UK: OGA’s first hackathon focuses on well plug & abandonment

UK’s Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has brought operators and the supply chain together to uncover solutions applicable to the Southern North Sea’s (SNS) well plug and abandonment (P&A) market at its first hackathon event held on Thursday in Aberdeen.

As oil and gas fields approach end of life, P&A is a necessary step in the majority of decommissioning campaigns to permanently prevent hydrocarbons from surfacing, OGA said on Thursday.

Bill Cattanach, OGA Head of Supply Chain, said: “Well P&A costs account for approximately 60% of the overall cost of decommissioning the SNS so a smarter way of working could unlock tens of billions of pounds worth of business opportunities for the local supply chain and cost savings for operators and government.“

He also said that the event is the first of its kind for OGA and that the hackathon represents a platform for presenting ideas directly to operators. Furthermore, he added that the collaborations established during the event and lessons learned can be applied to establish a competitive decommissioning sector for the whole UK Continental Shelf.

A hackathon, by definition, is an event that typically lasts for several days bringing people together in order to do collaborative computer programming. The term has since been adopted by other sectors.

The OGA is hosting a second SNS well P&A hackathon in Norwich on Wednesday, June 29, at Norwich City Football Club.