BP had made the announcement to the press on 7 October 1970, that oil had been struck 110 miles (180 km) east-northeast of Aberdeen in 350 feet (110 m) of water.

[1] BP's semi-submersible drilling rig Sea Quest hit crude oil at 11,000 feet (3,400 m) in the Upper Tertiary sandstone.

[2] Four appraisal wells drilled during 1971–1972 revealed a large reservoir at a depth of about 7,000 feet (2,100 m) and closure of 155 m.[3] So marked the first and largest major oil field discovery in the United Kingdom sector of the North Sea.

[6] By the time BP sold the field in 2003, their reservoir engineers estimated the oil in place was 4.2 billion barrels (670 million cubic metres).

The North Sea is typically too rough to make personnel transfers from a crewboat to a rig by basket or ladder, resulting in all crew changes being made by helicopter.

BP owned buildings near the airports around the North Sea to accommodate the crews while they were waiting or sometimes stranded in the Shetland Islands en route to the rigs from Aberdeen, Scotland.

When the project was completed, 400,000 barrels of crude was initially expected to be siphoned off each day and exported through a 36-inch pipeline to landfall at Cruden Bay north of Aberdeen.

The Forties field produced 41,704 barrels of oil and 10million cubic feet of associated gas per day during as of November 2013.