Lloyd’s Register names asset management and decommissioning head

Lloyd’s Register (LR), an engineering, technical and business services organization, has appointed Steve Gilbert as the organization’s new director of asset management and decommissioning. 

LR said that Gilbert, an industry veteran, would lead the asset management and decommissioning operations program internationally for operators and manufacturers in the oil and gas sector.

Gilbert will be based in Aberdeen and will bring with him a wealth of experience to the job, having spent more than 25 years in the industry.

Regarding his new role, Gilbert said: “Assessing the cost of late life asset management and decommissioning for operators in the UKCS and everywhere else in the world, is a real challenge. These costs are heavily influenced by the nature of the asset, the status of the global and local market, changes in technology, local regulation, and many other inflationary pressures.

“If you take a typical offshore installation with an operational life of 30 years and approximately 50,000 maintainable equipment items, in the region of 750,000 work orders will be generated, leading to some 9,000,000 hours of activity.

“In total, this can represent a cumulative expenditure of up to £2 billion and, with many facilities exceeding their original design life, the costs of maintenance can continue accumulating significantly beyond what was originally anticipated.

“Determining the nature, timing, and sequence of asset management, and ending the life of a field or facility in the most cost effective way, requires specialist knowledge of the reservoir, well design and production properties through to the drill package, processing equipment and vessel use. We have this unique capability in LR built up over many years from the investments we have made in companies such as ModuSpec, Scandpower, West Engineering, and more recently Senergy to provide a high-level of engineering expertise across the oil and gas value chain including ship recycling and nuclear.”

The organization added that it aimed to create a better understanding of the industry and the minimum that needs to done to achieve a safe and robust asset management plan and a cost-effective decommissioning process.

In related news, LR was awarded a contract with Statoil to conduct total risk analysis for the riser platform modification project at the Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea.