The NSTA's Decommissioning Benchmarking Report 2026 provides insights into actual UKCS decommissioning performance and underpins the drive to continuously improve decommissioning planning, execution readiness, delivery and performance.

In preparing the UKCS Decommissioning Benchmarking Report 2026, the NSTA has continued enhancing the well decommissioning section due to the considerable scale of the cost and opportunity associated with this aspect of decommissioning. The 2025 report highlighted a significant increase in the quality and quantity of ‘actual’, i.e. executed, well decommissioning data points, as well as augmented report functionality and interactivity available to the reader. This included the launch of an interactive tool containing more than 1,000 validated UKCS well decommissioning data points, cross-correlated with barrier data contained within the NSTA’s Well Operations Notification System (WONS), as well as a range of dynamic filter options. 

Highlights from this years report include: 

  • The inclusion of over 1,280 wells – an increase of nearly 200 on the 2025 report 
  • The augmentation of UKCS Stewardship Survey (UKSS) data points with WONS barrier data 
  • The interconnectivity of the key cost and duration benchmarks 
  • The calculation of historical quartile trends for key well categories across the cost, duration and WoW/NPT benchmarks 

As in previous years, in providing curated high-level data, the 2026 report is intended as a management-level report. It supports: 

  • Calibration of performance 
  • Identification of cost-efficiency opportunities and threats 
  • The achievement of first quartile performance by operators, in line with the NSTA’s expectations 
  • Holding industry to account for minimising the cost of decommissioning 

The input data for all benchmarks across all categories are gathered from the entire UKCS operator community via the NSTA’s annual UKSS and via WONS. The benchmarks are predominantly focused on the highest-cost work elements. New benchmarks and new ways of slicing the existing benchmarks are introduced annually as the dataset expands and as trends emerge, as well as in response to industry feedback. 

Decommissioning UKCS oil and gas infrastructure is a multibillion-pound opportunity for operators, the supply chain, and the UK economy. The NSTA expects operators to deliver cost-effective decommissioning, consistent with its Stewardship Expectation 10 - Cost-Effective Decommissioning. By focusing relentlessly on maximising value through continuous improvement, and by working collaboratively with the supply chain, a subset of operators is consistently responsible for setting new standards in cost-efficient decommissioning. However, performance varies across the sector and across the individual work elements defined in the OEUK Decommissioning Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Guidelines, meaning that if all operators were to deliver today’s top-quartile performance, it would cut billions of pounds from the decommissioning bill to industry and the taxpayer. 

We hope you find the 2026 report useful and welcome your feedback via decom.team@nstauthority.co.uk.