North Sea oil
From the 1960s to 2014 it was reported that 42 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) had been extracted from the North Sea since when production began.
[5] In England, BP discovered gas in similar reservoirs in the Eskdale anticline in 1938, and in 1939 they found commercial oil in Carboniferous rocks at Eakring in Nottinghamshire.
[5] The Netherlands' first oil shows were seen in a drilling demonstration at De Mient during the 1938 World Petroleum Congress at The Hague.
[5] Subsequent exploration led to the 1943 discovery by Exploratie Nederland, part of the Royal Dutch/Shell company Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, of oil under the Dutch village of Schoonebeek, near the German border.
[6] 1952 saw the first exploration well in the province of Groningen, Haren-1, which was the first to penetrate the Lower Permian Rotliegendes sandstone that is the main reservoir for the gas fields of the southern North Sea, although in Haren-1 it contained only water.
[7] The Ten Boer well failed to reach target depth for technical reasons, but was completed as a minor gas producer from the Zechstein carbonates.
[8] The celebrations were short-lived since the Sea Gem sank, with the loss of 13 lives, after part of the rig collapsed as it was moved away from the discovery well.
[8] The Viking Gas Field was discovered in December 1965 with the Conoco/National Coal Board well 49/17-1, finding the gas-bearing Permian Rotliegend Sandstone at a depth of 2,756 m subsea.
The situation was transformed in December 1969, when Phillips Petroleum discovered oil in Chalk of Danian age at Ekofisk, in Norwegian waters in the central North Sea.
[14] The inner Moray Firth Beatrice Field, a Jurassic sandstone/shale reservoir 1829 m deep in a "fault-bounded anticlinal trap", was discovered in 1976 with well 11/30-1, drilled by the Mesa Petroleum Group (named after T. Boone Pickens' wife Bea, "the only oil field in the North Sea named for a woman")[15] in 49 m of water.
[16] Volatile weather conditions in Europe's North Sea have made drilling particularly hazardous, claiming many lives (see Oil platform).
[23] The Smørbukk Field was discovered in 1984 in 250–300 m of water that produces from Lower to Middle Jurassic sandstone formations within a fault block.
[10] Following the 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf and after some disputes on the rights to natural resource exploitation[31] the national limits of the exclusive economic zones were ratified.
[32][failed verification] More than half of the North Sea oil reserves have been extracted, according to official sources in both Norway and the UK.
[citation needed] Note the UK figure includes fields which are not in the North Sea (onshore, West of Shetland).
[38][39] Exact figures are debatable, because methods of estimating reserves vary and it is often difficult to forecast future discoveries.
[44] This was the largest decrease of any oil-exporting nation in the world, and has led to Britain becoming a net importer of crude for the first time in decades, as recognized by the energy policy of the United Kingdom.
[45][46] Kittiwake, Gannet Middle: Brent, Bruce, Eider, Heather, Hutton, Ninian, Tern Lower to Middle: Beatrice Dotty, Douglas, Esmond, Hamilton, J-Block, Morecambe Bay Lower: Hewett Lower Permian (Rotliegend): Camelot, Indefatigable, Leman, Viking, West Sole In the North Sea, Norway's Equinor natural-gas platform Sleipner strips carbon dioxide out of the natural gas with amine solvents and disposes of this carbon dioxide by geological sequestration ("carbon sequestration") while keeping up gas production pressure.
