This report prepared by Arup and commissioned by Oil & Gas UK and Decom North Sea (DNS), seeks to provide potential innovators with a clear process to commercialising novel solutions which have the potential to accelerate cost reduction in decommissioning. It also seeks to identify the barriers and challenges to adoption of novel solutions and to offer suggestions as to how these barriers can be overcome by the industry and government stakeholders.
Estimates of the total cost of decommissioning the North Sea varies across studies and organisations. However, even conservative estimates of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) alone suggest a required expenditure of around £46bn by 2040.
These latest findings about the oil and gas sector in the North Sea follows on from a previous report produced by Arup and DNS - ‘Decommissioning in the North Sea: Review of Decommissioning Capacity’.