Decommissioning Insight 2015

7.6 Site Remediation and Monitoring Site remediation activities include cuttings piles management, oil field debris clearance (with a 500-metre zone and 200-metre pipeline corridor) and over-trawl surveys. Over-trawl surveys ensure that the seabed can be deemed clear for resuming normal fishing activities. Nearly £280 million is forecast to be spent on site remediation over the next decade, with 98 per cent of this concentrated in the CNS and NNS/WofS regions. Monitoring is the final stage in the decommissioning process. Operators are required to carry out post-decommissioning surveys and monitor the site beyond physical decommissioning. The specific details of the programme are agreed with the regulator on a project-by-project basis. Expenditure on monitoring is forecast at £32 million between 2015 and 2024. Eighty-eight per cent of this is forecast to be spent in the CNS and NNS/WofS areas. The expenditure forecast has not increased since the 2014 survey, despite new projects being included. This is because a number of projects are completed outside the survey timeframe. If the spend attributed to these projects is included in the total forecast expenditure, the total spend on site remediation would nearly double and the expenditure on monitoring would triple. However, overall, this is a fraction of the total cost to decommission a field.

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