LONDON – According to news reports this week, Royal Dutch Shell has laid out an ambitious plan to decommission the North Sea’s Brent oilfield — one of the United Kingdom’s largest — in a multibillion-dollar project over the next 10 years. Experts predict that other closures will follow, due to the decline in global oil prices.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Royal Dutch Shell will soon begin public consultation on a disposal plan for the “topside” of Brent Delta — one of four platforms in the field that gave its name to the international crude price benchmark. Shell executives say the process of decommissioning the platform, which will involve lifting its 23,000-ton steel superstructure on to a giant ship, could be a template for dismantling many of the North Sea’s larger platforms.

Shell’s 30-day public consultation on Brent Delta comes against a backdrop of a more than 50% drop in oil prices since last summer, which could encourage other North Sea operators to close down less profitable fields or even accelerate their own decommissioning plans.

Almost all the North Sea’s remaining 470 platforms, as well as 10,000 kilometers of pipelines and 5,000 wells, will be decommissioned over the next 30 years, according to the Financial Times article. The report cites ConocoPhillips among those that could follow Shell’s lead.

Though not the first of the U.K.’s offshore fields to be decommissioned, Brent will be the biggest so far. And Delta, which ceased production in 2011, will be the first of the four platforms to be dismantled.