Restoration of a Nottinghamshire oilfield needs another five years, Star Energy has told officials.

The company is seeking an extension of planning permission until the end of 2030 to decommission the Egmanton field, between Lincoln and Newark, and return it to arable farmland.

A previous consent required the field’s remaining 11 well sites to cease operations by the end of 2025 and be restored in the following 12 months.

Operations at the field have stopped. But in a new application, Star Energy said its proposed extension was a “more realistic timescale given the cost and work required to fully restore each site”.

It said if permission were extended there would be “no recommencement of oil extraction at any of the 11 sites”.

The company said five of the 11 wells had already been plugged and abandoned. The other six had been shut in, with all surface equipment and values closed to stop the flow of oil.

The company described the visual impact of the continued retention of the sites as “very minimal” and “not readily discernible within the existing agricultural buildings and operations”.

According to the application, restoration work had been due to start on two sites (5 and 14) in autumn 2025, to be completed in spring 2026.

Work on another two sites (1 and 35) would begin in summer 2026, to be completed in winter 2026, the company said. Well 64 would be completed by autumn 2027.

Work on the remaining wells would be completed by spring 2029 (3, 7, 27) and spring 2030 (32, 44, 52).

The former Egmanton gathering centre, which received hydrocarbons from the sites by pipeline, stopped operations in 2007 and has been restored.

Star Energy said there would be no change to the original restoration and aftercare scheme.

The first planning permission for Egmanton was granted in the 1950s.

According to a company report, the field produced a total of 3.3m barrels over its lifetime. At its peak, it extracted 750 barrels per day. Production in 2012, at the time of the report, was less than 1% of early production.

Official data shows the field produced no oil in 2024 or 2025. Annual production was below 50m3 in 2019-2023.

The field saw an enhanced recovery project in the 1980s but this was abandoned because of “prohibitive costs and the low injectivity of the formation”.

In 2022, the site was used in a trial of the Xclude system of well abandonment.

• The next scheduled planning committee meeting of Nottinghamshire County Council is on Tuesday 10 March 2026.