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UK port plans to recycle old rigs into foundations for floating wind farms UK’s Ardersier Port, which was one of the largest oil rig fabrication yards in the world employing up to 4500 workers, is now set to be transformed into Europe’s first fully circular energy transition facility where old oil rigs will be recycled to make foundations for floating offshore wind farms in a move expected to generate thousands of jobs.
The unused Ardersier Port located 14 miles east of Inverness stretches at over 400 acres and, with more than a kilometre of quayside, it is the largest brownfield port in the UK. It is now being transformed into an energy transition facility by its new owners as the work on a £20 million, nine-month ‘capital dredge’ is about to begin, expected to remove 2.5 million cubic metres of sand. The port is owned by Steve Regan, a former chief executive of civil engineering firm Careys, and business partner Tony O’Sullivan, who purchased the site earlier this year but the acquisition fee was not disclosed. They set up Ardersier Port in May and registered the business in Fraserburgh. Green steel plant Over the next five years, the port’s owners will deliver an oil rig decommissioning facility and a waste from energy recovery facility. They will also deliver a £300 million green steel plant, powered by offshore wind and
energy from waste, a concrete production plant utilising dredged sand from the port and by-products from the steel plant and energy from waste facility, as well as a dedicated floating wind hub for concrete floating wind foundation manufacturing. This, according to owners, will create the largest floating wind foundation fabrication, manufacturing and assembly facility in the UK – in an offshore wind market predicted to deliver 29,000 jobs and £43.6 billion to the UK economy by 2050. Floating wind Ardersier Port already has an agreement with floating wind player BW Ideol, guaranteeing it exclusive access to the port for the manufacture of concrete floating wind foundations. Once the dredging is complete next summer, Ardersier Port will build a bespoke slipway that will allow floating oil and gas structures to be hauled onshore prior to removing all contaminants and decommissioning them.
Last week, a report by industry body Oil and Gas UK estimated there will be more than a million tonnes of North Sea topsides coming ashore this decade, much of which can be recycled. Regan said: “At Ardersier, we can lead the UK’s Green Industrial Revolution by using circular economy practices to deliver new low carbon infrastructure built on the by-products of our oil and gas past. This is a once in a generation opportunity to create a world-leading industrial and offshore wind manufacturing facility here in the UK.” O’Sullivan said: “The energy transition from offshore structures to floating wind has an important missing factor: steel. Today, the UK exports ten million tonnes of scrap steel annually. By building a new renewable-powered electric arc furnace at Ardersier Port, the first new-build steel mill in the UK for 50 years, we will utilise a million tonnes of scrap each year. This will produce reinforcement steel for the UK construction industry, of which there is currently a shortfall, allow for the ons-
