Environmental Cost Of North Sea Oil Decommissioning

The Brent Spar protest revealed the truth about decommissioning the North Sea oil infrastructure. The process can create more pollution than simple burial at sea.

Who wants to see billions of taxpayers pounds spent in a decommissioning frenzy that will cause more pollution than it prevents? The decommissioning industry and anyone else looking to dip into the honeypot.

Gary Smith, Scottish secretary of the GMB union, claimed the value of decommissioning is “maybe even as high as £150 billion”.
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The trade union leader said 60% of the clean-up costs for the North Sea would be footed by the taxpayer in government grants and subsidies.

www.energyvoice.com...


The money could be spent on something useful instead.

An alternative approach would be to plug the wells, making infrastructure clean and safe, instead of funding complete removal. This will allow Government to redirect the substantial capital spend required for removal into renewables for example, the consequence being far superior sustainability metrics. Alternatively funds could be redirected into Government budgets for health or education or used to help our ailing steel and shipbuilding industries. The benefits for society, the environment and the economy would be much greater than those provided by the complete removal of offshore infrastructure.
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I believe that the sustainability metrics will be far superior for plugging and abandoning wells, as opposed to the current approach. However what we need now is a comparative assessment to provide the evidence which could form the basis for challenging current legislation.

www.imeche.org...

I don't believe the industry ever intended to remove the infrastructure. It's always been the plan to walk away and leave it. Apparently we now have to go through a tortuous decision making process to decide to do what the oil industry wanted us to do all along. That'll be the first cut of the £150 billion. Paying the evidence gatherers and decision makers. They'll milk it any way they can.


If it's mobile and worth money someone will pick it up and take it away.
Otherwise leave it. The damage is done.

If allowed to go ahead the decommissioning of the North Sea oil infrastructure would cause more environmental problems than it would solve.