Stories about the demise of North Sea oil and gas exploration are aplenty. The mature prospect peaked in 1999 and admittedly its heyday has come and gone. However, every single prediction about its end of life date has been wrong.
Towards the turn of this decade, the only business uptick expected in the North Sea was a “decommissioning bonanza” in the eyes of many analysts. Instead, production rose as back-dated investment yielded incremental volumes of oil and gas.
