Maersk Giant mobile drilling unit will be Yme living quarters

Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) has given Talisman Energy Norge consent to use the Maersk Giant mobile drilling facility to house workers preparing to decommission Talisman’s Yme field in the Norwegian North Sea.

Talisman discovered serious structural defects in the new platform in July 2012, prompting it and its partner licensees to evacuate the facility.

Veolia Environmental Services UK has won the contract to decommission the 14,000-tonne Yme platform. Preparation work will begin immediately, with the single-lift platform decommissioning scheduled to begin in mid-2015.

Maersk Giant is a jack-up drilling facility owned and operated by the A.P. Møller-Maersk Group that accommodates 87 people. It was built in Japan by Hitachi and completed in 1986. It can operate in water depths of up to 107 metres.

The Yme field is in the south-eastern section of the North Sea in a water depth of between 77m and 93m. It was first developed by Statoil in 1995. That stage of production lasted from 1996 to 2001.

In 2006, new licensees led by Talisman decided to recover remaining hydrocarbons with a new MOPU (mobile offshore production unit) set on an oil storage tank on the seabed. Built in Abu Dhabi, it was installed in 2011, but only a year later cracks were found in the cement grouting surrounding the platform’s legs.