STUART NUTTALL, OPERATIONS MANAGER FOR THE SOUTHERN NORTH SEA

Stuart joined Petrofac in 2011, and spent his first four months with the company as an Operations Engineer on the Hewett field. He has since worked across the UK and further afield, covering everything from pre-operations, to steady state operations, to late life asset management, to decommissioning. As Operations Manager, he is ultimately responsible for all activities in the field, and legally accountable to the UK regulators.

The difference between this project and my last decommissioning project is like day and night… I’d previously worked on the bp Miller decommissioning, which is a large modern platform, installed in larger modular sections in the early 1990s after the Piper Alpha tragedy, sitting in 100 metres of water, 150 miles offshore. This is the exact opposite. It’s a cluster of assets, located a few miles off the coast, in just 20 metres of water, and it was built before I was even born. It’s the age of the platforms and the interdependencies between them that makes this project so complex and challenging.

What you learn in five years at Petrofac would take 15 years anywhere else… I’ve worked with and for some amazing people at Petrofac. The opportunities are boundless. You’re actively encouraged to push yourself and step out of your comfort zone. And, if you build a good reputation for yourself, you’ll be swept along, constantly learning and developing.

Projects like this are helping to set Petrofac up for the next phase of its development… Building a strong foundation in late life asset management and decommissioning should position us well in the global market, as the demand for this type of work grows. This is an amazing project to be involved with. It has many complexities which everyone can learn from, and can carry those learnings to future projects and operations anywhere in the world.

The Hewett field will always mean something special to me… I have many great memories of the field. It was my very first assignment when I joined Petrofac and, although I did move to other things quite quickly, I have always maintained those early friendships and working relationships with onshore and offshore teams. This background helped significantly when I returned in 2019 to take over the contract.

My abiding memory of this project will be the development of the teams behind it… The way I see my job is to support and develop the team around me. It’s those team members who are doing the work and, without their commitment and dedication, a project like this wouldn’t be achievable. Here at Hewett, we’ve managed to build an amazing team, with a set of people who work together very well, with the right mindset, who always want to do the right thing, do it efficiently, and do it effectively.

The Hewett field

Meet the people behind the project