300 km off the tip of Scotland lies the Brent oil and gas field.
This is the story of Brent's four iconic platforms.
From the world firsts of construction...
It was comparable to putting a man on the Moon.
...life on board...
You're reliant on each other it's very much like a family.
...and finally the end of production.
Attention all personnel Brent Charlie will shortly sign off.
Told with historic archive...
Out here we're doing what had never been done before.
...and by those who were there.
It's an absolute privilege to have been part of this team.
For 33 years Derek 'Deek' Child has commuted
by helicopter to one of the most hostile places on the planet.
The Brent Field.
The Brent Field is being decommissioned
and Deek will be closing the last operational platform.
Brent Charlie.
These iconic engineering structures have helped transform Britain
but their story starts half a century earlier.
In the early 1970s Britain faces an energy crisis.
Tensions in the Middle East mean oil supply to the UK is under threat.
When I was a child we had power cuts
my children now don't even know what a power cut is.
So people wanted to have far more dependency on security of supply.
The key to security lies with the recently discovered
Brent oil field in the North Sea.
Developing it requires one of the greatest feats in engineering history.
It was a frontier location, much harsher conditions
bigger waves, higher wind speeds
really remote locations.
The task was how can we develop this field as quickly as we possibly can.
The undertaking is too costly for one company alone.
What's needed is an unlikely partnership.
Shell and Esso, which was part of Exxon, are competitors in the course of the normal business
entered into a 50/50 joint venture
a relationship that's probably unprecedented in corporate history.
The terminals, all the offshore infrastructure
all the capabilities this needed big organisation
with big management capability, with big engineering capability to do so.
Within a year Shell and Exxon draw up an audacious plan.
Building four giant oil platforms.
And there is no one place where you could do that altogether.
So pieces of the platforms they were made in a number of different yards.
Shell had to reach out to Norway as well as to Scotland
to enable the platforms to be built.
I grew up in the north of Scotland between two of the big fabrication yards
and I remember seeing these colossal structures taking shape
you would see them basically grow on the skyline.
Towering over 200 metres the rigs push engineering prowess to the limit.
These are absolutely incredibly large platforms
some were made of concrete again never been done before
they were kind of a world-first at the time.
The Brents were amongst the heaviest objects
that had moved on the surface of the Earth.
I remember watching on TV that the tugs were trying to harness this big offshore jacket into place
and every single one of the managers had their fingers crossed.
If something goes wrong and the platform can sink to the bottom of the sea
and the whole thing is lost and you're back to square one.
Incredibly just six years after the discovery of North Sea oil
the Brent platforms Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta are ready to start drilling.
In terms of putting Brent out there and what that achieved
it was comparable to putting a man on the Moon.
Derek Child has been coming to the Brent Field for most of his working life.
This is his last two week stint before Charlie ends production.
For over 40 years tens of thousands have worked here
living on a platform not much wider than a football field.
Brent is very often described as a town it's got people all doing different jobs, different roles
but all dependent on each other at the same time.
It is like a family you're working together very closely.
So very much a home away from home a family away from family.
You are obviously leaving your family at home.
Now, you will end up missing key events so you miss birthdays, you missed births.
There are various things that you accept that you are likely to miss.
But if something's not going quite so right at home then that can be very difficult to mentally deal with
and to assist your loved ones at home when actually you're on a platform.
You need to be happy
you also need to be able to be comfortable living away from home.
Ask any crew member what's the key to happiness on a rig
and you'll hear the same answer.
It really is the quality of the food having something nice to eat
especially if you've been out in the cold all day
physically working that really makes your day.
A chap came along and had four T-bone steaks and came back and had another two
with all the trimmings and he devoured the lot.
Get the recipe wrong and you could face a mutiny.
There's one particular time when the brand of ice cream changed.
There was such an uproar from all of the workforce
and some considerable diplomacy was required
to ensure that people didn't down tools.
The canteen may provide some comfort
but outside it's a different story.
In the winter you can be stepping off into 55-60 mile an hour winds.
When a big wave hits one of these platforms it actually causes it to move.
You get the bang and the shudder from the wave
But you also get a sway as well it takes a bit of getting used to.
It does feel like man against the elements.
Working on a platform demands a heightened awareness of health and safety.
Today the team practice a worst case scenario.
Fire on the rig.
All personnel, please report to your muster station.
The crew practice techniques for locating trapped colleagues in smoke filled corridors.
Today's drill is a critical reminder of how dangerous life out here can be.
When you're working offshore
you're not just working on your normal construction site or a building site
you've got many hazards all around you such as jet fires, dropped objects
ship collisions, helicopters and explosions.
One of the big things that people need to realise is we are so far away from a hospital.
You need to be switched on.
The dangers aren't just on the rig the North Sea can be equally unforgiving.
The mass of water is at about six degrees in the winter
so if you end up in the water it doesn't take very long
if you don't have any sort of protection for you to be into a hypothermic state.
In the 40 years that Brent has been offshore
20 people have lost their lives on work related accidents.
That's just such a god-awful thing to go through
that stays with you and you really learn
it sounds dreadful, but you really learn a lot from those things.
So we have an ultimate goal and a duty to protect everybody
and make sure that our systems and practices are as strong as they can be.
And that's really been a big development over the decades working on Brent.
As the film archive shows safety considerations were very different in the 1970s.
When I look back at the film you feel shocked
as to how people are coming to work back then
you know you've got your OIM sitting with a shirt and tie
on the helicopter and he almost is wearing just a Mac.
Today every worker is equipped with state of the art survival equipment
and safety is the concern of everyone.
We work at every single level from the ground all the way up
through the management and everybody has a voice.
Everyone is empowered.
Back on Brent Charlie
the decommissioning is gathering pace.
Barry Meldrum and his team are responsible for recovering
and dismantling Charlie's kilometers of well piping.
Some of the wells that been down there for a longer period
and they are not, and the tubing is not in such a good condition.
Buried deep within the well for decades takes its toll on the pipes.
So that makes our job a lot more difficult in the recovery.
But this one is, touch wood, is relatively textbook
and is generally in quite good condition.
With Brent it's not just well piping that's proved critical to keeping the UK's oil and gas flowing.
By the late 70s Brent has become a victim of its own success
producing more oil and gas than it can bring ashore.
Brent was producing more than 500,000 barrels a day.
Well that's filling a large oil tanker every day.
With production ramping up tankers alone can't keep up with delivery.
So pipelines had to be laid fast.
We were going into the most hostile of territories into the deepest of waters.
This was done at a time before computers
people used slide rules and pieces of paper
and written calculations as well.
Laying the pipes requires one of the largest engineering vessels of its day.
The SEMAC.
I had the good fortune of being shown around the SEMAC
and I was absolutely staggered at how big this vessel was.
That was a huge piece of infrastructure to put in
this deepwater pipeline.
The 121-metre-long ship lays over 12,000 sections of piping.
In under two years.
So with the advent of the ability to lay large diameter pipelines
that really opened up the opportunity of producing more from Brent.
And in terms of the contribution that it has made
to the UK economy it's been fundamental.
Attention all personnel.
Attention all personnel. For your information
Brent Charlie will shortly sign off...
In Charlie's operations room Alan Lawrie and his team are
about to bring 40 years of operations to a close.
We're here to mark the end of an era and celebrate
the cessation of production of Brent Charlie.
I have to say that I stand here with very mixed emotions.
All great things do have to come to a natural end.
Onshore, William Lindsay joins an online call
with other Brent colleagues, past and present, to witness the event.
We've been thinking and planning for this event
for a very, very long time.
So in that respect, it's not really a surprise
but I just think the magnitude of the event it's now really coming to an end.
I will now hand you over to Derek Child
who is the longest serving Shell Ops staff member on Brent Charlie
and he has the honours of shutting down the topside processing facility for the last time.
Derek.
All stations, all stations, this is Brent Charlie.
Brent Charlie gas export shut down.
This marks the end of Brent Charlie's production.
I thought I'll get my quaich out
and I'll toast Brent for all the production people.
Dismantling Brent Charlie will take another two years
but Brent's legacy lives on.
There's no doubt at all that oil and gas
went a long way to save the UK's economy.
Brent has given us tens of thousands of jobs over the years.
A contribution to the UK's infrastructure
to schools, to hospitals, to roads being built.
It fueled our cars, it provided gas that heats our homes.
It has been a true, true diamond in terms of
its contribution to the UK, its economy
and the well-being of the people in the country.
And for those who worked there
it’s changed their lives forever.
I think a lot of the people I worked with
significantly influenced who I am now today.
People have built strong bonds
strong friendships with each other.
The thing I'm most going to miss are the people
and it's an absolute privilege to have been part of this team.