Can we pump carbon back beneath the North Sea?

Few people have ever seen them, except perhaps from a plane. Yet these huge, remote structures have stood planted in the North Sea, buffeted for decades by wind and wave, pumping cash into the UK economy. They are the hundreds of oil and gas platforms which churn out the equivalent of 2.8 million barrels of oil per day. But there is a strong likelihood that the North Sea will within a generation return to the unbroken grey expanse of the mid-1960s, when the first offshore rig struck gas. If the government’s predictions are accurate, most of the rigs will have tumbled by 2035.

Approximately 470 installations are to be decommissioned, including up to 14,000km of pipelines, 15 onshore terminals and around 5,000 wells. Sad though this may be for oil managers and rig workers, it is good news for one group of entrepreneurs — the decommissioning crews who will dismantle the kit and the companies that will treat and sell the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of scrap metal brought ashore.