A new Oil and Gas UK (OGUK) report sheds more light on the industry body’s expectations for the decommissioning market.
OGUK chief executive Malcolm Webb told the 2011 Offshore Decommissioning Conference at Dunblane in October that overall expenditure on removals to 2050 could exceed £30billion.
The industry would spend more than £4billion on North Sea decommissioning in the next five years alone, he added.
In its recently published Decommissioning Insight, OGUK said the next five years were likely to see 51 removal projects, including 32 platforms, 23 subsea structures and 202 pipelines.
Two-thirds of total decommissioning expenditure is expected to be in the northern North Sea.
The report added that well plugging and abandonment would be the largest single activity across the UK continental shelf and was estimated at £1.3billion, covering 295 wells. Beyond 2016, UKCS decommissioning work is expected to increase to around £1billion a year.
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