Title: Conservation of biodiversity during decommissioning of oil and gas facilities

Biography:

Sylvia Jagerroos is a Senior Consultant with ERM and she has over fifteen years’ experience assessing a wide range of marine environment and has in depth knowledge of sensitive tropical habitat assessments. She is specialized in Climate Change and Resilience Adaptation and she has collaborated with the World Bank to establish Coastal Management plans on islands in the Maldives and she has assessed other projects in a wide range of countries like Kenya, Sri Lanka, Australia, Philippines, Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia. She is currently working in the oil and gas sector in South East Asia where she is developing several environmental studies to aid in the decommissioning process

Abstract

Decommissioning of offshore oil and gas platforms raises many complex issues to consider before accomplishing a successful strategy to undertake these activities in an environmentally effective, efficient and equitably safe manner not only for the operators and the regulatory authorities but for the physical and biological surroundings. There are many factors to evaluate and issues like liability, reputational risk, cost, cumulative impact, technical development, regulatory framework and Climate Change would all have to be considered on a case to case scenario as opposed to adopting a regular strategy for all facilities. The debate is focused about whether the structure or facilities left in place like an artifical reef habitat constitute valuable habitat and deliver ecosystem services or in contrast impact the biological environment and should be removed. Many offshore facilities, although deployed as artifical reef for a very long time have not developed the diversity of benthic or fish assemblages comparable to that found on the natural reef. South East Asia hosts many aging offshore facilities and the shortage of decomissioning yards and a lack of policy framework and financial support play a big role in order to conduct these activities in a way that safeguard the environment and the biodiversity of the marine environment.