Public perspective: legacy management
An important aspect of the decommissioning process is how the legacy of
Britain’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure is managed in the future.
Public consultation and
confidence
Fig: Stakeholder consultation is an important aspect of
the decommissioning process
As the decommissioning of redundant North Sea oil and gas installations
becomes an increasingly important activity for operators in the UKCS, it has
the potential to attract significant interest from external audiences,
particularly on issues of environmental, social and economic impact.
Engaging with these interested parties is a critical element of achieving a
successful outcome and although each decommissioning project will have
different issues and drivers, operators’ current and past experience of
stakeholder dialogue can be analysed to find some common principles and
methods.
Every decommissioning project involves consultation – with partners,
regulators and statutory consultees (in the UK this includes the fishing
organisations, primarily Scottish Fishermen’s Federation,
SFF, and the National Federation of
Fishermen’s Organisations, NFFO, and
the Joint Nature Conservation Council,
JNCC).
The experience of recent years, however, suggests that in future,
consultation will need to be much wider and take a rather different
approach. It is therefore becoming common for some operators to run more
extensive stakeholder consultation programmes, especially when derogation is
an option. Involving this wider spectrum of stakeholders makes sound
business sense. Company reputation is an important commodity and identifying
potential conflict and addressing it early is a sound strategy for
protecting reputation.
It is only through dialogue that different sectors and interest groups can
resolve the dilemmas associated with formulating a decommissioning
programme, and this will enable a robust solution to be established and
endorsed by the regulator.
The DECC guidance notes on decommissioning contains information on how
stakeholder consultation should be included in the decommissioning programme
formulation, including an explanation of how a wide ranging stakeholder
dialogue should precede statutory public consultation in certain cases.
In addition, Oil & Gas UK has developed the notes: “Guidelines on
Stakeholder Engagement for Decommissioning Activities”, which draw on
experiences at North West Hutton and Frigg. Effectively these notes (which
are available free of charge) utilise Operators’ current and past
experiences of stakeholder engagement and consolidate them into some common
principles and tools.
The key processes involved in the stakeholder dialogue process include the
need to:
- Identify and
prioritise stakeholders;
- Analyse and map
stakeholder interests;
- Define dialogue
strategy;
- Implement
stakeholder engagement plan;
- Analyse, evaluate
and feed-back into decommissioning programme;
The report also
identifies some of the key themes and issues which are consistently
raised by stakeholders through dialogue on North Sea decommissioning,
which include:
- The ‘clean
seabed’ principle and no dumping of installations;
- Concern over
material left on the seabed being a hazard for fishermen;
- Uncertainty
about the long term effects of leaving drill cuttings accumulations;
- Alternative
uses of equipment, as opposed to disposal solutions;
- Concerns over
potentially hazardous waste streams;
- UK employment
and regional economic impact aspirations;
- Long term
legacy issues.
The following
diagram summarises the recommended processes and time scale for a
successful stakeholder engagement exercise.
Fig: An overview of the Stakeholder Engagement
process. Source: Oil & Gas UK “guidelines on stakeholder engagement
for decommissioning activities”
Other users of
the sea: fishing issues
Fig: North Sea Fishing Trawler
Oil & Gas UK has had a long-term working relationship with fishing
organisations, especially the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation,
SFF and the National Federation
of Fishermen’s Organisations, NFFO.
There is constructive dialogue to ensure harmonious interaction
between the two active users of the North Sea and, often, to provide
mutually beneficial services. Discussions in recent years have been
held to consider how best to manage the implications of any
decommissioning legacy left on the seabed for the long-term.
The oil and gas industry currently provides the fishermen with
regularly updated information on all seabed inventories to help
prevent contact with their operations and a comprehensive
compensation scheme to address where incidents do occur. What is
needed is a means to extend this into the future and to cover
decommissioned sites, where owners have completed their approved
programme and moved on. A
Fisheries Legacy Trust Company (FLTC) was set up in 2007 to manage
this legacy into the long term. The responsibility for
maintaining data transfer and mechanisms to communicate information
for the safety of fishermen is now with FLTC. Services can be
viewed by accessing the FLTC website.
Further information on seabed structures can be found on the
FishSafe website.
Last updated 14th May 2009 |
Decommissioning Index
