associated with platform installation and decommissioning, shifting the activities onshore where it’s safer and more cost effective.
Prior to the Brent Charlie lift, Pioneering Spirit completed its first assignment of a busy 2024 lift season, installing the offshore substation for Ocean Winds’s Eoliennes en Mer Iles d’Yeu et de Noirmoutier windfarm project off the Pays-de-la-Loire coast of France.
DEME contracted Allseas to install the substation jacket and topsides. These were transferred to Pioneering Spirit in the field and installed directly with the 5,000-tonne crane. Previously, DEME installed the pin piles in the rocky seabed for the substation jacket foundation.
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