North Sea ‘has much more oil in pipeline’

Jun 5 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

THERE could be as many as 300 untapped oil fields – or 30 billion barrels of oil – beneath the bed of the North Sea, experts claimed yesterday.

Alan Kemp, professor of petroleum economics at Aberdeen University, said there was almost as much oil remaining in the North Sea as had already been extracted to date.

Meanwhile, Prof Peter O’Dell, of the Erasmus University in the Netherlands, said there is the equivalent of 44 years worth of oil in the North Sea. The claims were made as part of a BBC Scotland documentary entitled Truth, Lies, Oil and Scotland.

North East oil and gas expert George Rafferty, of NOF Energy, last night backed up the claims and said the untapped sources represented “tremendous opportunities” for the region’s oil sector. He said: “All the information we have suggests there’s more oil out in the North Sea than has already been recovered and the North East in particular has the technology and skills to recover these resources. There are some fields which could be recovered now and others that may take another couple of years to develop. They stretch the length of the North Sea and will give a huge economic boost to the North East.”

Prof Kemp told the BBC: “We’ve produced, since day one, 37-and-a-half billion barrels of oil equivalent.

“The remaining reserves on central estimates could be 20 to 22 billion barrels equivalent and on optimistic estimates could be over 30. So there still is a substantial amount left.”

Prof Kemp added that challenging conditions such as heavy oil, deep formations and high pressures also meant that the price per barrel would be “very, very high” to extract.

As oil companies continue to invest heavily into exploiting new reserves, the expertise of North East companies in subsea exploration has seen the region emerge as a world leader in the sector. Earlier this year, industry leaders heralded a new North East oil boom which could create thousands of jobs and bring millions of pounds into the region’s economy in the future.