Two subsea mid water arches weighing around 100 tonnes each are just some of the items that have been landed at Aberdeen Harbour as the port supports Maersk Oil’s decommissioning campaign for the James, Janice, Affleck and Leadon fields in the North Sea.

In conjunction with Scotoil and Maersk Supply Service, Aberdeen Harbour has supported Maersk as it works to safely recover subsea infrastructure from these decommissioned fields.

A total of nine shipments, due to be complete in September, will be brought to Aberdeen by the vessel Maersk Achiever.

The Janice decommissioning programme in its entirety involves more than 37,000 tonnes of material being brought ashore, of which more than 90% from the 4 fields will be recycled.

Colin Parker, chief executive of Aberdeen Harbour Board, said: “The port has been handling decommissioning work for several years now, including the decommissioning of sizeable structures since 2014, and we are ideally placed to support such work, given that we are home to a range of specialist disposal and recycling service companies, fully licensed SEPA approved project areas, and our trunk road accessibility.

“Our capabilities in this area are due to expand even further once Aberdeen South Harbour is operational in 2020, but we continue to welcome decommissioning work into the existing harbour, and believe that the service we are providing is of the highest quality.”

Craig Smith, managing director of Scotoil, added: “Several of the units involved in this job have been too large to ship by road in their current state, but we have been able to use the Aberdeen Harbour and Scotoil Licensed Area within the port to down-size the units, ready for onward road transportation, thereby providing a cost-effective processing solution for our customer. We hope to carry out many similar projects in conjunction with Aberdeen Harbour Board in the future.”