Circle Technical Services has reached the milestone of 100 decommissioning projects in the Gulf of Mexico between 2001 and 2005.

In the course of these projects the subsea specialist - which has bases in Aberdeen, Scotland and Houma, Louisiana - deployed its Jetcut water-abrasive cuttings systems to carry out no less than 1,000 internal cuts for the removal of structures and wellheads below the seabed.
The pile sizes involved mostly ranged from 20 inches to 72 inches in diameter, but the largest was a 120-inch pile with a 2.5-inch wall. The greatest wall thickness has been four inches on an 84-inch diameter pile.
“The main benefit of using water-abrasive cutting techniques is that it is completely harmless to the marine environment,” explains David Dent, Circle Technical Services’ managing director.
In the UK North Sea, the company has so far worked on seven major decommissioning programmes, with a further six scheduled.
“There are some 6,500 structures worldwide that, at some point will be partially or completely removed, depending on feasibility,” Derrick Reith, Circle’s sales and marketing manager, points out. “With such extensive work in the Gulf of Mexico and these major North Sea projects behind us, we believe we are setting standards in safe and effective cold-cutting solutions for the removal of offshore structures.”
Among the most recent projects on which Circle’s Jetcut systems were deployed were three North Sea platform removals carried out this year by Seaway Heavy Lifting Engineering BV (SHL). A further six are scheduled for later this year.
“SHL is very experienced in environmentally friendly methods of platform decommissioning and removal,” says Renier de Jong, SHL operations manager. “Our heavy lifting experience and facilities combined with Circle’s Jetcut expertise has proven to be a very powerful combination on the contracts we have carried out together.”