For the North Sea oil and gas industry, it must seem like Christmas comes in March. The chancellor’s budget announcements for the past five years have given increasingly generous financial incentives to ensure every last drop of oil is extracted from the rapidly depleting North Sea fields.
But at what cost?
Around 470 platforms and 5,000 wells are due to be decommissioned from the North Sea, according to industry body Oil and Gas UK. The government is currently consulting on plans to decommission seven projects in the North Sea, including Shell and Exxon’s famous Brent oilfield. Many of these sit near or in environmentally significant sites.
