39 / 74
39
Central and Northern North Sea and West of Shetland
•
Operators plan to decommission 580 pipelines with a total length of 3,700 kilometres from these regions over
the next decade.
•
Around 25 kilometres of pipeline are forecast to be decommissioned in 2016, rising to an average of over
300 kilometres per year between 2018 and 2022.
•
Activity is expected to peak at over 1,000 kilometres in 2024.
•
The majority of this activity involves inter-field pipelines connecting fields to host facilities, although some
import/export lines are included.
•
Pipeline decommissioning activity is one of the later activities in a decommissioning project and there is therefore
a high degree of uncertainty in the timing.
Figure 26: Forecast of Pipeline Decommissioning Activity in the Central and Northern North Sea
and West of Shetland
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Total Length (km)
Umbilicals
Other Pipelines
Trunklines
Source: Oil & Gas UK
Increased Uncertainty
in Forecasts
Pipeline Decommissioning
2016 to 2025
Pipeline Decommissioning
(Kilometres) 2016 to 2025
Total
580
3,704
Umbilicals
221
1,027
Trunklines
68
1,117
Other pipelines
291
1,560
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9