NonA Weekly: NEW POSSIBILITIES 🤯
Image by @HydroEnergy
Dear readers and friends,
Dotted around the planet 🌍, rising out of the sea, are thousands 📈 of oil and gas platforms. There are varying types of energy platforms – fixed, floating or sub-sea, among others. It’s the fixed ones that often require the most complicated decommissioning processes 🏗️, lasting up to seven years in some cases, from concept to completion.
As the world gradually releases itself from the stranglehold of fossil fuels 🛢️, all these platforms will become redundant. What will happen to them, though? Can they be recycled ♻️ or re-used? Or will they just languish in place, slowly rusting away? 🤔
1. DECOMMISSIONING OIL PLATFORMS 👷
Decommissioning is a massive CHALLENGE in its sheer scale and complexity 💪. But it also harbours exciting opportunities 🙌 for the marine environment and the transition to a low-carbon energy system.
2. HOW DECOMMISSIONED OIL PLATFORMS CAN SERVE ANOTHER PURPOSE 💭
The UK’s oil PLATFORMS are going to have to be decommissioned one day, so the key question is how they will do it 🧐. The circular economy framework offers those tasked with the process, an opportunity to capture as much economic value 💰 as possible by aiming to reuse the vast quantities of steel ⛓️ rather than recycle it.
3. CAN NORTH SEA INSTALLATIONS BE RECYCLED ♻️, OR DECOMMISSIONED SUSTAINABLY?
Encouraging oil and gas operators to find ways of REUSING assets ⚒️ comes with its own challenges – economics 💸 being one of them.
4. THE NOAH OASIS TRANSFORMS EXISTING OIL RIGS INTO VERTICAL BIO-HABITATS 🏡
The “noah oasis” imagines the TRANSFORMATION of oil rigs into vertical bio-habitats in the ocean 🌊 landscape, aiming to exert instant response and restore damaged eco-system 🐠 from oil spillage whilst offering shelter from future disasters.
5. SPACEX’S PLAN TO CONVERT OIL RIGS INTO LAUNCH PADS 🚀
SpaceX has acquired two decommissioned 🚧 offshore oil rigs at ports in Texas, which the company plans to CONVERT into spaceports 👨🚀 to service its Starship launch system, a project that is still under development.
6. A DISUSED FUEL RIG RECENTLY BECAME A BRITISH ART INSTALLATION 🎨. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE REST?
Decommissioning 🔨 an oil or gas platform is a mammoth task, and the industrial tangle above the water is only a tiny bit of what must be dealt with as they approach the end of their life. So how are they DISMANTLED – and what happens next? 🔮
7. EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW 📋 ABOUT ADAPTIVE REUSE OF BUILDINGS
Adaptive REUSE is the process by which historic structures 🏛️ are repurposed for different use. The goal of adaptive reuse is to merge the historically accurate nature of a once-underutilised or abandoned property with contemporary economic 🤑 viability.
Stay creative and see you all next week! 👋
Daniela
