The North Sea, home of the Brent benchmark, has been on a downward production path for well over a decade, with oil output hitting 847,000 b/d last year. The oil price slump has added to alarm about the basin’s future and that of the independent companies that have sprung up to handle small or mature fields. It has exposed increasingly unviable costs, with operating costs averaging nearly $30/b in 2014 and total spending on decommissioning aging facilities running at over GBP1 billion ($1.6 billion)/year. Recent months have seen a flurry of financial deals and announcements aimed at jump-starting the North Sea industry, but recovery remains elusive.
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