Australia is entering a significant period of offshore decommissioning, with the Australian Government estimating around AUD 60 billion of decommissioning activity over the next five decades. The country has the skills, regulation and specialist capability needed to undertake this work. The question is whether its waste chain is ready for what will come ashore.
Around 89 percent of the total mass of Australia’s offshore decommissioning projects is located off the Northwest coast of Western Australia, with a further nine percent in the Gippsland Basin. Yet specialist waste infrastructure is not always located close to where material will originate, creating a more complex onshore journey for decommissioning waste. Materials may need to move between ports, storage facilities, treatment providers and final recovery or disposal routes, often across different jurisdictions and regulatory requirements.
For operators, how those routes are planned and coordinated can have a direct bearing on programme schedules, cost and compliance. The issue is not simply whether individual capabilities exist, but whether they can form a clear and accountable onshore chain.
The North Sea offers a useful reference point. After decades of decommissioning activity, its supply chain has developed greater coordination between offshore removal, port operations, waste management, specialist treatment and final disposal.
ASCO has seen the value of this approach first-hand in the UK, having coordinated multiple onshore decommissioning scopes, allowing for full coordination between removal, receipt through to final disposal, ensuring information stays intact, responsibilities are clear and operations stay efficient.
For Australia, the opportunity is not to replicate the North Sea model, but to adapt what works to its own scale, geography and infrastructure.
With volumes expected to increase through the 2030s, the decisions made now could determine whether Australia’s waste infrastructure supports decommissioning delivery or becomes a constraint on it.