Decommissioning faces a hefty clean-up bill
The industry will spend tens of billions of dollars closing down old offshore fields
The global decommissioning market is yet to take off fully. But as provinces mature, as fields near the end of their life, companies are preparing for the inevitable. They are scrutinising their decommissioning plans, the regulatory and fiscal regimes governing decommissioning and the costs of completing that work. The oil-price crash has made the task more urgent. In mature regions like the UK, higher oil prices allowed mature fields to keep producing beyond their expected economic life, but the price drop brought the day of reckoning nearer. Over the past five years, almost 500 offshore fields globally have ceased production, with that number expected to rise to 735 fields from 2018 to 202
Also in this section
13 March 2026
Brussels is again weighing a cap on gas prices amid the Hormuz crisis, but the measure could backfire by deterring the LNG cargoes Europe urgently needs
12 March 2026
Emergency oil stocks provide a last line of defence to oil market shocks, so the IEA’s unprecedented 400m bl release represents something of a double-edged sword
12 March 2026
LPG could rapidly expand access to clean cooking across Africa and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths from indoor air pollution each year, but infrastructure shortages and regulatory barriers are slowing investment and market growth
11 March 2026
Missiles over Dubai and disruption in Hormuz are testing the emirate’s reputation—and shaking the energy hub at the centre of the Gulf economy
