Australia's decommisioning industry regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) in its Decommissioning Compliance Strategy 2024-2029 outlines the key steps taken to achieve its objective for decommissioning all petroleum wells, structures, equipment and property in Commonwealth waters.
NOPSEMA's vision is to ensure that all decommissioning activities are completed in a timely, safe and environmentally responsible manner. To achieve this, the authority has laid out a list of targets that aim to reduce uncertainity and support the transparency of NOPSEMA's regulatory actions. These targets provide simple, time-based expectations for decommissioning. The approach is shaped by criteria that focus on the time to end of production, uncertainity surrounding that timing, financial capacity and the titleholder's planning performance.
Potential regulatory actions for the four risk tiers in relation to decommissioning include:
- Tier 1: If NOPSEMA has lost confidence in the titleholder's ability to meet decommissioning targets or discovers indicators of underdeveloped planning, then a combination of regulatory actions will be undertaken. These include an increased level of inspections or compliance monitoring, an issue of enforecement and a request for title-related intervention, among others.
- Tier 2: If the decommissioning plan is found to be immature and NOPSEMA loses confidence in the titleholder's ability to meet targets without heightened regulatory oversight, then regulatory bodies will ensure to intervene by requesting detailed plans and commitments, increasing collaboration with relevant stakeholders such as NOPTA and providing liaison at an increased frequency.
- Tier 3: If NOPSEMA has confidence in the titleholder's ability to fulfil decommissioning targets during the late-life operations phase of the project, or during some uncertainity regarding the time to production cessation, the routine regulatory oversight will include a moderate level of compliance monitoring and a timely checking of decommissioning plans or schedules, among other actions.
- Tier 4: If the project is in a mid-early life operations phase and NOPSEMA is reasonably confident the Titleholder is aware of their obligations for decommissioning, then the regulatory body will consider the proposed end-state, property maintenance and future decommissioning requirements during assessments.
