Silver Lining in South-East Asia's Decommissioning Industry: A Red Carpet for Service Providers

Abstract With over 50 years of sizeable offshore developments, South-east Asia (SEA) has become the next hotbed for the oilfield decommissioning industry. It is estimated that more than 200 offshore fields in SEA will stop producing by 20301, comprising more than 1,500 platforms and ~7,000 wells2–3. With such a large number of "decommission-ready" assets, the total decommissioning costs are estimated to range from $30 billion to as much as $100 billion2–3. Starting with a large internation oil company (IOC)'s limited decommissioning work in Brunei towards the end of the 1980s, Malaysian national oil company’ first decommissioning in 2003, and Thailand's focused attempts recently at decommissioning it's large assets3, the industry has been evolving at a slow pace in the region and this has created a significant backlog of "decommission-ready" assets adding to the already high liabilities. A combination of complexities and challenges has led to the buildup of this backlog.