A lack of certainty and transparency around the timing of projects has been a persistent source of frustration for many service companies.
To tackle this issue, the Decommissioning and Repurposing Taskforce (DaRT), co-chaired by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) and industry, piloted the Decommissioning Data Visibility project in 2021.
As part of the pilot, operators bp, EnQuest and Spirit Energy agreed to release a wide range of field-specific decommissioning information, including all-important schedules. The NSTA displayed the data on an interactive dashboard.
On 29th February 2024, the NSTA launched an expanded dashboard which includes data provided by a total of 15 operators.
Using data from the annual UK Stewardship Survey, it shows how many wells, subsea structures and pipelines the participating companies plan to decommission – and the weight of platforms to be removed – over the next five years.
Publishing this information encourages early engagement between operators and suppliers and helps service providers understand what skills and resources will be in demand. This gives suppliers the confidence to invest in technologies and training.
In addition, operators can use the data to identify opportunities to decommission wells together through campaigns which can help deliver savings.
