It should be added that Norway also built and manage an incredible sovereign investing fund from its oil revenues that will guarantee generations of Norwegians to have a peaceful and wealthy retirement. Only a few of OPEC countries can rival what they have achieved.
One point about the UK economy and North Sea Oil, in the 1980s the Pound behaved like a petrocurrency, leaving it overvalued in the early 1980s which in turn caused another round of deindustrialization as UK industry was unable to compete. In fact, much of the oil revenue was simply spent on paying benefits to unemployed workers who lost their jobs in the early Thatcher years.
Very interesting and well done presentation. Starting in early 1977 I worked the oil fields for 36 years in 15 countries around the world, and did not know these details. Thank you for sharing.
Drawing the seaborder with Norway anywhere other than the median would be a tough fight as Norway in this time perriode fought hard to get as much sea as possible, mainly for fishing. I think Norway and iceland are the main reason you can draw the border at the continental shelf, for example
I worked for a company that entered into a letter agreement in 1965 with British Gas and Amerada Hess concerning investments in North Sea oil and gas development. It resulted in minority ownership stakes in 14 oil and gas fields in the British and Norwegian sectors, the largest of which was a 5% stake in the Ekofisk Field. These North Sea assets, along with other assets in Indonesia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Alaska sold in 1989 for $1.4 billion. As we joked at the time, that was a pretty good return for the cost of a 25 cent stamp.
Hello, just to comment that I have been a member of ASPO since 2007 and already at that time we were discussing this situation that we saw from all the oil producers who behaved as if it were never going to end.
Great content as usual. As you mentioned Groningen gas fields several times - I have been living in the Netherlands for 8 years and they have been in the news a lot, the Groningen gas fields had to be turned off because the collapsing of empty gas chambers caused and is still causing earthquakes that have damaged thousands of homes and made dozens of homes uninhabitable already. So there is going to be a high cost for the dutch for the Groningen gas fields, repairing all those homes and moving some people making the cheap gas from half a century ago really expensive now.
That sounds a lot like the Bass Strait oil fields in south eastern Australia. Similar sea conditions that also began in the late 1960s and most oil and gas fields are now nearly exhausted.
France was in a similar situation when oil prices spiked in the early 70s but they did not have a big oil field to tap so they went all in on nuclear. Now they get like 60 percent of their electricity from nuclear, a carbon free power source.
You mentioned the Netherlands finding the natural gas, but you didn't say anything about dutch disease. Could the reason they don't do more now be related? Norway did well with their pension system, so it can be done, in comparison to Venezuela.
As someone who works in this industry in the UK for a Norwegian company I can say that 10 years ago most of my work in engineering revolved around local assets & projects. More recently the big engineering projects we do are ending up in other parts of the world. We still do the engineering, qualification, support the manufacturing, etc but the actual building of stuff and installation is all going further a field in recent times.
North Sea oil basically staved off economic collapse in the UK in the 1970s. Economic collapse is now returning full steam with the decline of production and the coal and nuclear sectors being in even worse shape now than back then. I don't think there is much appreciation amongst energy blind politicians about how bad things are likely to get economically in the next 10 years.
East Midlands Province is a new one but thankyou for acknowledgement of our existence! The English North/South divide argument for some reason leaves an entire 1/3 of the country out!
Regarding the borders drawn up in the video, why would drawing a border at a trench line be more "proper" than the current border? Is the word "proper" just another word for "advantageous" in this case? I'm no expert on drawing borders, but this seems like a biased conclusion that would have been hugely disadvantageous (not to mention unfair) for Norway.
As a Norwegian I appreciate Asianometry covering this little known part of Asia. 😋
It should be added that Norway also built and manage an incredible sovereign investing fund from its oil revenues that will guarantee generations of Norwegians to have a peaceful and wealthy retirement. Only a few of OPEC countries can rival what they have achieved.
One point about the UK economy and North Sea Oil, in the 1980s the Pound behaved like a petrocurrency, leaving it overvalued in the early 1980s which in turn caused another round of deindustrialization as UK industry was unable to compete. In fact, much of the oil revenue was simply spent on paying benefits to unemployed workers who lost their jobs in the early Thatcher years.
Very interesting and well done presentation. Starting in early 1977 I worked the oil fields for 36 years in 15 countries around the world, and did not know these details. Thank you for sharing.
Drawing the seaborder with Norway anywhere other than the median would be a tough fight as Norway in this time perriode fought hard to get as much sea as possible, mainly for fishing. I think Norway and iceland are the main reason you can draw the border at the continental shelf, for example
I worked for a company that entered into a letter agreement in 1965 with British Gas and Amerada Hess concerning investments in North Sea oil and gas development. It resulted in minority ownership stakes in 14 oil and gas fields in the British and Norwegian sectors, the largest of which was a 5% stake in the Ekofisk Field. These North Sea assets, along with other assets in Indonesia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Alaska sold in 1989 for $1.4 billion. As we joked at the time, that was a pretty good return for the cost of a 25 cent stamp.
No mention of the sovereign wealth fund that Norway set up that is directly linked to North Sea oil production, the UK has no such similar fund.
Great new entry to the "Britain's Missed XXXX Opportunity" series. Can't wait to see what's next lol
Hello, just to comment that I have been a member of ASPO since 2007 and already at that time we were discussing this situation that we saw from all the oil producers who behaved as if it were never going to end.
Great content as usual. As you mentioned Groningen gas fields several times - I have been living in the Netherlands for 8 years and they have been in the news a lot, the Groningen gas fields had to be turned off because the collapsing of empty gas chambers caused and is still causing earthquakes that have damaged thousands of homes and made dozens of homes uninhabitable already. So there is going to be a high cost for the dutch for the Groningen gas fields, repairing all those homes and moving some people making the cheap gas from half a century ago really expensive now.
8:05
That sounds a lot like the Bass Strait oil fields in south eastern Australia. Similar sea conditions that also began in the late 1960s and most oil and gas fields are now nearly exhausted.
France was in a similar situation when oil prices spiked in the early 70s but they did not have a big oil field to tap so they went all in on nuclear. Now they get like 60 percent of their electricity from nuclear, a carbon free power source.
You mentioned the Netherlands finding the natural gas, but you didn't say anything about dutch disease. Could the reason they don't do more now be related? Norway did well with their pension system, so it can be done, in comparison to Venezuela.
Your point around
As someone who works in this industry in the UK for a Norwegian company I can say that 10 years ago most of my work in engineering revolved around local assets & projects. More recently the big engineering projects we do are ending up in other parts of the world. We still do the engineering, qualification, support the manufacturing, etc but the actual building of stuff and installation is all going further a field in recent times.
North Sea oil basically staved off economic collapse in the UK in the 1970s. Economic collapse is now returning full steam with the decline of production and the coal and nuclear sectors being in even worse shape now than back then. I don't think there is much appreciation amongst energy blind politicians about how bad things are likely to get economically in the next 10 years.
East Midlands Province is a new one but thankyou for acknowledgement of our existence! The English North/South divide argument for some reason leaves an entire 1/3 of the country out!
"not the first time the UK failed to draw a proper border"
Regarding the borders drawn up in the video, why would drawing a border at a trench line be more "proper" than the current border? Is the word "proper" just another word for "advantageous" in this case? I'm no expert on drawing borders, but this seems like a biased conclusion that would have been hugely disadvantageous (not to mention unfair) for Norway.