Great Britain’s regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), has signaled its readiness to tackle the decommissioning deficit on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) by revealing the names of operators that are lagging behind their peers in the decommissioning department.

The NSTA’s first published table of the North Sea well decommissioning deficit shows that 13 operators have missed their consent deadlines for fully decommissioning 153 inactive wells, which are spread geographically from West of Shetland to the Southern North Sea and East Irish Sea, with the greatest concentration in the Central North Sea.