Kristen Ounanian, Jan van Tatenhove and Paulina Ramírez-Monsalve
Centre for Blue Governance, University of Aarlborg, Denmark
Why is there so little policy support for reusing oil and gas installations as reefs in in the North Sea? MERCES researchers, Kristen Ounanian, Jan van Tatenhove and Paulina Ramírez-Monsalve answer this intriguing question in their open access paper, “Midnight in the oasis: does restoration change the rigs-to-reefs debate in the North Sea?, published in the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning. This article is one of the outputs of the governance and legal work package in the MERCES project.
Many oil and gas fields in the North Sea will soon reach the end of their productivity; their associated structures will be decommissioned. Decommissioning is the abandonment, disposal and removal of equipment and installations used in offshore industries, such as oil and gas. Decommissioning will remain an important issue in the near and far future in the North Sea, because not only will offshore oil and gas installations reach the end of their productivity, in fifty years structures related to wind farms will also face decommissioning. A decision (98/3) of the Regional Sea Convention for the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) prescribes removal of all disused offshore structures as the only acceptable decommissioning option. This policy is the legacy of the 1995 Brent Spar incident. Shell wanted to dispose of the offshore oil storage buoy (Brent Spar) in the North Sea, which was fiercely opposed by Greenpeace, fuelling the dominant discourse of “Hands off the Oceans”. The main storyline of this discourse is that there should be nothing dumped into the oceans and that abandoned or disused installations and platforms should be dismantled onshore. This discourse—or mental frame—was institutionalized in the OSPAR’s decommissioning decision.
Nonetheless, in the past years, environmental management at sea has evolved from a conservation and protection paradigm to one advocating restoration. This paradigm shift could favour the “Rigs as Restoration” discourse, in which the conversion of rigs and platforms into artificial reefs, the Rigs-to-Reefs (RtR), becomes a new decommissioning option. The article poses the question whether the emerging restoration discourse related to decommissioning in the form of RtR is capable of changing the dominant ‘Hands off the oceans’ discourse? The analysis described the emerging ‘RtR as Restoration’ discourse, as four different storylines; cost-savings; the rigs as habitats for (threatened) species; oases in the desert, and RtR as de facto Marine Protected Areas. However, given the present, fragmented nature of this discourse, and the counter-arguments voiced, it is not expected that the ‘RtR as Restoration’ discourse will challenge the dominant ‘Hands off the Oceans’ discourse, nor will it open a debate on OSPAR’s decommissioning decision in the near future. However, the development of windfarms and the EU Biodiversity Strategy could result in a reframing of the restoration discourse and in the end put decommissioning as RtR conversion on OSPAR’s agenda again.
For further information, contact Kristen Ounanian (kristen@plan.aau.dk)
