1970: Large oil field found in North Sea

The oil company British Petroleum has announced it has struck oil in the North Sea.

The find will eventually make a huge difference to Britain's balance of payments since almost all of the country's oil is imported.

Last year the cost of importing crude and partly refined petroleum was �670m.

This discovery follows other finds in the last five years of natural gas as well as oil and suggests the North Sea could become one of the world's major sources of crude oil.

The North Sea is divided into UK, German, Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch sectors. The UK has the largest of these sectors.

In June BP discovered another major field in the Norwegian section, Ekofisk, that is expected to supply 10% of Britain's oil needs.

The new field situated in block 21/10 of the British sector, some 110 miles (177km) east of Aberdeen in Scotland.

BP said its exploration well was dug 350ft (106 metres) into the sea bed and produced good quality oil at the rate of about 4,700 barrels a day.

Currently oil consumption in Britain is nearly two million barrels a day.

This month's find is welcome news for BP which has been hard hit by high costs of transporting oil from its huge oil reserves in the Middle East.

The company's shares have risen by 14% in the last two weeks in anticipation of the announcement.

But it will take some time - some say up to seven years - to develop the field into a viable oil producer. A pipeline will have to be built on the sea bed from the oil field all the way to the Scottish coast near Aberdeen.

Conditions in the North Sea during winter are particularly harsh. Shell-Esso has a drilling rig, Staflo, and sometimes has to evacuate it when winds reach gale force 10 in the region.

	E-mail this story to a friend