LONDON�Norway's Aker Maritime AS has clinched a further �7 million contract connected to Phillips Petroleum UK Ltd.'s decommissioning plans for the Maureen platform in the North Sea. The new deal to tow the giant steel gravity base to the Aker Stord facility, clean its three storage tanks, and carry out a "thorough inspection" of the platform, builds on a 500 million kroner contract awarded last year to the Norwegian company to engineer the structure's refloating.
Should Phillips fail to find the "reuse opportunity" for the Maureen platform it has been seeking since last year, Aker also has been provisionally contracted to dismantle the structure. The installation is scheduled to be refloated next summer.
Decommissioning plans for the Maureen field call for the platform�a 92,000 tonne steel gravity base topped by a 18,000 tonne topsides�to be "freed" from the seabed, refloated, and towed to shore, followed by the development's 10,000 tonne articulated loading structure, used for oil export, which stands in 96 m of water 2.5 km away.
"Great importance will be attached to environmental considerations. [We] will be responsible for the effective handling and processing of all associated waste in a environmentally sensitive way," said Aker Maritime, which has tapped subsidiaries Aker Marine Contractors and Aker Offshore Partners to execute the Maureen removal job.
The dedicated decommissioning facility at Aker Stord, designed for "reception, dismantling, and recycling" of offshore installations, was built to deal with the removal of Esso's Odin platform in 1996, the first platform to be removed in the Norwegian North Sea and work also contracted to Aker.
