North Sea operators are good at cleaning-up

Soil Recovery A/S at Nyborg looking at new markets after having been acquired by US global concern, NOV.

The North Sea is a pioneer area when it comes to environment-friendly handling of the oily deposits from the drilling activities in the underground.

Soil Recovery A/S, Nyborg, every year receives some 6,000-10,000 tons of drilling mud from the Danish sector and rinses the last 10% of the oil from the cuttings from the exploration wells. The process onshore cleans the water and isolates dry matter to be deposited.

But this is not a procedure adhered to all over the world. Here authorities often have a more liberal view on whether the oil companies are dumping their waste at sea, depositing it on shore or getting rid of it in a way harming the environment.

In Azerbaijan Soil Recovery is recovering valuable
oil from 14,000 tonnes of oil contaminated cuttings
per annum.

“We envisage an enormous potential abroad if the operators start complying with regulations for protecting the environment instead of dumping oily cuttings or oil-based mud from complicated wells,” states Managing Director Kjeld Bjerre Sørensen, Soil Recovery.

Member of a strong family
His optimism concerning the market potential has grown considerably since Soil Recovery - for 20 years being owned by Kommunikemi A/S - in 2006 became a member of Houston-based National Oilwell Varco (NOV) having a turn-over in 2005 of 4.6 billion US$ and a staff of some 20,000 worldwide.

“We are now a member of the NOV-family’s Brandt Division engaged in hand-ling and recovery of drilling mud from rigs, and Brandt is present in almost every place where you find exploration for oil and gas, so we have a market share of 60% in our business sector. So from being a one-man army we have now grown to having our own sales and service companies or representations all over the world.”

“We envisage an enormous
potential abroad if the operators
start complying with -regulations
for protecting the environment
instead of dumping oily cuttings
or -oil-based mud from complicated
wells,” states Managing Director
Kjeld Bjerre Sørensen, Soil Recovery.
Photo: Niels Husted

Soil Recovery and its staff of 60 have, however, brought their own specialities into the global oil and gas concern, too. Denmark, thus, is a key area for testing of the new technology having been contracted for tank cleaning of supply vessels by DONG Energy, Altinex Oil and Conoco Philips. The same ser-vice is being provided in Azerbaijan and Angola, and here in Denmark personnel from a number of other countries are trained for operating the plants.

The North Sea setting the standard
Half of the staff of Soil Recovery are working as operators at plants offshore, and the company has bases in all countries around the North Sea as well as in Nigeria, Angola, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. DONG Energy and Hess are among its major clients in the North Sea.

“We are pleased to see that the North Sea is setting the standard for how waste from the exploration of oil and gas should be handled in other parts of the world, too. On behalf of the fish, the ground water and sensitive areas we hope that other parts of the world will follow the example of the North Sea operators. It is my impression that everybody is sympathetic towards the issue, but often authorities have to apply a certain pressure before the re-gulations for protecting the environment are complied with.”

At its workshop in Nyborg Soil Recovery is constructing machinery, too, for treatment of cuttings, shaker systems and equipment for tank cleaning – however, only for rental.

During the latest two years the company has grown some 50% now having an annual turn-over of approx. 100 million DDK.