Treat waste disposal offers with care
Decommissioning of assets from the UK Continental Shelf
("UKCS") is regulated by both domestic and international
law, policy and obligations. The Petroleum Act 1988 (as amended)
implements the OSPAR Convention and imposes a duty on operators to
remove all offshore installations from the seabed. In the course of
doing so, operators have a duty to submit and agree a
decommissioning and abandonment programme with the Secretary of
State for Energy, and ensure that this programme is carried
out.
The relevant programme must consider the possibility for reuse
and/or recycling and the operator must ensure that any subsequent
buyer has a programme for the proper recycling and disposal of any
materials. This is important in view of the fact that offshore
installations, in particular, FPSOs (floating, production storage
offloading units), often contain large quantities of hazardous
substances such as trapped gas, asbestos, residual oils
