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- OIL AND GAS JOBS - INSIGHT
- OIL AND GAS JOBS - INSIGHT
- OIL AND GAS JOBS - INSIGHT
- OIL AND GAS JOBS - INSIGHT
Archived on: Tuesday 20th October 09
Facts and History Of The North Sea.
By Jack Kane.
The North Sea is one of most frequently traversed seas of the world and two of the world’s largest ports are situated on its coasts. The North Sea is mostly renowned for its offshore oil industry; however it also supplies most of Northern Europe with fish, with over 230 different species living its waters. In particular Cod, Sole, Plaice, Mackerel and Haddock are fished commercially. These intensive and sometimes conflicting uses of the North Sea cause a number of challenges in maintaining a healthy and balanced eco system.
Most people consider oil in the region to have been discovered within the last 35 years; however it was way back in 1859 when the oil was first struck, in the Southern North Sea Basin above North Germany after initially drilling for coal. This oil find kick started the beginning of the German oil industry, up until 1890 a further 100 well were drilled, of which 60 produced oil. Natural Gas was then discovered in the North Sea shortly after in 1910.
Five relatively quiet decades passed, until in August 1959 a well drilled by Shell & Esso in Groningen, the Netherlands literally changed the European oil and gas industry over night. Realization of the vast size of this immense gas field suddenly hit home. The geologists calculated it to be twenty miles long with a capacity of 6 billion cubic feet per day, making it one of the largest gas fields in the world. After this discovery in 1959, serious commercial exploration in the North Sea was soon underway.
In 1965 five major gas discoveries totaling some 20 trillium cubic feet were found, enough to saturate the entire UK monopoly market. By 1969 seismic ships were scouring the North Sea for oil, and then the Phillips Petroleum Company made the second biggest discovery in North Sea history, the fist billion barrel oil field, ‘Ekofisk Field’ in Norwegian waters.
The North Sea is sometimes considered to be a deep sea area; however it is actually relatively shallow. The depth increases from less than 30 meters in the South to around 200 meters in the North. The exception to this is a small area of the North Sea called the Norwegian Trench which cuts through the North-Western part of the sea and is up to 700 meters deep in the area called the Skagerrak.
The popular view is that the UK's share of North Sea oil is in decline, with energy reserves
diminishing rapidly about 35 years after the oilfields were first exploited. There is however
a growing body of opinion that suggests that proven oil reserves have been underestimated
Consistently.
The equivalent of 37billion barrels of oil have been extracted from the UK Continental Shelf,
leaving up to 25.5billion barrels still to be recovered. Industry experts firmly believe that the remaining reserves exceed current estimates by as much as a fifth.
New technology and the rising price of oil mean that it is now economically viable to drill
fields once considered too difficult or too remote.
