Information Management for Decommissioning

A few years ago we wrote about how legacy hardcopy data – wellfiles, seismic sections, basemaps, paper folios accumulated through decades of mergers, license rounds and farm-ins – had a quiet habit of becoming unfindable. At the time, the phrase “I wish I could put my hands on that report” was, for most operators, an inconvenience. Today, for operators preparing to decommission, it is a growing regulatory and financial headache.

Three things have changed since we last looked at this.

The work has changed

The North Sea, and basins like it, are firmly in a decommissioning phase. The NSTA’s Decommissioning Glidepath has formalised what most operators already knew: you cannot plan, cost or execute a credible decommissioning programme without trusted information on what is in the well, on the seabed and on the platform. The OEUK 2024 Decommissioning Report put hard numbers behind that pressure – cost per platform well is up by a quarter since 2021, and cost per exploration and appraisal well is up by more than half. Every gap in the record now carries a price tag, and every box of paper sitting in offsite storage is potentially a contingency line in someone’s AFE.

That has shifted attitudes. Hardcopy data is no longer a tidy-up job that can be picked up between projects. For decommissioning teams, it sits squarely on the critical path. 

MiNDR’s core components of Intelligent Search, AI-assisted automatic tagging and regulatory compliance monitoring support operators with:

Effective decommissioning is built on a foundation of trusted information.

Flare’s industry-leading IM solution allows operators to quickly and cost effectively assess, optimise, and exploit all the information available to them to support good decommissioning decision making, and reliable decommissioning plan delivery across all phases of the Decommissioning Glidepath.