Nearly five years on from Shell UK's first announcement of its intention to dispose of the Brent Spar oil storage and loading buoy, the story is almost over. In the process, Expro has come through a firestorm of adverse publicity to reach a widely agreed solution. By early next year the four Spar sections already in place at the port of Mekjarvik in Stavangerfjord will have been filled with ballast and capped by a 150-metre concrete apron, and trucks will be rolling over them. Since the original plan to sink Spar in the Atlantic was abandoned in the summer of 1995, it has evolved from being a symbol from environmentalists' concern over global business issues, through being a tourist attraction during its three-year mooring in Erfjord, to stand again as a symbol - this time for the success of a dialogue which has swung public and stakeholder opinion behind a marine disposal solution, albeit rather different from the original. The Spar's topsides were removed by the giant crane barge Thialf last November (Shell UK Focus, Winter 1998) and dismantled onshore, with all of the steel heading for the smelter. The main hull of the 14,500-tonne buoy was then lifted by a specially constructed cradle arrangement fitted to the H851 barge. After cleaning by remotely operated high-pressure water jets, the rings were cut off and skidded to the end of the barge (Shell UK Focus, Spring 1999). The base section, which weighed 7,000 tonnes and could not be lifted, was floated off the cradle and towed to Mekjarvik by tugs to be placed in position in June. The Thialf was once again on station in early July to lift the three rings - each 22 metres high and 29 metres in diameter, weighing between 1,200 and 1,800 tonnes - from the H851 and position them on the seabed. Eric Faulds, Expro's former Decommissioning manager, said: "Clearly we're very happy to be almost at the end of the unprecedented engineering challenge of first finding, then carrying through this unique re-use decommissioning solution. It's been quite an experience being involved in such a groundbreaking, high profile project. "We've learned a great deal in the process and, in the spirit of openness and communication which has been a feature of Brent Spar decommissioning since we launched the Way Forward dialogue process in October, 1995, we will be publishing information on the technical and other lessons learned in a close-out report later this year. In that report we will also be able to provide details of all aspects of the work including final costs and other statistical data compiled over the whole project. "We are very grateful to the UK and Norwegian authorities for the support we have received and for their co-operative approach in helping to process the many authorisations and permits to allow work to go ahead."
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