UPDATES from Serica Energy and Jersey Oil and Gas and news of an appointment to the board of Oil & Gas UK yesterday underlined the growing importance of smaller players in the North Sea.
Serica is investing in maximising production from the kind of mature field that giants such as BP have decided no longer meet their investment criteria.
Jersey is stepping up an exploration campaign which has already resulted in the company making a big find in the Moray Firth after persuading Statoil to buy in to the licence concerned.
Oil & Gas UK recruited Azinor Catalyst boss Nick Terrell in response to the influx of independent operators now active in the UK North Sea.
The industry body hopes such independents will invest heavily in assets majors may have lost interest in.
But Serica’s experience shows independents can’t expect growth will be easy to achieve in an area containing lots of ageing production facilities.
The company is laying a section of pipeline to bypass a blockage that could mean the Erskine field is offline for around nine months.
The rise in the crude price since late 2016 may encourage investors to risk the long term investment required to be able to cope with such complications. It may also result in the costs of services increasing in a way that could frighten some people off.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here