A lack of certainty and transparency around the timing of projects has been a persistent source of frustration for many service companies.
To tackle this issue, the Decommissioning and Repurposing Taskforce (DaRT), co-chaired by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) and industry, piloted the Decommissioning Data Visibility project in 2021.
As part of the pilot, operators bp, EnQuest and Spirit Energy agreed to release a wide range of field-specific decommissioning information, including all-important schedules. The NSTA displayed the data on an interactive dashboard.
On 30 June 2025, the NSTA refreshed and expanded its Decommissioning Data Visibility Dashboard, which now includes data provided by a total of 18 operators, up from 15 previously.
Using data from the annual UK Stewardship Survey, it shows how many wells, subsea structures and pipelines the participating companies plan to decommission – and the weight of platforms to be removed – over the next five years.
Publishing this information encourages early engagement between operators and suppliers and helps service providers understand what skills and resources will be in demand. This gives suppliers the confidence to invest in technologies and training.
In addition, operators can use the data to identify opportunities to decommission wells together through campaigns which can help deliver savings.
The information contained in the dashboard is based on UKSS data submissions that the operators and their co-venturers have given permission to be shared in this way, for their applicable assets/fields. It is not indicative of Decommissioning Programme (DP) approval status, and so any assumptions made in survey submissions regarding proposed activities and their scheduling (including any infrastructure the operator considers to be potential derogation candidates) should be taken as the view/proposal of the operator, and not reflecting any endorsement or approval of this by the NSTA or other regulatory bodies.
