One of the brains behind an iconic piece of the North Sea oil and gas landscape will have a last chance to say goodbye before it is dismantled for good.
Written by Stephen Walsh –
Shell’s Brent Delta platform was a major part of offshore infrastructure for more than 40 years.
But, last month, the top was removed from the waters, leaving its legs behind, and transported to Hartlepool as part of the decommissioning process.
The huge 24,000 tonne topside, which weighs the same as the Empire State Building, is currently being stored in an Able UK’s shipyard, where it is waiting to be taken apart and recycled.
However, Shell gave some of its former employees the chance to bid farewell to the platform, which generated more than £35billion over its four decades.
Among them was Austin Hand, the project manager who helped bring the structure from drawing board to reality in the 1970s.
And the 68-year-old, who is originally from Stockton-on-Tees, said the event had added poignancy as he spent time working in the Teeside shipyard before moving up north to work for the energy giants.
He said: “I’m really proud and I never imagined I would get this far.
“I remember, when I was 13, my mother told me to get a white collar job, and not go to the shipyard or the mines.
“In those days, if you hadn’t been to Cambridge, Oxford or Imperial College you didn’t get to work with Shell, but 37 years later, I have been to Saudi, Gabon, Korea and more.”
Delta was installed in the Brent field, 115 miles north-east of Shetland, in 1976. And Mr Hand added there will be thousands of people who share his sentimentality for the “North Sea towers” as he affectionately named them.
He said: “I think, even with the oil companies, there wasn’t necessarily an end game.
“You take for granted that these people were flying back and forth there to work for decades.
“These guys were family offshore, it was their home for many years.”
Shell started planning to decommission the field in 2006. Delta ceased production in 2011, followed by the Alpha and Bravo platforms in 2014. The last platform, Charlie, is still producing, but will be retired in the next few years.
The huge, twin-hulled Pioneering Spirit vessel set a world lifting record when it picked the 24,000-tonne topside up off its three concrete legs before sailing south.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
