Ex-Quadrant man to head Xodus decom division

Engineering company Xodus Group has appointed a new decommissioning director to lead the company’s decom division.

Xodus said on Thursday that Enrico Salardi would be the head of its decom division, which was formed in 2015.

According to the company, Salardi has more than 20 years of experience in the management of oil and gas assets. He joins Xodus from operator Quadrant Energy where he was a senior project manager for several decommissioning programs in Australia.

“I am joining a very experienced team that has worked on managing processes and the execution of work on many assets in the North Sea and around the world.

“I hope my knowledge will add to this and provide the team with an insight into what challenges the operators are facing and how we can help ease the demanding process of decommissioning, including reducing associated costs,” said Salardi.

Throughout his career, Salardi managed many projects in various phases of their lifecycle around the world, including Italy, Nigeria, Norway, Libya, Croatia, Egypt, and Australia. After more than 15 years working for Italian supermajor Eni, he joined Apache in Perth, Australia where, besides decommissioning work, he also managed a number of new development projects.

Salardi will work alongside Xodus’ decommissioning lead, Peter Tipler, who will continue to focus on delivering the innovation, collaboration and strategic solutions that are required to reduce the overall cost of decommissioning.

Tipler recently helped Xodus deliver a decommissioning trend survey to Japan’s JOGMEC to provide oil and gas companies in the country with a better understanding of the decommissioning process and how to manage their global asset and abandonment liabilities.

As several assets in the North Sea reach the end of their lifespan, the latest cost estimate from the Oil and Gas Authority has predicted the cost of decommissioning the UKCS oil and gas infrastructure is £59.7 billion ($74 billion) with an ambitious goal of completing this work for less than £39 billion ($50.6 billion).

Wim van der Zande, CEO of Xodus Group said: “Enrico has vast experience of working at all stages of an asset’s lifecycle and his recent work in directly managing a decommissioning project will provide our team with valuable insight of an operator’s perspective. He will bring his learnings from global decommissioning projects to our key areas, including the North Sea, which we hope will lead to further cost savings for our clients.”