A person who has been issued a notice under section 29 of the Petroleum Act 1998 must consult the NSTA before submitting a decommissioning programme to the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED).
When should the NSTA be consulted?
To ensure efficient preparation of a decommissioning programme, the NSTA should be consulted at an appropriately early stage of framing the decommissioning programme. This is likely to be once the section 29 notice holders have agreed upon their preferred decommissioning option for the installation/pipeline (i.e. full removal, partial removal, etc.) and in advance of a completed draft decommissioning programme being submitted to OPRED for public consultation (see below figure).
Figure 1: OPRED DP pathway (taken from OPRED Decommissioning of Offshore Oil and Gas Installations and Pipelines Guidance Notes, Annex H)
For the NSTA to be in a position to consider and advise on the relevant matters, the decommissioning programme should demonstrate a sufficient level of planning and engineering maturity (please refer to Stewardship Expectation 10 for more information). Where a sufficient level of detail of planned costs and contracting strategy is not yet available, the NSTA may advise the section 29 notice holder that the NSTA should be consulted at a later date when appropriate information is available.
How to initiate the consultation process with the NSTA
A section 29 notice holder should use the consultation request template in the link below to formally consult the NSTA on a decommissioning programme under section 29 of the Petroleum Act 1998. The template sets out the information the NSTA will expect to be provided for the purposes of the consultation.
Please note that the party who engages with the NSTA (usually the field/asset operator) is doing so on behalf of all of the parties responsible for the programme and any advice given by the NSTA will be provided to all parties.
Where an operator is preparing multiple decommissioning programmes for the installations/pipelines associated with a single field or hub at the time of submission, a single consultation request can be submitted. However, in these instances, it should clearly set out how the respective installations/pipelines will be split across those decommissioning programmes and the estimated timing/maturity of each programme.
Click to download the template
Once complete, the above template should be sent to the NSTA at decom.team@nstauthority.co.uk. The NSTA will acknowledge the request and return consultation advice or requests for further information via email.