-- The UK's North Sea Transition Authority on Thursday said it has fined EnQuest Heather a total of 16.5 million British pounds ($22.2 million) for failing to decommission 33 inactive wells in the UK North Sea.
The move followed what the NSTA described as prolonged non-compliance and repeated warnings.
The penalty covers breaches across four licenses tied to the Alma, Galia, Broom and Dons fields, each incurring a 500,000 British pound fine. The fields ceased production between mid-2020 and early 2021, and the wells have remained undecommissioned since then.
The NSTA said its enforcement action followed an extended period of engagement with the company, including multiple missed deadlines and requests for extensions. An investigation found the operator had adopted a strategy of deferring plugging and abandonment obligations after the wells reached the end of their operational life.
The NSTA estimates the industry will spend about 27 billion British pounds on decommissioning between 2023 and 2032, more than half of the projected total cost of 44 billion British pounds for North Sea decommissioning. Plugging and abandonment activities account for nearly half of that spending.
Around 500 wells are already past their decommissioning deadlines, with over 1,000 additional wells expected to require decommissioning between 2026 and 2030, according to the regulator.