Decommissioning at The Front of The Field Life Cycle

Background

Once a field ceases to produce commercially viable quantities, the operator is expected to plug and abandon the wells, dismantle pipelines, flowlines and installations, and restore the environment to its pre-operational condition. Before the PIA, these expectations rested on the Petroleum (Drilling and Production) Regulations and on departmental guidance issued by the former Department of Petroleum Resources. They were real obligations, but they were not underpinned by a comprehensive statutory framework, and critically they were not funded.