Decommissioning Insight 2019

DECOMMISSIONING INSIGHT 2019

6.2 North Sea Topsides Decommissioning Activity

Figure 18: Topsides Decommissioning Activity in the North Sea 2019, to 2028

200,000

UK Norway The Netherlands Denmark

180,000

160,000

140,000

120,000

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000 Topsides to be Decommissioned (t)

20,000

0

2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028

Source: OGUK, OGA and Nexstep

Country

Sub-Totals

Percentage

UK

879,011 136,516 154,598 78,480

70% 11% 12%

The Netherlands

Norway Denmark

6%

TOTAL

1,248,605

100%*

*May not add to 100% due to rounding.

Over 1.2 million tonnes of topsides are expected to be removed throughout the North Sea over the next ten years. This is a significant increase from last year’s findings, which anticipated just over 950,000 tonnes. Most of this increase is due to a greater activity profile in the UK, increasing from around 605,000 tonnes to almost 880,000 tonnes reported this year. The majority of the work scopes (70 per cent) are expected to be conducted in UK waters, with smaller but similar workloads expected in the Netherlands and Norway. Activity in the Netherlands has a similar work profile to that of the southern North Sea and Irish Sea regions in the UK. Assets in the Netherlands bear a lot of similarities to SNS assets in terms of water depths and seabed conditions, and therefore employ similar infrastructure. The UK SNS and IS region is expected to remove 188,782 tonnes of material; while this is the least amount of tonnage compared to the NNS and CNS, it is derived from the greatest amount of assets (83 topsides). The Netherlands is expecting to remove 136,516 tonnes of very similar topsides material, representing a very similar work profile to that of the SNS and IS. Therefore, both regions can benefit if there are opportunities to work together.

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