Collecting and displaying the decommissioning of North Sea Oil and Gas at the National Museums Scotland

Ellie Swinbank

doi:10.37190/arc200104

Abstract

This article discusses objects relating to the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea and now held in the collection of National Museums Scotland. Oil and gas extraction and processing has been a key industry in Scotland in recent decades, important to the economy and also to the debate about Scotland’s independence. The industry is now approaching an end and it is expected that, by 2040, around 470 installations will have been closed and dismantled. In this context, the issue of preservation becomes extremely important. National Museums Scotland has been collecting and display these objects for some time. The acquisiton in 2017 of the Murchison oil platform flare tip was a key achievement and also probably the biggest challenge for staff in this area to date. Weighing nearly a ton and standing 4 metres tall, the flare tip is not only a symbol of industry but of human history, and accompanying audiovisual documentation, oral history, images and report book entries add depth to this and increase display potential. The flare tip is also a starting point for discussion about contemporary collecting and the future of energy collections in Scotland. The article discusses the significance of this object and the work relating to its preservation and display.

Keywords:
oil
decommissioning
industry
museum
collection
scotland

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2020

1(61)

DOI: 10.37190/arc200104

Introduction

National Museums Scotland (NMS) has a long history

of collecting industrial objects. Our predecessor museum,

the Industrial Museum of Scotland, was founded with

the intention of collecting the materials and processes of

manu facture; that is, contemporary technologies and the

tacit skills that went with them [1]. For a lot of the mu-

seum’s lifetime the emphasis has tended to be more on

historical collecting but there has always been a remit for

collecting relevant current material. In recent years, this

has been distilled and formalised into a strategic priority

within our Collections Development Strategy.

In terms of our energy collections this means that we

aim to build on our world-class collections and expertise in

the areas of energy generation and consumption, working

with industry and universities to collect innovative techno-

lo gy and industrial material as its working life concludes [2].

This collecting target aligns closely with the acqui-

sition of material from transforming industries. This in-

cludes the nuclear industry, the oil and gas industry and

the renewable energy sector.

Contemporary collecting and decommissioning

– looking back and forward

A key acquisition from recent years is the are tip from

the Murchison oil platform. Although this is a piece of

Ellie Swinbank*

Collecting and displaying the decommissioning

of North Sea Oil and Gas at the National Museums Scotland

Gromadzenie i eksponowanie obiektów związanych z wydobyciem

ropy naftowej i gazu z Morza Północnego w National Museums Scotland

contemporary collecting, it in many ways represents the

end of a technical endeavour, rather than the beginning

[1]. That said, the decommissioning of Scotland’s oil and

gas industry is an industry in itself. It will take approxi-

mately 25–35 years to dismantle nearly 500 oshore in-

stallations and looks set to cost between £45 billion and

£77 billion [3]. So, collecting the are tip from the Mur-

chison oil platform is a way of looking back at the re-

cent past and also of representing the beginning of a new

and signicant chapter. The item itself has just entered

the realm of obsolescence, but the process of retrieving

it and dismantling the platform, where it operated from

1982 until 2014, is part of a new, expanding and evolving

discipline that is going to be relevant for decades to come,

as is reected in the fact that the University of Aberdeen

is now oering a master’s degree in the decommissioning

of oil rigs, platforms and oshore structures.

The Significance of North Sea Oil and Gas

(NS O & G) and how it is already represented

in our collections

North Sea Oil has been vital to Scotland and Britain

for more than half a century. The rst licenses to drill

were granted in 1964. Since then, thousands have been

employed in the industry and it has generated vast in-

come for the government and private companies alike. We

have become reliant on oil and gas products for fuel for

transport, manufacture of plastics, cleaning products and

heating. In its peak year of production, the Brent oil eld

supplied enough energy to meet the annual needs of half

* ORCID: 0000-0002-2720-2054. National Museums Scotland,

Scotland.

26 Ellie Swinbank

of the UK’s homes [4]. The industry has been central to

UK politics as well, playing a prominent role in the Scot-

tish independence debate and being used to make various

arguments during the Brexit discussion, from the impact

that the loss of access to markets and EU workers may

have on the industry [5], to whether it would provide the

economic buer needed in the event of a hard or no deal

Brexit [6].

Oil and gas have been, and continue to be, central to

our economy and politics and have provided employment

to an enormous workforce both o and on shore. Up to

200 people may be working on an oil rig on one shift and

a vast support and supply industry of goods, services and

cargo vessels is based on the mainland to provide safe-

ty cover and maintain the cities in the sea [7]. In 2014,

the website Scotjobsnet.co.uk said, It is dicult to put an

exact gure on how many jobs oil and gas supports in

the Aberdeen area, although 23,500 people, equivalent to

10.3% of the workforce, are employed directly by the in-

dustry. It has been estimated that a further 82,000 people

work locally in the supply chain, which would mean the

sector accounted for 46% of jobs in the area [8].

The developments in the industry since the 1960s were

already well represented in the NMS collections by drill

and platform models used to inform manufacture, sam-

ples of North Sea oil, and a cross section of the Ninian

oil pipeline from Sullom Voe terminal in Shetland, which

is on display alongside drill bits and a model of the Elgin

wellhead in the Scotland: A Changing Nation gallery in

the Museum of Scotland (Fig. 1).

These collections form a powerful core of the Science

and Technology collections and enhance our ability to tell

the story of 20

and 21

century Scotland. In order to

continue to tell that story we needed to collect the begin-

ning of the decommissioning story and that is where our

relationship with the Murchison platform began.

Murchison

The Murchison oil platform was located 240 km north

east of Shetland (Fig. 2). The platform was installed in 1979

and began producing oil in 1980. It produced more than

390 million barrels of oil before its shutdown in 2014. One

of the largest North Sea oil platforms ever built, the huge

structure has been described as scaled up Gothic cathedral

in the sea [7]. Murchison was part of the rst wave of North

Sea decommissioning, so in many ways embodied what

was to come in the industry over the following decades.

It was a perfect collecting target for NMS which want-

ed to develop its collection on three levels: the decline of

the industry; the engineering involved in removing these

mega-structures from the North Sea and – perhaps most

importantly – the people who work in these alien envi-

ronments [9].

The rst challenge in collecting material of this nature

is how to reach out to the companies involved, to start to

build a relationship where political sensitivities and con-

cerns about reputational risk could contribute to resistance

and to make a case for why elements of these companies’

work should be collected for heritage purposes. NMS was

incredibly lucky to have a “way in” to Canadian Natural

Resources, the owners and operators of the Murchison

platform, through the visual artist Sue Jane Taylor (Fig. 3).

Sue Jane has a deep understanding of the energy indus-

tries, workforce and environments having spent more than

30 years recording people and their technologies [7]. She

has gained access to remote and publicly prohibited o-

shore installations, and had been invited by Canadian Nat-

ural Resources to make three visits to Murchison between

2014 and 2016. NMS had the good fortune to have worked

with Sue Jane back in 2008 when developing the gallery

called Scotland: A Changing Nation, which uses some of

her sketchbooks and etchings from her earlier work to con-

textualise the interpretation of the oshore industries. She

was therefore able to put NMS sta in touch with the right

people at Canadian Natural Resources. Sue Jane has con-

tinued to be a good friend to NMS and went on to work

with us further on an exhibition called Age of Oil in 2017.

The opportunity provided by this existing relationship,

along with the signicance of Murchison as an early de-

commissioning project, made it the obvious candidate

from which to collect. The rst phase of this collection was

undertaken with the development of the new science and

technology galleries in the National Museum of Scotland

in mind. Among these galleries, which opened in 2016,

is Energise which explores the evolution of, and issues

surrounding, the dierent types of energy in Scotland’s

portfolio, from fossil fuels to nuclear to cutting edge re-

newables. At that stage NMS collected a sample of the last

crude oil to come from Murchison; the driller’s console

Fig. 1. Oil objects in Scotland: A Changing Nation

(source: © National Museums Scotland)

Il. 1. Obiekty naftowe w galerii Scotland: A Changing Nation

(źródło: © National Museums Scotland)

Oil and Gas at National Museums Scotland / Ropa naftowa i gaz w National Museums Scotland 27

and telephone that were used on the platform for more

than 35 years to control the drilling of 98 wells; and two

pipeline pigs, designed to clean debris from oil pipes and

named for the squealing noise they make in the process

(Fig. 4). One of the pigs and the console are on display

in Energise, and the other pig, the telephone and the oil

have been displayed as part of the Age of Oil exhibition.

Due to our relationship with Sue Jane Taylor and her work

and contacts in the industry and with the Murchison sta,

we were able to acquire oral history recordings and lm

footage sourced by Sue Jane that supported the interpre-

tation of these items, both in the permanent gallery and

Fig. 3. Artist Sue Jane Taylor with artwork from her 2017 exhibition,

Age of Oil (source: © Neil Hanna)

Il. 3. Artystka Sue Jane Taylor z grafiką z wystawy w 2017 r.,

Age of Oil (źródło: © Neil Hanna)

Fig. 4. Objects collected from the Murchison Oil Platform

including the driller’s console, last oil, driller’s telephone

and pipeline pigs (source: © National Museums Scotland)

Il. 4. Przedmioty z platformy wiertniczej Murchison,

w tym konsola wiertnicza, pojemnik na olej, telefon pracowniczy,

złącze gazowe (źródło: © National Museums Scotland)

Fig. 2. Murchison is one of

the most northerly North Sea

oil fields

(Base map © Maproom at

www.maproom.net)

Il. 2. Murchison jest jednym

z najbardziej wysuniętych

na północ pól naftowych

na Morzu Północnym

(mapa podstawowa © Maproom

na www.maproom.net)

the temporary exhibition, and that will become part of the

permanent history les for these objects [1].

Flare tip

While these objects all tell parts of the story of the oil

industry and its decommissioning, it was the slightly lat-

er and much larger acquisition of the Murchison platform

are tip (Fig. 5) that has provided the most impressive

and powerful symbol of the technical, human and decom-

missioning stories. An oil rig is the most recognisable

icon of the industry, but collecting an entire rig would be

28 Ellie Swinbank

problematic and beyond the capacity of NMS. The are

tip was selected to function as an emblem of the whole rig,

a part to represent the whole. At over four metres tall and

weighing almost a ton, the are tip is still NMS’s biggest

acquisition of recent years, apart from the aviation collec-

tions. NMS felt that the are tip would provide a powerful

experience of the scale of the industry and of the interface

between humanity and industry.

Sue Jane Taylor’s footage of life on Murchison and her

oral history interviews provide a real sense of human in-

teraction with technology through the are tip. A worker

must climb 259 steps to inspect the tip, with the ocean

churning below. The hair-raising piece of lm showing

this being done emphasises the riskier side of oshore

work and the challenging environment the workers had to

face every day to do their jobs (Fig. 6a, b).

Extinguishing the are tip was highly symbolic and

represented the end of the working life of this massive

structure. This made the are tip an even more pertinent

object to collect to symbolise the beginning of the decom-

missioning process.

It was hoped that the are tip would prompt discus-

sions among NMS’s visitors about our reliance on fossil

fuels and what this means for the future, raising questions

about energy security, dependence on petroleum related

products, Government climate change targets, and loss of

income from the industry as it declines. It could also spark

debate about what to do with the infrastructure of industry

when it becomes obsolete or no longer func tional. What,

for instance, should be done with the almost 500 platforms

and the 10,000 km [4] of steel pipeline that will need to

be removed from the North Sea over the coming decades?

What about the suggestion that the underwater parts of oil

rigs could simply be cleaned up and left in the ocean to

become marine habitats? Is that viable? Is it environmen-

tal? Given that the Murchison are tip is the only one that

has been saved for heritage reasons, what has happened,

or will happen, to all the others?

On that last point, the “proposal for acquisition” that

was prepared to make the case to acquire the are tip says:

No other Museum in the UK holds a are tip in their col-

lection – we would be the rst to do so. It will be as sig-

nicant a legacy for our successors as the Boulton-Watt

engine was for us. It will be a unique synecdoche for the

rig as a whole; and therefore decommissioning, and there-

fore North Sea oil; and therefore the Scottish experience

in the twenty-rst century

Challenges of collection

The challenges of collecting large industrial objects

from remote and hostile environments are plentiful and

various, ranging from how to physically access and move

the items, to the potentially huge costs involved.

Again, our good relationship with Canadian Natural

Resources was crucial in addressing these challenges.

Most of the Murchison structure was being shipped to

Norway to be scrapped. Canadian Natural Resources very

generously removed the are tip from the oil platform and

brought it to the mainland at their own expense (Fig. 7),

and also prepared it for onward transport to Edinburgh.

Not only did they cover these costs, but they sacriced the

considerable scrap value of this nickel-chromium based

superalloy. Without the relationship nurtured by Sue Jane

Taylor and then NMS sta during the earlier phase of col-

lecting, it is hard to imagine this having happened. We

were also very fortunate to have the assistance of Cana -

dian Natural Resources Decommissioning Projects Man-

ager, Roy Aspden. Mr Aspden had a good understanding

of the importance of preserving elements of the industry

for heritage purposes, and commented that his interest

in this process had been inspired by a visit to Stavanger

in Norway, where remnants of decommissioned oil plat-

forms have been incorporated into the city’s physical in-

frastructure. An example of this is the Geopark, which is

built on an abandoned oil platform and whose landscaping

is based on the geological layers of the oil eld.

Challenges of display

Since arriving at the National Museums Collections

Centre in Granton, Edinburgh, the are tip has been ac-

cessible to all visitors on monthly public tours and by ap-

pointment (Fig. 8). It does not currently have any interpre-

tation with it, but all of the rich materials generated and

collected by Sue Jane Taylor are available for inspection.

Recently, some of her images and diary extracts were in-

corporated into a tour to emphasise the human endeavour

that the are tip represents. It would be ideal to show her

lm of the worker climbing the steps as part of the tour, be-

cause that footage so stunningly illustrates all the elements

Source: National Museum Scotland object database AdLib entry

for T.2017.28, link to Proposed Acquisition PA0008.

Fig. 5. Murchison Oil Platform dwarfs the flare tip (top right)

Il. 5. Platforma wiertnicza Murchison przygasza pochodnię

Oil and Gas at National Museums Scotland / Ropa naftowa i gaz w National Museums Scotland 29

that the object brings together, but how to show it as part of

a tour in a storage area is not obvious, although carrying

a tablet with the lm clip on it would be one solution.

However, this demonstrates that, for audiences to fully

experience and appreciate the are tip, seeing it in store is

not ideal, and indeed a visitor on a recent tour asked when

it was going to be on display somewhere more public.

Among the sta at NMS there is fondness and enthusiasm

for the are tip as well as belief in its value as a piece of

heritage and a way of communicating with audiences, but

its size presents real challenges for us in terms of display-

ing it in one of our more publicly accessible spaces. How-

ever, the director of NMS has asked for it to be placed

on display and sta have therefore begun to explore ways

of doing this, beginning a process of negotiation between

dierent stakeholder groups within the organisation. Po-

tential locations where the are tip could be displayed

have been identied and the challenges of how to bring it

into the building and display it safely are being addressed,

along with the question of how to work a project of this

size into museum schedules that are already very tight.

However, in the near future we intend to properly share

this object with our audiences, as the oil and gas industry

and its decommissioning continues to play a central role

in Scottish life, albeit a shifting role in an ever-changing

social, political and economic environment.

Fig. 7. National Museums Scotland staff inspect the flare tip

Il. 7. Personel National Museums Scotland sprawdza

końcówkę pochodni na placu składowym na kontynencie

Fig. 8. The flare tip in storage at the National Museums Collection

Il. 8. Pochodnia w magazynie w National Museums Collection Centre

30 Ellie Swinbank

References /Bibliografia

[1] Alberti S.J.M.M., Cox E., Phillipson T., Taubman A., Collecting

contemporary science, technology and medicine, “Museum Man-

agement and Curatorship” 2018, Vol. 33, Iss. 5, 402–427.

[2] National Museums Scotland, Collections Development Strategy

2017–2022, 2017, https://www.nms.ac.uk/collections-research/col-

lections-and-research-policies [accessed: 6.09.2019].

[3]

House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, Public cost of

decommissioning oil and gas infrastructure, 2019, https://publica-

tions.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/1742/1742.pdf

[accessed: 6.09.2019].

[4] Jack I., North Sea oil is in its death throes. But the industry has

one last grand act left, “The Guardian” 2017, 8 April, https://www.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/08/north-sea-oil-death-

throes-rigs-decommission-industry [accessed: 6.09.2019].

[5] Symon K., North Sea oil “could be at risk of no-deal Brexit shut-

down”, “Insider.co.uk” 2018, 11 September, https://www.insider.co.uk/

news/north-sea-oil-gas-brexit-13221967 [accessed: 6.09.2019].

[6] Critchlow A., North Sea oil can still be the bargaining chip we need,

“The Telegraph” 2018, 8 November, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/

business/2018/11/08/north-sea-oil-can-still-bargaining-chip-need/

[accessed: 6.09.2019].

[7] Age of Oil: Artwork by Sue Jane Taylor, E. Cox, A. Taubman (eds.),

NMS Enterprises, Edinburgh 2017.

[8] Scotjobsnet, Aberdeen the Scottish capital of growth and employ-

ment, 2014, https://www.scotjobsnet.co.uk/aberdeen-the-scottish-

capital-of-growth-and-employment.cms.asp [accessed: 6.09.2019].

[9] Cox E., Energy Well Spent: Practical Approaches to Contempo-

rary Collecting at the National Museum of Scotland, [in:] C. Ballé,

C. Cuenca, S. Chambaud, R. Halleux, D. Thoulouze (eds.), Patri-

moine contemporain des sciences et techniques, La documentation

Française, Paris 2016, 321–330.

Abstract

This article discusses objects relating to the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea and now held in the collection of National Museums Scot-

land. Oil and gas extraction and processing has been a key industry in Scotland in recent decades, important to the economy and also to the debate

about Scotland’s independence. The industry is now approaching an end and it is expected that, by 2040, around 470 installations will have been

closed and dismantled. In this context, the issue of preservation becomes extremely important. National Museums Scotland has been collecting and

display these objects for some time. The acquisiton in 2017 of the Murchison oil platform are tip was a key achievement and also probably the big-

gest challenge for sta in this area to date. Weighing nearly a ton and standing 4 metres tall, the are tip is not only a symbol of industry but of human

history, and accompanying audiovisual documentation, oral history, images and report book entries add depth to this and increase display potential.

The are tip is also a starting point for discussion about contemporary collecting and the future of energy collections in Scotland. The article discusses

the signicance of this object and the work relating to its preservation and display.

Key words: oil, decommissioning, industry, museum, collection, Scotland

Streszczenie

Tematem artykułu są zgromadzone w National Museums Scotland zabytki związane z wydobyciem ropy naftowej i gazu z Morza Północnego. Nie-

gdyś wydobycie i przetwórstwo ropy naftowej i gazu było ważną gałęzią przemysłu, istotną dla ekonomii oraz debaty o niezawisłości Szkocji. Teraz

się kończy i przewiduje się, że około roku 2040 jakieś 470 instalacji pozostanie zamkniętych i zdemontowanych. W tym kontekście niezwykłego

znaczenia nabiera kwestia zachowania obiektów związanych z przemysłem wydobycia ropy naftowej. National Museums Scotland od lat zajmuje

się gromadzeniem i eksponowaniem tych zabytków. Jedną z największych zdobyczy Muzeum i prawdopodobnie największym wyzwaniem dla jego

pracowników jest końcówka pochodni z platformy Murchison – ważąca blisko tonę i licząca prawie 4 m wysokości. Końcówka ta to nie tylko symbol

przemysłu – opowiada ona ludzką historię, a towarzysząca jej przejęciu dokumentacja audiowizualna, historia ustna, wizerunki i wpisy do książki

raportowej dokumentujące tę historię pogłębiają potencjał wystawowy obiektu. Stanowi ona również punkt wyjścia dyskusji wokół współczesnych

zbiorów oraz przyszłości zabytków energii w Szkocji. Artykuł przedstawia znaczenie tego zabytku oraz prace związane z jego zabezpieczeniem

i ekspozycją.

Słowa kluczowe: ropa naftowa, likwidacja, przemysł, muzeum, kolekcja, Szkocja