Publications

Expensive decommissioning is an inevitability for the oil and gas industry. The complexities of the issues expand from technicalities to financial and environmental sustainability. As for Indonesia, currently, 630 offshore oil and gas platforms have been built, with 107 of them no longer in use (106 built before 1994 and 1 built after 1994). However, for the pre-1994 platforms, decommissioning processes were still constrained because there was no mandatory allocation for Abandonment Site Restoration (ASR) funds in their early operations.

Through this meta-analytical study, authors offer an alternative to decommissioning solutions that are economically advantageous and may add environmental value. The proposed idea is to implant the wave energy converters (WECs) and turn the decommissioned platform into a renewable power generator. The study will focus on the oil and gas working area of the offshore North West Java region, where many pre-1994 offshore platforms are located, and the wave energy potential is measured at up to 14 kW/m2. The cost and benefit will be observed and compared to the conventional decommissioning scenario.

The results show that turning one platform into a Wave Energy Generator as an alternative to decommissioning is sufficient to support the offshore power generation need by substituting one unit of 2.5 MW in-situ natural gas power generator. Repurposing the decommissioned platform will avoid significant steps out of the conventional asset removal procedures and reduce the decommissioning cost by approximately USD 8,350,000. Moreover, the proposed decommissioning alternative gives a relative advantage in increasing oportunity revenue from the natural gas sales by USD 228,165/year., and cutting 15 million Pound carbon dioxide emissions from annual operation.