They sound like the kind of arsenal controlled by a Bond villain – twin-hulled megaships, underwater lasers, robot submarines and diamond saws.

But they are, in fact, the kind of tools that engineers will need to dispose of hundreds of the soon-to-be-derelict oil and gas platforms littering the North Sea.

While clean, green offshore wind farms increasingly begin to populate the North Sea – there are now 3,000 of them there – the area’s once-mighty oil and gas platforms, which helped fuel Europe’s economy for the best part of 40 years, are facing an ignominious end in the breaker’s yards. But getting them there is going to be hellishly difficult.

At issue is the fact that North Sea hydrocarbon reserves are depleting, and many hundreds of oil and gas rigs are approaching the end of their productive lives. And the emptier their wells get, the more the rigs cost to keep running, says Richard Neilson, a physicist specialising in offshore technologies at the University of Aberdeen.