BP Defies Ed Miliband to Reopen North Sea Oil Field

BP is reopening the Murlach North Sea oil field for at least ten more years, despite Ed Miliband’s best efforts to halt new fossil fuel projects. The Telegraph has the details.

The energy giant is reviving the Murlach field, which was declared uneconomic and taken out of use in 2004, has now become viable partly due to new technologies.

BP won agreement to reopen Murlach, 120 miles east of Aberdeen, under the previous government and has since been installing equipment, with production potentially restarting next month.

The milestone comes despite efforts by the Energy Secretary to bring an end to new fossil fuel production in the North Sea. Mr Miliband and his predecessors have almost doubled the taxation rate on oil and gas profits and banned the issuing of licences for new exploration and production.

BP said the Murlach field contained 20 million barrels of recoverable oil and 600 million cubic metres of gas – enough to keep it in production for 11 years. “Murlach is expected to produce around 20,000 barrels of oil and 17 million cubic feet of gas per day,” it said.

It means BP can partially reverse the decline in North Sea output, which has seen oil production fall from 96,000 barrels per day in 2020 to 70,000 last year. Gas production has fallen from 221m cubic feet a day to 197m. …

BP’s success at Murlach follows a similar story at Shell, which restarted production from its Penguins oil field north of Shetland earlier this year – despite Greenpeace protesters boarding its new production vessel.

The field went into production in 2003 but had to be shut down in 2021 when the Brent Charlie production platform was decommissioned. Production restarted this year with Shell expecting 45,000 barrels a day once in full flow.

Worth reading in full.