UKCS Decommissioning Benchmarking Report 2021

Managing the UKCS declining production to maximise value from the basin is vital to meet our energy demands, as well as reducing reliance on imports and their associated carbon footprint. Ensuring that decommissioning is carried out safely, and in a timely, cost effective manner not only helps value extraction from the UKCS, but also demonstrates industry’s commitment to responsibly manage the UK’s hydrocarbon legacy. This report provides comparison data which benchmarks a wide range of UKCS decommissioning activities.

It follows the publication of the UKCS Decommissioning Cost Estimate 2021. The reported benchmark information is derived from the perspective of the customer (i.e. does not necessarily reflect the costs incurred by the service provider) and, with a very small number of defined exceptions, is based on ‘actual’, expenditure. Decommissioning activity in 2020 was without doubt in part impacted by Covid-19 and the low commodity price, contributing to a reduction in scope liquidation and the decommissioning benchmark sample size has hence in some instances only seen marginal change. The benchmarks for 2020 should be considered in this context