When the North Sea oil- and gasfields were booming, inefficiencies mushroomed. Now, times are tough-and it may be too late for belt-tightening. The offshore industry, particularly the British bit of it, is squeezed between a lower oil price, stubbornly high costs, an ageing infrastructure and a looming bill of many billions of dollars for decommissioning old platforms. The result threatens the profitable and unprofitable alike. If even a few companies which use the pipelines and terminals shut down, then the bill lands all the more heavily-and perhaps cripplingly-on the survivors. Similarly, if a piece of the infrastructure breaks (or its operator goes bust) then everyone who uses it is in trouble.
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