Removing North Sea oil structures to cost £40bn

Inflation and growing competition for resources from offshore renewables have added billions of pounds to the cost of decommissioning the North Sea’s redundant oil and gas infrastructure.

The North Sea Transition Authority said the total bill was now expected to be in the region of £40 billion, up from the £37 billion estimate it made a year ago. However, the work is expected to provide a boon for local contractors, with about 70 per cent of it estimated to go to companies based in the UK.

About £21 billion is likely to be spent over the next decade removing things such as wells, pipelines and offshore platforms; £8 billion has been committed between 2017 and this year, according to the authority’s decommissioning cost and performance

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