Despite a recent spike in oil prices, energy industry chiefs warn that infrastructure investment in the North Sea will not jump in tandem.
Scaring investors away is market volatility, they say.
Bosses from the oil and gas sector gathered last week in the Scottish coastal city of Aberdeen for an industry conference that delivered little optimism regarding the outlook for North Sea development.
Oil & Gas UK, an organization representing Britain’s offshore energy industry, hosted the Aberdeen gathering amid a sharp domestic downturn that has curbed business investment across the country.
“Businesses have already found 2009 a turbulent, tough year and the UK offshore oil and gas industry is no more immune to these pressures than the rest of the economy,” Oil & Gas UK said in a statement. “There is growing concern that the rapid fall in oil prices and the freezing of capital markets will impair investment and suppress production in the North Sea, with wider implications for companies and employment across the supply chain.”
Oil prices, despite a solid rally in recent months, languish more than 50 percent beneath record highs struck one year ago.
“Even the short term, recovery in oil prices of the last two or three months is way too early to positively impact people’s decision [to invest] in the long term,” Bob Keiller, chief executive of energy industry services provider PSN, said.
“The volatility [of oil prices] has affected the confidence in investments,” added Keiller in Aberdeen, a city whose wealth has ballooned since the discovery of oil in the neighboring North Sea during the 1970s.
According to Oil & Gas UK, expenditure on North Sea exploration was down 70 percent at the start of this year compared to a year earlier.
Investment that totaled £5 billion (US$8.1 billion) last year could fall to £2.5 billion this year, the industry body said.
Malcolm Webb, president of Oil & Gas UK, said that erosion in capital expenditure for North Sea exploration had begun in 2006, when oil prices were far below current levels.
“Our statistical review shows that UK [oil] production has dropped 38 percent since 2000 to 2008. When I listen to people discuss what I call the ‘seductive run up’ in oil price, I am worried that this is masking a much less talked about fact — gas prices. They continue to fall. When you assume that 50 percent of North Sea production is gas, the average North Sea realization today is still around US$40 per barrel of oil equivalent,” he said.
Soaring costs of exploration have hampered the industry, one expert said.
“Between 2004 and 2008 the cost of operations has more or less doubled,” said Alex Kemp, professor of petroleum economics at the University of Aberdeen Business School.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat