Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the UKCS Decommissioning 2018 Cost Estimate Report by the Oil and Gas Authority, what assessment he has made of trends in the cost of labour associated with decommissioning projects.

The Department does not have details on the cost of labour associated with decommissioning projects nor trends in the cost. However, the recent report by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) indicates that operators are making progress to reduce costs, with some reporting significant cost reductions in platform running costs, platform well plugging and abandonment costs and removal costs. The OGA is working with industry to support further cost reductions to achieve delivery of the £39bn target cost for decommissioning and is developing cost benchmarks that will enable trend analysis of decommissioning costs over time.

https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/media/4925/decommissioning-cost-report-2018.pdf