Tim Eggar, U.K. minister of industry and energy, has announced government approval of a plan by Shell U.K. Exploration & Production to dump its Brent spar offshore loading buoy this summer in deep water off Northwest Britain.
Paul Dymond, chairman of the abandonment committee of the U.K. Offshore Operators Association, confirmed the Brent spar platform in the U.K. North Sea will be ditched in the Atlantic Ocean in more than 2,000 m of water.
A Shell official said the company had surveyed a number of possible disposal sites.
Eggar called the Brent spar a good example of deep sea disposal as the best environmental option. The dump site is on the U.K. abyssal plain, beyond reach of trawlers' nets.
The spar is a 65,000 metric ton structure with capacity to store 300,000 bbl of oil in six tanks. It is 141 m high and 29 m in diameter across its main chamber.
The unit began operation in Brent field in December 1976 and was decommissioned in August 1991. Typical throughput to tankers was about 200,000 b/d.
The spar allowed early production from Brent field before installation of a crude oil pipeline from the field to Sullom Voe terminal.
After the pipeline went on stream in November 1979, the buoy was retained as an alternative to pipelines. In 1991 a review of refurbishment costs showed further use would not be economical.
Dumping of the spar will be the first operation of its kind off the U.K. So far, eight U.K. offshore fields have been abandoned. They were mainly floating production and subsea developments.
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