More than £4.5billion is to be spent on removing North Sea platforms and pipelines in the next five years, it was predicted yesterday.
Oil and Gas UK (OGUK) said firms were looking to remove some 40 platforms, serving about 80 fields with 177 pieces of pipeline, between now and 2017.
The industry body added, however, that the massive task of removing unwanted platforms and infrastructure could be hampered by a lack of engineering skills and specialist vessels, especially heavy-lift vessels.
The comments came at the sellout Offshore Decommissioning Conference, at St Andrews.
OGUK operations project co-ordinator and analyst Louise Ryan said more than half of the forecast spending between 2012 and 2017 would be in the northern North Sea, with about one-third in the central zone and 14% in the southern part.
She added: “About 44% will be on well abandonment and about 22% will be in the removal (of structures) phase. About 71% of the spending will be operational support costs.”
Ms Ryan said the average cost of plugging a platform well in the central and northern North Sea would be about £2.9million and for a subsea development well £15million. The information was gathered from 25 North Sea operators, accounting for about 80% of all companies expected to carry out decom projects between 2012 and 2017.
Decommissioning all the platforms and infrastructure in the North Sea is expected to cost around £34billion, up from about £13billion estimated in 2005 after costs increased and more infrastructure was built.
Energy analyst Gregory Brown, of Infield Systems, warned of an issue surrounding the availability of vessels. He added: “There are not many heavy-lift vessels out there.”
Mr Brown said Lerwick in Shetland and Nigg near Inverness were looking to become decommissioning hubs but there might not be enough yards able to deal with all the structures being removed.
Another concern is that industry guidelines covering what equipment can be left in the sea could be changed next year, increasing the cost and complexity of decommissioning.
The conference, organised by OGUK and Decom North Sea (DNS), continues today.
DNS has just elected new board members. They are: Roy Aspden, CNR International; Roger Esson, Amec; Ian Prince, Wood Group PSN; David Dent, Proserv; Eddie Grant, Tetra Technologies; Nigel Lees, BIS Salamis; David Hamill, Stork Technical Services; Paul Charlton, PDL Solutions (Europe); Andrew MacDonald, Asco UK and Tom Leeson, Halliburton.
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