A Birmingham-based company has put forward outline plans to build a £-multi-million new harbour on the Orkney islands to land and de-commission scrapped oil and gas platforms from the North Sea.
There are hundreds of such platforms to be decommissioned over the next 30 years in a market worth up to £50 billion, according to the Oil and Gas Authority.
Now the DSM decommissioning group – which has carried out an initial assessment of the putative site at Lyness – has met local council officials and presented its outline plants to the local community council.
A DSM spokesman said: “Once a platform comes out of the North Sea in a clean condition, it is floated to Lyness, where we’d bring it onshore and reduce it to parts that can be recycled and go off to third world oilfields. Or it’s completely cut up as scrap to be recycled and used again.”
Orkney Islands Council Convener Steven Heddle said: “This project has the potential to create significant employment, a range of business opportunities for local companies, and considerable economic benefits for Orkney as a whole,
“There will be a growing demand for oil and gas decommissioning facilities in the years ahead. Lyness and the natural deep-water harbour of Scapa Flow, with their location close to the North Sea, are ideally located to serve as a potential base for work of this kind,
“We now look forward to working with the company. Our priorities will be to ensure that Orkney benefits economically and that a development of this type is approached in an environmentally responsible manner, in order that we maintain our excellent track record for stewardship of our local environment and the seas around us.”
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