RE: decommissioning - Daily Telegraph25 Jan 2019 07:37
Mike Tholen, of Oil & Gas UK, said the industry was committed to cutting the cost of plugging old oil fields by 35pc because the burden was “in the first place paid for by industry”.
North Sea oil companies are already spending about £1bn a year to tear down their disused oil infrastructure, in part through tax breaks and "repayments" from the Treasury in return for paying higher tax in the past.
These costs have already fallen by 7pc since 2017, Mr Tholen said.
During the basin’s heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, oil companies paid tax totaling £334bn, in exchange for late-life tax breaks to cover the cost of decommissioning their rigs.
A government spokesman said this arrangement helped to attract investment into the North Sea, which supports about 280,000 jobs: “We are working with industry to increase the efficiency of decommissioning and minimise costs.”