Plans are being put together to fully decommission the Beatrice oil field in the Moray Firth. Production at the field has ceased, and it has been proposed to remove the platform complex, two demonstrator wind turbines and cables between 2024 and 2027.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) expressed an interest in using the complex as a training facility, but it has decided not to pursue the idea.
This decision means that a decommissioning programme approved by the UK Government in 2004 has been updated and extended to include the removal of the field’s platforms and other structures.
Energy company Repsol Sinopec Resources UK, owner of the oil field, has set out details of the planned decommissioning and uploaded an environmental impact assessment on its Web site.
The field, about 13 miles off the Caithness coast, forms part of the site of a massive offshore wind-farm project that will see 84 turbines installed in the Outer Moray Firth, generating 588MW of power once operational in 2019.
The planned decommissioning project involves the removal of five platform structures and power cables, while 43 wells in the field are to be “plugged” and abandoned.