Total Waste Management Alliance (TWMA), a world leader in environmental waste management services to the oil and gas industry, has been awarded drilling waste management contracts by BP worth around £4million.

The contracts involve the containment, handling, processing, recycling and disposal of drill cuttings at remote offshore locations using environmentally sensitive waste management equipment which is designed, manufactured, installed and operated by TWMA.

They cover complete containment and processing of drill cuttings on Transocean’s Paul B Loyd Junior semi-submersible rig using the TWMA TCC-RotoMill and the TWMA Cuttings Containment and Distribution System (CCDS).

The North Sea deal includes a two-year offshore waste management contract for the provision of thermal processing services, which includes bulk waste containment on the same rig with the extended scope to install bulk storage tanks.

As part of the Paul B Loyd Junior CCDS package, TWMA has customised the cuttings storage transfer (CST) units to BP requirements with a special custom-built frame that sits on new weighing pad. The weight indicators, which improve efficiency by providing real time tonnage readings while drilling, were designed by TWMA’s engineering team in collaboration BP specifically for this complete waste handling project.

The TCC-RotoMill is a thermal waste processing technology that recycles tens of thousands of drilled cuttings each year by effectively breaking them down into oil, water and solid components for reuse, removing the need for skip and ship operations, thereby resulting in major environmental and health and safety benefits for operators and clients.

Integrating the TCC-RotoMill technology with the CCDS System is TWMA’s optimum drill cuttings configuration as this gives operators a complete environmentally sensitive system capable of containing and processing drill cuttings on-site, concurrently the TCC-RotoMill recycles recovered oil back into the drilling fluid. TWMA is, at the moment, the only company in the world able to offer this complete waste management capability offshore.

Ronnie Garrick, managing director of TWMA, said: “We are excited about delivering offshore processing services to BP in the North Sea where we have serviced BP’s operations in the past. These contracts strengthen our long-term relationship with BP and ongoing technology collaboration between TWMA and BP.

“Drilling operators are facing increasingly stringent environmental and health and safety legislation, which puts immense pressure on operators to process waste in the most environmentally sound and safe manner, while doing that cost-effectively. Our waste disposal technologies meet all those challenges – it is no surprise that we are experiencing a period of strong growth in a heavily regulated industry environment that is ever more changing and challenging.”

Tags: BP PLC, Total Waste Management Alliance (TWMA)