Exceed eyes £40b N. Sea decommissioning market with new collaboration tool

An Aberdeen based oil-well management and services company has developed what it claims to be the world’s first online information management system for the expanding North Sea  decommissioning market.

The Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) acknowledged in its Call to Action in February 2015 that, whilst the UK has a good track record of decommissioning to date, the industry is still learning and adapting to this new phase.

Successful collaboration is key to the future of decommissioning, a £40 billion market which will shape the future economy of north east Scotland for the next 35 years.

This is already happening, for instance, in the Southern North Sea where operators are looking at ways to combine well abandonment scope. With the scale of decommissioning set to significantly ramp up over coming decades, however, efforts to collaborate efficiently will need to match this pace.

Exceed has now invested more than £300,000 in the development of iVISION, an online platform which connects multi-location, multi-discipline teams and business units through one central point where information is securely stored and accessed.

iVISION integrates safety management, technical information and video to drive continuous improvement, enhance knowledge transfer and reduce the cost of current and future projects.

It is being used across global well management projects by its performance improvement division for clients such as Engie (previously GDF Suez), Tullow Oil and a major operator in South East Asia. The decommissioning edition of iVISION is now being launched to the decommissioning market to address the collaboration challenges outlined by the Oil & Gas Authority (OGA).

Martin Slowey has been appointed to head up Exceed’s iVISION business unit. He said:“The decommissioning edition of iVISION is the first tool of its kind in two respects. It takes users past the planning stages, through to execution and close out of a project, and is the first system available specifically for the decommissioning market.

“It will enable operators and contractors to share information effectively, as decommissioning steps up over the coming decades. iVISION is an enabling technology, and without it we anticipate that the industry will struggle to find an efficient, cost-effective way to collaborate.”