Neptune Energy announced the award of a $30 million decommissioning contract to Well-Safe Solutions, for a campaign covering more than 20 wells located across eight Dutch and UK North Sea fields.

It is the first multi-region, multi-well decommissioning campaign award by Neptune to a single rig contractor and will significantly reduce time and costs associated with the work.

Well-Safe Solutions’ Well-Safe Protector jack-up rig will carry out the plug and abandonment of at least four subsea and 17 platform wells located in Dutch and UK waters.

Neptune Energy’s Managing Director in the Netherlands, Lex de Groot, said: “Safely decommissioning assets at the end of their economic producing lives is an important part of our work. We plug and abandon the wells, taking everything with us and leaving the seabed in a clean state. That is our responsibility and we don’t take it lightly.

“Working with a single rig contractor for this extensive, cross-border decommissioning campaign is an innovative way reduce time and costs.”

Duncan Morison, Rig Manager of the Well-Safe Protector, said: “The Well-Safe Protector boasts a large volume of deck space for tubing, casing and conductor recovery, allowing effective batch operations and will help Neptune Energy realise considerable operational savings.”

The Well-Safe Protector is scheduled to mobilise in Q1 2023 to the Dutch and UK sectors for P&A operations in fields including D18a-A, G14-B, K12-S2, L10-S2 and K9c-A in the Netherlands and the Neptune-operated Minke and Orca fields.

Neptune has the option to extend the one-year contract by a further two years, via eight three-month extension.