DECOMMISSIONING has been on the North Sea agenda for at least two decades, with a modest number of platforms removed to date, but with many more to go. But, momentum is now building to the point that the CEO of recently-formed Decommissioning UK says there will be a spate of fields abandoned in the middle of the current decade.
“Abandonments have slipped to the right for lots of good reasons,” Brian Nixon told Energy. “Operators with the supply chain have been very successful at extending the life of assets, so pushing that programme back several years in numerous cases.
“However, that programme has stopped slipping to the right and there is a series of major peaks of activity kicking off in the next year or two and lasting out to the late 2020s.
According to projections by Professor Alex Kemp of Aberdeen University … whether $45, $60 or $80 per barrel oil, the initial peak of activity around 2015 is unlikely to be pushed any further back.
“However, what will happen at $80, is that it encourages more exploration and development with the result that there will be an increase in decommissioning during the late 2020s and beyond.”
“With DECC sitting with a very considerable number of new developments right now, the anticipated decommissioning programme will extend significantly longer than had been anticipated,” said Mr Nixon, who will be chairing the industry’s upcoming decommissioning conference in October and who will also be involved in a decommissioning seminar at Aberdeen Business School tomorrow.