Offshore Energies Magazine - Winter 2022/23

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Decomcosts fall The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has cut its forecast for the cost of offshore decommissioning by £1.5bn (2%) to £44.5bn – contributing to a total cut of £15bn (25%) since 2017. That is still a bigger cost than its target total of £39bn by the end of the year but NSTA said that the “highly ambitious 35% targetwas always intended tobe challenging.” Savings mean that companies have more to invest in production and emissions reduction projects. Taxpayers also win when the cost of decommissioning falls. Industry made swift progress in the first two years of the target, cutting the estimate by 17%, and while that has slowed, progress has continued. The final costs of completed projects are on average 20-25% lower than initially predicted, over the five years. The upstream regulator’s head of decommissioning Pauline Innes said that

Authority (NDA) have signed a three-year collaborative research agreement. It is the first of its kind between the two sectors and the aim is to identify mutual benefits. The strategic partnership, supporting research with a potential value of up to £900,000, will see researchers from the University of Aberdeen work with the NDA on areas such as decarbonisation, economic impacts, cost benchmarking and remote operations in hazardous environments. The NDA, the NDC, the Net Zero Technology Centre and the North Sea Transition Authority have been seeking mutually beneficial opportunities from each sector’s experiences for the past few years. Welcoming the agreement, Professor Richard Neilson, director of the NDC at the University of Aberdeen, said in the September 22 announcement that each could learn from the other's experiences in remote operations, decarbonisation, cost benchmarking and potentially underwater laser cutting. The head of Industry and Partner Networks at the Net Zero Technology Centre, Roger Esson, said that this kind of cross-sector learning would accelerate the energy transition. GHG ‘on target’ Greenhouse gas emissions from offshore platforms fell by an estimated 14.6% to 14.3mn metric tons of CO2e last year, according to the upstream regulator NSTA.

“potential savings of £15bn during a short period marked by extremely turbulent economic conditions should give the sector confidence as it looks to the future.” That future includes opportunities overseas, she said. Agencies swap experiences The National Decommissioning Centre (NDC) and the Nuclear Decommissioning

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