The Centre of Decommissioning Australia (CODA)
24 episodes listed below
Practical conversations from the decommissioning front line.
Plugging Away is a specialist decommissioning series from Coda, built around working conversations with operators, regulators, researchers, suppliers, and partners. It suits listeners who want the details: well P&A, subsea cutting, workforce access, cross-border lessons, and the slow maturity of a complex industry.
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Plugging Away is a specialist show about oil and gas decommissioning from Coda, the Centre of Decommissioning Australia. It sits close to the work. Recent episodes focus on the people and organisations dealing with aging infrastructure, from well P&A research in Norway to subsea cutting projects, regulatory transparency, workforce mobility, and the growing Australian decommissioning market. The conversations are practical first. Francis Norman regularly asks guests to explain what they do, where their expertise comes from, and how their lessons might apply in another jurisdiction. That gives the show a useful international shape. Norway appears often, through discussions with Sintaf, the Sweeper Innovation Center, Offshore Naga, and Haftil. Those episodes examine scientific approaches to plugging and abandonment, the ambition of reducing P&A cost, and the Norwegian model of openness, transparency, audits, and public reporting. Australia remains the strategic centre. The show keeps returning to how local industry can build capability before larger waves of work arrive, especially around pipelines, FPSO fields, subsea services, and collaboration between operators and suppliers. Some episodes are heavily technical. Others are market-facing, covering contractor access, company partnerships, conference conversations, and the industry mood at the end of 2025. The pacing is conversational rather than polished into a lecture. Guests are given room to describe machinery, project histories, regulatory structures, and commercial realities in their own terms. That can mean dense detail, but it is also the point. Plugging Away is less interested in broad energy slogans than in the day-to-day mechanics of making decommissioning safer, cheaper, more transparent, and more repeatable. It works best for professionals who need to hear how adjacent markets are solving similar problems. Researchers, suppliers, regulators, operators, workforce planners, and decommissioning-curious energy listeners will find a grounded view of a sector still building its playbook.
Made for: Built for energy professionals, decommissioning specialists, suppliers, regulators, researchers, and workforce planners tracking oil and gas infrastructure retirement. It also suits technically curious listeners who want industry detail without conference-stage gloss.
What sets it apart: The show connects Australia’s emerging decommissioning needs with concrete lessons from Norway, Aberdeen, global subsea projects, and active supplier work. Its strength is the mix of regulatory, technical, commercial, and workforce perspectives in one narrow but consequential field.
Welcome to Plugging Away, your go-to source for in-depth discussions and insights into the world of oil and gas decommissioning. Brought to you by The Centre of Decommissioning Australia (CODA), this podcast is dedicated to fostering a collaborative and sustainable approach to managing Australia's aging oil and gas infrastructure. Join us as we dive into the decommissioning industry and engage in thought-provoking conversations with stakeholders from every facet of the field to explore the latest developments, cutting-edge research, and game-changing technologies that are shaping the decommissioning landscape. Whether you're a seasoned professional, or simply curious about the processes invo…
ROV footage meets 24,000 pipeline cuts, and your curiosity gets an offshore hard hat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear look at the scale, pace, and learning curve of subsea decommissioning in Australia.
Centurion's Brett Phillips and Francis Norman frame the episode around a subsea services business that began in Australia, building on earlier capability in the USA and UK and support from Singapore.
Kentucky tech, explained from the ground up.
Commodity shocks, traced to market mechanics.
Finance stories with consequences attached.
Energy transition, explained at system scale.
Plugging Away introduces Coda’s Women in Decommissioning special interest group with host Rhiann Gilbert and guests from Coda, Exodus, and CB&I.
Harald Linge discusses his background in multiphase pipe flow research and his current role leading the Sweeper Innovation Center for Well Integrity, Plugging and Abandonment.
Plugging Away’s Francis speaks with Annelise Søyland, Michael Bishop, and Magnus Svensson of Offshore Norge about Norway’s future decommissioning workload.
Nina Ringen from Haftil discusses the Norwegian regulator's role in well plugging and abandonment, emphasizing transparency and trust.
Plugging Away host Francis Norman interviews Nick McNally, managing director of Decom Engineering, about saws and other tools for pipeline and well decommissioning.
Francis Norman interviews Paul Samaroff about his recruitment consultancy Resource 17 and its partnership with Coda to expedite business in Australia, focusing on contract personnel in the energy sector.
CEO Francis Norman discusses the increasing maturity and challenges of the oil and gas decommissioning industry in 2025.
["Centurion subsea manager Brett Phillips says the Gulf of Thailand project recovered about 240 kilometers of pipeline in phase one and ran for roughly 14 months.", "Francis Norman, CEO and Managing Director at Coda, the Centre of Decommissioning Australia, hosts the conversation and asks how Centurion's Australian subsea business is being built.", "Phillips also walks through Bass Strait flowline removal, ROV-operated seabed remediation, marine-growth removal, and access work ahead of Harriet platform removal.", "The discussion keeps returning to pre-engineering, spare planning, lifting rules, and reusable equipment as the practical edge in remote offshore work."]
Francis Norman hosts a series of short interviews from SPE Offshore Europe 2025 with key organizations discussing the oil and gas decommissioning market in Europe and globally.
Plugging Away examines how the National Decommissioning Research Initiative, AIMS, and industry partners are building evidence for decisions about offshore infrastructure.
Coder CEO Francis Norman and General Manager Sean Sadler discuss reflections on 2023 and plans for 2024, focusing on the Supply Chain Partnership Programme and industry engagement.
An interview with Tommy Angel, Founding Director of Offshore Network, discussing the growth and regulatory drivers of the decommissioning and abandonment industry at the D&A conference in Perth.