Writing Offshore Well Abandonment Regulations – Thinking Outside The Box

Adopting the holistic “complete life cycle” philosophy promoted by SEMS to reduce the environmental impact of offshore plugging and abandonment operations, often requires participants to be able to step into the shoes of their colleagues in different disciplines, and to understand their priorities, workflow, and analytical procedures.

In an interview with the magazine Decommissioning World on the topic of developing offshore facility abandonment legislature in the Asia Pacific Region, Dr. Brian Twomey of Reverse Engineering Services Ltd. supports this point by describing decommissioning is not the direct “reverse of construction,” and that the cleanup and remediation process requires a “different mentality and approach.”

https://www.decomworld.com/asiapac/content3.php

Typically thinking outside the box training had been directed at the management and technical level staff, but implementing this philosophy has been more challenging for the legal sections in both sides of the regulatory table.  Saddled with lexicon that does not always translate easily into cost-effective or safe engineering practice, how have organizations adapted their training programs for their legal staff to better inform the practical implications of legal terms on engineering life cycle design?

*The author’s views and opinions are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views and opinions of 360factors.