Maersk's Offshore Decommissioning Joint Venture Folds

Maersk Decom, the offshore decommissioning joint venture between Maersk Drilling and Maersk Supply Service, is shutting its doors and offloading its only active project. 

"Maersk Decom has transferred its responsibility for the Banda Tiof project in Mauritania to Petrofac, effective from April 2022. With this Maersk Decom has no further commitments and the company will close down," the firm said in a statement on its site. 

Petrofac will take over the JV's final project, a contract for Tullow Oil with a potential total value of more than $60 million. It covers plugging and abandoning seven subsea wells on Tullow Oil’s Banda and Tiof fields off the coast of Mauritania. Maersk Decom had been preparing the work since 2020, but it has agreed to hand it off to Petrofac, which will take control immediately.

Maersk's decommissioning tie-up launched in 2018 with a focus on "innovation to help energy companies restore the seabed, extend the lifetime of materials, reduce risk and free up value." The JV was intended to provide a one-stop shop for planning and carrying out well abandonments and platform removals, but the Banda/Tiof project was the only contract in its pipeline. With the transfer of that project complete, the partnership will be dissolved, and its website and social media channels will close down at the end of the month. 

The split-up does not mean the end of decommissioning work for Maersk Drilling and Maersk Supply Service, which each continue to look for projects independently. Maersk Supply Service recently won a contract from Shell Brasil for station-keeping services during the removal of a riser on the aging FPSO Fluminense. Meanwhile, Maersk Drilling recently landed a 19-month contract for plugging & abandonment services from TotalEnergies and Petrogas, covering 31 wells in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.