The Oil Drum: Europe

Buzzard is the only sizable new field due to come online in the next couple of years and it is predicted to produce 0.18 to 0.19 mbpd barrels of oil by mid 2007.

We also need to consider for how long such flowrates might be maintained. Looking at Buzzard History URR is reported as 'at least 550m bbls'.  Let's assume peak rate is 185k bopd and URR is 550m bbls; peak flowrate would effectively deplete entire field in 8.15 years i.e. peak rate represents 1/2973 of URR.  Compare this result with Forties where depletion fraction at peak was 1/5600 (500k bopd peak flowrate, 2.8 Gbbls URR) - in effect they plan to pull on Buzzard at around twice the rate of Forties.

Of course it's not hard to see why - early cost recovery for operator, early tax revenue for Gov't and production will occur during the (now limited) lifespan of key infrastructure i.e. Forties and Frigg oil / gas gathering systems respectively.  Major NS infrastructure dating from 1970's will soon be approaching end of design life for the corrosive environment and average size of new discoveries would be unlikely to justify such repeat investments.

Clearly Buzzard peak rate cannot be maintained for very long thus, after a couple of years or so UK NS oil production will show an even steeper decline curve following a 'blip' on the downslope as Buzzard is commissioned.

Like Nick I cannot see where the 'rise to 3.4m boe/d in 2007' is coming from - Energy Trends has just reported an 8.5% oil and 4.5% gas decline in 12 months 1Qr 2005 to 1Qr 2006.  From this report I've calculated the declines as 155.4k bopd (oil) and 94.4k boe/d (gas) i.e 249.8k boe/d in total.  Even if Buzzard peaks at 190k bopd within 12 months of startup combined energy output from NS for that year would still decline.