Deeper, rougher, further – in search of the last North Sea oil

Britain is in the autumn of its North sea era. “The oil we’re getting from the North Sea is in decline,” says the energy minister, Malcolm Wicks. “A lot of it is getting more difficult to recover. Some of the big companies have gone away. In the last few years, our oil production has fallen by 8% or 9% annually. We aim to slow that decline to, say, 5% a year.”

Last year Britain’s oil output was the lowest since 1979, the first big year of North Sea production. This week BP announced it was shedding up to 350 North Sea jobs, the latest in a series of cuts in the oilfield by major companies.
Yet in a world where the price of crude is rapidly approaching $100 (