The new decommissioning relief deeds regime will bring certainty for the North Sea oil and gas industry, writes Roman Webber
‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.’ So wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1789.
Fast forward to September 2013 and after a process that has been over three years in the making we can now add another certainty – tax relief for the cost of decommissioning offshore oil and gas operations in the UK North Sea. For earlier this month at a speech in Aberdeen George Osborne unveiled the (very nearly) finalised decommissioning relief deed (DRD) for the North Sea – a contractual regime separate from tax legislation to provide such certainty to industry.
The chancellor stressed that: ‘Never before has any [UK]...
