North Sea OIl - the eternal resilience of capitalism.

The Telegraph, 14 April 2015:

Britain's oil industry faces a deep and long-lasting crisis, according to the International Monetary Fund, which said the collapse in oil prices would stifle investment and hit production at a much faster pace than other countries.

Analysis by the IMF and Rystad Energy showed North Sea oil producers would be among the hardest hit by the slump in prices because huge operating costs meant they could not absorb the decline as easily as countries such as Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia... The fund’s oil industry analysis showed that UK producers faced the highest operating costs in the oil producing world, equating to an average of around $40 per barrel. By comparison, operating costs were less than $5 a barrel in Iraq and Kuwait, and about $6 on average in Russia. The figures will deal a further blow to the Scottish nationalists who have claimed North Sea revenues could help sustain an independent Scotland.

Oil prices have fallen from their June high of $115 a barrel to just $58 today. While this has led to a collapse in the use of oil rigs, most notably among US shale oil producers, the IMF said "significant efficiency gains" in the sector would help to limit falls in production.

CNBC, 16 May 2017:

North Sea oil output is expected to jump by a net 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) or about a fifth in the next two years, defying gloomy forecasts for the oldest deepwater basin that produces the world's benchmark crude price... The region is expected to report its third annual production rise in a row in 2017, reversing years of sliding output...

"The drop in the oil price forced everyone to focus even more than they were on (production) uptime and operating efficiencies which have risen dramatically over the last two years," Premier Chief Executive Tony Durrant told Reuters, "We've been at over 90 percent operating efficiency and a lot of the other players are very high as well. If you roll back to 2012-2013, then the North Sea had a shocking record of about 65 percent," he said.

Mark Thomas, BP's regional president for the North Sea, said in September that BP's cost of production had fallen to about $16 or $17 a barrel from above $30 in 2014.

For sure, there is a lot more to this than meets the eye and I have quoted selectively, but you get the general idea.