Esso Australia joins new Australian decommissioning centre of expertise

Esso Australia has joined the newly formed Centre of Decommissioning Australia, or CODA.

“As operator of some of Australia’s oldest oil and gas assets and with a substantial plug and abandonment campaign already underway in Bass Strait, we are keen to understand and increase our influence on the development of Australia’s decommissioning policies and regulations,” said Esso Australia Decommissioning Asset Manager, Simon Kemp.

CODA will lead a collaborative effort to address the challenges and maximise the opportunities of decommissioning Australia’s aging oil and gas infrastructure by bringing together many of the world’s major oil and gas companies including Chevron, Woodside, Santos, Esso Australia, Vermilion Oil and Gas and BHP — as well as many leading service and research organisations such as Baker Hughes, Atteris, Linch-Pin, AGR, Curtin University and Xodus Group.

CODA is part of National Energy Resources Australia, Australia’s Industry Growth Centre for the energy resources sector.

NERA’s Chief Executive Miranda Taylor said the launch of CODA marked an important step in maximising value for the community, the environment and for Australian industry.

“We are looking at $50 billion of work over the next 50 years, so decommissioning represents a multi-generational challenge for Australia. CODA will play a critical role in transforming our approach to late life planning and decommissioning to maximise the value for Australia.

“NERA is an expert facilitator, bringing our stakeholders together to work on collaborative solutions, like those required to reduce decommissioning costs, create opportunity for local suppliers and improve our understanding of the impact of decommissioning decisions.” 

In 2020 NERA commissioned the first assessment of Australia’s offshore decommissioning liability, produced with support and involvement from oil and gas operators, which found that there is more than $50 billion of necessary decommissioning work on Australia’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure, over half of which needs to be started within the next ten years.

CODA has announced a series of foundation projects designed to rapidly accelerate cross-industry understanding of our decommissioning challenge including:

• Understanding opportunities for local disposal and recycling
• A global review of decommissioning planning and execution learnings
• Development of a decommissioning innovation and technology roadmap

These projects, along with other work being progressed by CODA, represent critical early-stage building blocks in delivering CODA’s objective of maximising value for Australia from decommissioning activities.

You can find more information on the work of CODA on the NERA website.