Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate his Department has made of the carbon footprint of the North Sea decommissioning market in each year to 2025.

Offshore oil and gas operators must decommission installations and pipelines at the end of a field’s economic life. This is done in accordance with international obligations using a process that sees operators assess the carbon footprint of their decommissioning proposals where appropriate. The data is reviewed as part of the regulatory process but no annual assessment of the overall carbon footprint is calculated.