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Expro has chosen new life for Brent Spar as a roll-on/roll-off ferry quay in Norway...
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 The innovative re-use proposal, from the British-Norwegian consortium Wood-GMC, uses cleaned slices of the Spar's hull to build a new quay extension at Mekjarvik, near Stavanger. It still requires final approval by the British Government, which is the regulatory authority, and also Norwegian approvals. Expro decided that the Wood-GMC proposal was the Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO) for the Spar after making the required balance of the BPEO considerations; technical, environmental, safety and cost; and by absorbing feedback from the pan-European Brent Spar Dialogue seminars. Expro's managing director Heinz Rothermund said: "Our choice is not deep-sea disposal and not scrap on shore at any cost as some have urged. It is a unique re-use solution for a unique structure. He added: "It is not, and never can be, a precedent for other offshore installations." Mr Rothermund pointed out that this option had not existed when Expro first considered decommissioning the Spar. Because Norway had now indicated that work could be carried out there, the redundant offshore storage and loading buoy could now be tackled in a calm and sheltered, but deep-water location, enabling safer methods of raising it from the water.
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 Stavanger Port Authority is planning its new 170-metre quay to operate from the summer of 1999, with or without the Spar, but using slices of the Spar's hull will save money, energy and greenhouse gas emissions in construction. The giant structure will be raised vertically, using a special lifting cradle and heavy barges, and its hull cut into rings. These will be cleaned, filled with ballast and completed with concrete on top to form the quay. The topsides "the smaller living and control module" will be scrapped onshore in Norway. Eric Faulds, Expro's decommissioning manager, said: "This elegant solution is not so much an end as a new life for a hard-working North Sea workhorse. Brent Spar will now serve another community for perhaps 100 years." In the crucial first step of the BPEO evaluation, technical acceptability, four Short List options passed the hurdle. They were:
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- Wood-GMC's re-use as a quay;
- Brown and Root's onshore scrapping in the uk;
- AMEC's re-use in a uk coastal protection scheme; and
- Deep-sea disposal
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Environment, safety and costs were considered next. In the detailed environmental analysis, Dialogue participants agreed there would be no significant environmental impact from any of the proposals, including deep-sea disposal. But they suggested the solution should save more energy than it consumed, and should prefer re-use to recycling and recycling to disposal. On safety potential for loss of life and major accidents AMEC had higher risk. Wood-GMC and deep-sea disposal had the lowest risks. On cost, Brown and Root's scrapping cost the most, a total of between £49 million and £52 million. AMEC's total costs were similar. Wood-GMC's total was between £23 million and £26 million, while deep-sea disposal, taking account of new regulations expected this summer, totalled £17 million to £20 million. Expro found a high degree of equivalence between Wood-GMC's proposal and the benchmark, deep-sea disposal. Participants in the Dialogue debated whether the environmental gains with re-use would be worth the additional cost of obtaining them. But in line with the BPEO guidance that financial considerations should not be overriding, Shell concluded that the BPEO was Wood-GMC's reuse.
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