Australia’s decommissioning workload has continued to grow at a pace in the past year, several scopes are now awarded and significant progress being achieved on a number of studies. However, there is still a lot to do for Australia to deliver its decommissioning outcomes efficiently, safely and to best achievable standards. This paper will provide an update on decommissioning developments across Australia as well as highlighting some key activities helping grow a sustainable local industry.
Coming off a low historic volume of activity of the previous decade, Australia’s decommissioning industry has had to rapidly scale and skill-up to address the significant volume of activity anticipated for the remainder of the decade. This increase has impacted across the entire value chain, with everyone struggling to find experienced staff, access technologies and secure the all important vessels to execute the work.
Government is moving to support local companies grow into the industry. Regulators are working to balance societal expectations and industry plans. The service sector is mobilising into Australia, and everyone is looking for access to facilities to land equipment, understand recycling and disposal chains. Meanwhile the workforce, keen to understand where to position themselves for the energy transition, are looking for opportunities.
CODA has continued to work strategically to build the local industry. In the past 12 months developing a new online lookahead, completed several port studies, are beginning to map industry skills needs and looked deeper into materials disposal and recycling.

Over the next 7 years, according to Wood Mackenzie it is estimated that as many as 380 fields Oil & Gas facilities will be decommissioned across Asia Pacific.
Decommissioning is the last lifecycle phase of an oil and gas facility. It is often seen as an expensive cost of doing business and for many operators, involves a process they don’t fully understand.
For this reason, many operators defer the planning of decommissioning until the last minute. However just as the associated development project began many years prior to the commencement of construction, the decommissioning project should also begin well before any of the structure is removed – with the double objective of minimising risk whist planning and implementing an efficient process.
For decommissioning to be efficient – from an operational, sustainable, regulatory compliance and financial perspective, it must not be limited to an isolated project group. Rather, it must leverage corporate knowledge, processes and tools, facility operations, lessons learned from other decommissioning projects and the original facility development, to support the identification and management of the decommissioning risk profile.
Many opportunities may be missed if decommissioning risks and opportunities are not addressed in a timely enough manner.
In this presentation, dss+ will provide Oil & Gas companies with pragmatic guidance on how to plan for a decommissioning process that is managed well from an operational, risk, and financial point of view – preventing cost blowouts and safety incidents.

Over more than 50 years, safe and successful installation projects have enabled progressive development and expansion of the Gippsland Basin Joint Venture off the coast of Victoria, Australia. This has resulted in a highly integrated network of 19 offshore platforms which are now starting to progressively reach the end of their productive life and the detailed planning for the first phase of decommissioning projects has increased in intensity. Decommissioning of these assets is planned to take place in a number of campaigns. The Campaign 1 Decommissioning Project includes up to 13 platforms to be removed, which is likely be the largest single project of its kind in Australia. Experience of similar decommissioning projects in Australia is very limited, resulting in unprecedented challenges across many aspects of this project requiring creative, innovative and adaptable solutions to be developed to enable an efficient execution methodology. This paper will explore the strategies, challenges and successes involved with the early planning and development phase of the Gippsland Basin Joint Venture, Campaign 1 Decommissioning Project. Key insights from contracting, to execution planning and stakeholder engagement will be discussed, promoting sharing across the industry and efficiency for future Decommissioning Projects in Australia.

Australia's decommissioning outlook has previously been estimated at $63 billion of activity (USD 40.5 billion), while Australia's total technical potential for offshore wind could be estimated at approximately $11 trillion (assuming $5 billion of investment per gigawatt and 2,200 gigawatt of technical resource).
Both offshore wind and oil and gas industries require access to similar facilities, specifically ports, to support execution. Many ports are pursuing expansion plans independent of national opportunities across industries.
This paper proposes to discuss the opportunities available through improved supply chain planning, specifically in relation to ports, for decommissioning and offshore wind activities. These reflections arise from work that Xodus has completed in the United Kingdom for port facility providers and support delivered locally for decommissioning and offshore wind activities. In particular, it will discuss geographic advantages, shared vessel requirements, capability alignment across facilities, shared workforce planning and the opportunity for common service providers located at port.
Without improved coordination, there is a risk that constraints at port will defer both decommissioning and offshore wind activities, risking integrity challenges for oil and gas assets and an impact on Australia's energy transition objectives.