Australia’s 2024 decommissioning landscape

Abstract

Australia’s decommissioning workload has continued to grow at a pace in the past year, several scopes are now awarded, and significant progress is being achieved on a number of studies. However, there is still a lot to do for Australia to deliver its decommissioning outcomes efficiently, safely and to best achievable standards. This paper will provide an update on decommissioning developments across Australia as well as highlighting some key activities helping grow a sustainable local industry. Coming off a low historic volume of activity of the previous decade, Australia’s decommissioning industry has had to rapidly scale and skill-up to address the significant volume of activity anticipated for the remainder of the decade. This increase has impacted the entire value chain, with everyone struggling to find experienced staff, access technologies and secure the all-important vessels to execute the work. Government is moving to support local companies grow into the industry. Regulators are working to balance societal expectations and industry plans. The service sector is mobilising into Australia, and everyone is looking for access to facilities to land equipment and to understand recycling and disposal chains. Meanwhile the workforce, keen to understand where to position themselves for the energy transition, are looking for opportunities. CODA has continued to work strategically to build the local industry. In the past 12 months, CODA has been developing a new online lookahead, completed several port studies, started to map industry skills needs and looked deeper into materials disposal and recycling.