Between now and the mid-2050s, around 470 platforms, 5,000 wells, 10,000km of pipelines and 40,000 concrete blocks will have to be removed from the North Sea.
Decommissioning takes place regularly in other mature basins such as the Gulf of Mexico but nowhere in the oil industry will such a major clean-up have happened in such a short time. But it [decommissioning] offers continued employment, so those that stay in work are pretty happy.” Many in the north of Scotland hope decommissioning can provide a lifeline for the local economy, which has been battered by the collapse in oil prices since mid-2014. It could even turn the area into a centre of excellence from where expertise and technology can be exported worldwide.
North Sea Decommissioning Costs estimate TWS
The British offshore oil and gas industry is plugging and abandoning more wells than it drills.
Once a company decides to abandon a facility, the hard work begins. It must first make the reservoir safe, a process that involves removing tonnes of steel from the well and sealing it up to make sure no oil or gas escapes. Only then can a company think about how to remove the structures that sit above the well, the process that Shell is about to undertake at Brent Delta. Companies calculate it will cost an average of £10m to plug and abandon a complex North Sea well. Removing the physical structures could be far more expensive. On Brent Delta it will cost several billion pounds, according to Shell, and take hundreds of workers years to complete. Oil and Gas UK, the industry body, suggests it will cost nearly £17bn over the next 10 years to remove around 80 platforms and their associated infrastructure. The estimated cost to complete the entire job through to the 2050s ranges between £30bn and £60bn, a figure that has risen on several occasions as the scale of the task has become clear.
Edited and extracted from a Times newspaper article on North Sea Decommissioning works
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