Some of the offshore oil and gas infrastructures are ending their operational life in most areas of the world, and the impact of decommissioning activities is still largely unknown. Removal of such structures is unlikely to represent best environmental practice; recognition of this has resulted in some nations leaving not productive structures in place as artificial reefs or to find alternative solutions for their sustainable re-use. The PLaCE project aims at investigating for the first time at Italian national level solutions for the eco-sustainable re-use of offshore platforms located in the Adriatic Sea at the end of their productive phase. The selected re-use solutions to be tested in the offshore location are a set of innovative eco-sustainable strategies for offshore aquaculture and a life-extension strategy for reutilization of offshore platforms into new and eco-sustainable economy, based on mineral accretion technology under low voltage electrolysis of seawater to protect offshore structures from corrosion. To do this, a suitable offshore asset was selected to perform a substantial asset conversion investigation on such infrastructure. The paper describes the asset conversion process to meet the project requirements, the design of a dedicated remote-controlled renewable power system, the planning and carrying out of the relevant offshore works. A dedicated lesson learnt summary is also included in the last paper section. The project is co-funded by the European Union within the projects PON - Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020.
Several offshore platforms around the world oceans will reach the end of their production phase in the next decade and will require sustainable management solutions. Options alternative to the complete removal has been explored at international level, including partial decommissioning and leave in place for sustainable and beneficial re-use. Indeed, platforms at the end of their operational phase can represent multi-use hubs for the development of the Blue Economy, such as renewable energy production and aquaculture in line with the principles of the sustainable use of marine space and its resources. At Italian level, on the basis of the available information contained in the UNMIG database (latest update October 2020), there are 124 oil and gas offshore platforms of which 115 located in the Adriatic Sea, 4 in the Ionic Sea and 5 in the Sicily Channel and some of them are ending their operational life.
