I'm approaching 100 metres up in the air on a massive tangle of rusting steel, trying to ignore my rising in a panic.

But this is an orderly expedition with the experienced team at Britain's Seton Port.

I'm Laura Heightonjim's and for today's business daily I've come to an oil rig, just one

of thousands becoming redundant around the world.

Taking them out of service is a multi-billion dollar business.

It's also a complex operation beset by sometimes opposing interests.

In this program we'll meet the makers of the world's largest ship, a machine at the cutting edge of rig removal.

We'll hear how decommissioning costs are set to swell rapidly and question whether enough progress is being made with removing old rigs around the world.

That's all coming up in today's Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

Just stepping onto the platform.

Metal pipes everywhere.

Most of the steel is painted yellow and rusting there's water everywhere

danger high voltage switch room just passing through climbing more steps this post-apocalyptic

scene is the platform or top side of Brent Charlie, the last remaining of four rigs from the prolific Brent oil field, which produced over 3 billion barrels of oil from under the North Sea.

Production peaked in the 80s, but the legacy continues. In oil trading, the benchmark price is still Brent Crude.

Andy Jakes is the operations director for Able UK,

owners of this port in Hartlepool, North East England, where the top side now stands.

It's here because back in 2012 we were asked to tender and we were successful to be awarded the contract.

And that contract is to dismantle and recycle the platform?

Yeah, so the arrangement is to reuse the items that we can.

So first of all, we'll take something as simple as a lifeboat structure or an on-platform

generator we will look at all of our supply chains to see where we can reuse those items then we'll

...