OGUK Decom Insight Report 2021

Subsea decommissioning expenditure sees slight reduction – This year’s insight report looks in greater detail at the subsea infrastructure than in previous years. With 9 per cent of the overall expenditure forecast to be spent on subsea decommissioning, this is a key cost driver for the UK decommissioning industry. £1.531 billion is set to be spent in a fluctuating profile over the next ten years, a reduction from the £1.622 billion forecast in Decommissioning Insight 2020 . Invisible decommissioning – There are almost 350km of pipelines, 90,000 tonnes of subsea infrastructure, and 17,000 mattresses to be removed from the UKCS over the next decade. This is a side of decommissioning that goes relatively unnoticed by communities. While large topsides and jacket structures normally draw a crowd as they are brought ashore for disposal, these smaller pieces of infrastructure tend to escape public attention as they are landed and transported to their final destination for disposal, reuse or recycling. With a supply chain well set up to service the oil and gas sector, these smaller items are more “business as usual” for the logistics and disposal organisations in the areas used to dealing with this kind of infrastructure.

Subsea structure removal activity set to increase steadily over time – Around 2,000 tonnes of subsea structures are forecast to be removed between 2021 to 2023 rising steadily to over 11,000 tonnes in the middle of the decade. A spike is seen in removals activity in 2030 as a few larger subsea structures are set to be decommissioned in the CNS. Decommissioning Insight 2020 forecast that just over 70,000 tonnes were forecast to be removed but this has increased to almost 90,000 tonnes in this year’s report. Mattress decommissioning sees slight reduction – 16,661 mattresses are set to be removed from the North Sea over the next decade, down from around 22,000 reported in last year’s Decommissioning Insight . Of that total, 7,620 are in the CNS with slightly fewer expected to be removed from the NNS and WoS (4,886) and SNS and IS (4,155).

DECOMMISSIONING INSIGHT 2021

21