How quickly things change. Little more than a year after it took full control of the Dunlin cluster of fields in the U.K. North Sea with the aim of squeezing as much as possible out of it, Fairfield Energy has changed tack sharply and started the job of decommissioning the fields.

Fairfield was set up more than a decade ago with the remit of breathing new life into old North Sea fields that were no longer deemed viable by major operators.

The company, which boasted shareholders including former BP boss Lord John Browne of Riverstone, was supposed to ride to the rescue of the U.K. Continental Shelf.

Ian Sharp, Fairfield’s COO, said when the deal for Dunlin was done last year that the move was a “positive and logical progression for Fairfield Energy and demonstrates our commitment to the North Sea.”

Fast forward a year and with the oil price halved from more than $100/bbl to less than $50/bbl and a huge leap in contractor rates in the region to contend with, Fairfield is turning from a swashbuckling producer to a decommissioning specialist.

It has put its old fields up for sale and launched the take-down program for Dunlin because of the “asset’s life cycle, the depressed oil price and challenging operational conditions in the North Sea.”

Production from all Dunlin cluster fields was shut down in mid-June 2015, although the Dunlin Alpha platform will remain fully manned and operational. The platform will continue to export third-party oil into the Brent system pipeline.

The phased decommissioning process is anticipated to take a number of years, with high offshore activity levels maintained throughout.

The closure of the fields is all the more disappointing because Fairfield has done a great deal of work on the Dunlin, Dunlin Southwest, Merlin and Osprey fields since acquiring them from Shell and its partners in April 2008. The deployment of new technology and the introduction of operational and efficiency improvements had resulted in a significant extension of its life cycle.

But in the face of events conspiring against it, Fairfield has taken what may seem like a pragmatic approach. And it isn’t the only one. Maersk Oil recently announced that it is closing its Janice Field in the North Sea.

This isn’t the beginning of the end, however, according to those who are battling to extend the life of aging fields.

“It’s not too late for the North Sea, but you wouldn’t want too many Dunlins,” said David Lamont, CEO of Proserv, during the Offshore Europe Conference Sept. 8. “I’m really optimistic about the North Sea for a number of reasons,” he continued. “I would even go as far as to say that the lower oil price is good for the North Sea because it is making change compelling rather than something that could take a long time to introduce.

“There will be those cases, but with more intervention early we can extend the life of assets,” he added. “That will snowball in a more positive way because we can be putting more production through the old assets. The big fear of the industry is that we’re not responding fast enough to save some of these assets. We must respond on an urgent basis to make sure that we do not lose more of these assets.”

We shall watch and wait.

Offshore