Brent was once one of the most productive parts of the UK's offshore assets but has now been fully decommissioned after reaching the end of its economic life. All four platforms were removed from the field between 2017 and 2024 by Pioneering Spirit, the world's largest vessel by tonnage.

2024年7月12日 · Allseas has completed the removal of the fourth and final platform from Shell’s Brent field in the UK’s North Sea as part of a decommissioning project that took over a decade to conclude.

2024年7月12日 · Allseas is proud to announce the safe removal of Shell UK’s 31,000-tonne Brent Charlie platform topsides from the UK sector of the North Sea. Executed on 9 July, the single-lift removal of Brent Charlie by Allseas’ heavy lift vessel Pioneering Spirit , represents the heaviest offshore lift ever performed, and concludes years of engineering ...

The Brent field, operated by Shell, lies off the north-east coast of Scotland, midway between the Shetland Islands and Norway. It is one of the largest fields in the North Sea and is served by four large platforms – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

As the UK transitions towards net zero, the next step is to decommission four platforms in the Brent Field and their related infrastructure. This is an enormous undertaking involving: There We Go’ – Lifting 25,000 tonnes in 9 seconds: Brent Bravo Lift.

Executed on 9 July 2024, the single-lift removal of Brent Charlie by Allseas’ heavy lift vessel Pioneering Spirit, represents the heaviest offshore lift ever performed, and concludes years of engineering and planning. Removal of the fourth and final Brent platform is a significant milestone in a remarkable project spanning more than a decade.

All of the platforms – as well as their associated infrastructure such as wells and pipelines – will be included in the decommissioning programme which will make recommendations for how to safely and responsibly decommission the Brent Field.

Royal Dutch Shell is leading the way; in February 2015 the company set out plans to decommission the iconic Brent platforms in the oilfield north-east of Shetland – using Allseas’ heavy-lift vessel Pioneering Spirit. Removals began with the 24,000-t Brent Delta topside in 2017.

2017年12月6日 · To access the light, sweet crude which is now an industry benchmark, four platforms – Brent Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta – were constructed between 1975 and 1978 in a line running roughly 10 km south-south-west to north-north-east over the field (see the schematic image at the end of this article).

Of the four production platforms at Brent, three are gravity base structures: Bravo, Charlie and Delta. Bravo and Delta are of a similar design. Each structure has either three or four concrete legs almost 20 metres in diameter and up to 165m tall. There are 64 storage cells in the three concrete bases, 42 of which were used to store oil.