Path to a Green and Circular Decommissioning

Abstract

Various Oil & Gas companies, in the current context of Energy Transition, have the ambition to develop a circular economy approach framework which ranks the options for dealing with waste, beginning from the reduction of its generation, listing the possible actions in order of precedence for its management making possible also a better use of resources and finally maximizing the reuse and/or recycling of materials and components. Eni has developed within its organization a new culture of Circular Decommissioning with the main goal to set up a structured process to improve the environmental performance by implementing the Circular Economy principles during the engineering and execution of Decommissioning projects. The new initiative is aimed at encouraging all discipline functions towards a circular economy "culture" of reutilization also maximizing the Assets residual life. For this reason, during the preliminary stages of the Asset life cycle, specific feasibility studies are usually carried out to select the most preferred decommissioning solution from the environmental point of view and providing an early evaluation of potential benefits from the recycling of the residual materials. A circular economy can be simply considered as an upside of the linear economy where resources are taken from the natural environment, producing materials, components and equipment generally used for a short period of time, and then at their final stage of the life cycle are disposed of in different ways with a negative environmental impact. Circular economy can be explained in hundreds of different ways but surely it has a primary objective based on the maximization of the waste prevention optimizing the environmental, technical, and social benefits. Various Operators have the ambition to make possible the adoption of Circular Economy principles in their processes with the main goal to get a better use of resources, limiting the carbon emissions and promoting the use of renewable materials and energy. In the last two years, Eni has developed a new standard of circular decommissioning approach mainly aimed at adopting a new circular culture with the improvement of the environmental performance in other words reducing the amount of the waste materials through the reuse and/or the recycling of components. This approach, better described in next paragraphs as "3R" - Reuse, Recycle and Reduce approach will have a considerable importance over the next years with an increasing portfolio of high complexity decommissioning projects. It is supported by a new company culture based on the shift of decommissioning perception "from a liability to a regeneration opportunity" leveraging two fundamental pillars: the circular economy approach and the assets value maximization.