Economic Report 2016 - Oil & Gas UK

ECONOMIC REPORT 2016

5.4 Production The latest provisional production data, published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), confirms strong performance on the UKCS over the last 18 months. Last year saw the first annual increase in production for 15 years. The start-up of new fields and restart of existing fields have contributed to the rise in production, as well as increased uptime from existing assets due to an improvement in production efficiency from 65 per cent in 2014 to 71 per cent 24 . 2015 Production Figure 30 shows how the traditional period of summer maintenance was less pronounced in 2015 after years of significant integrity work from 2011 to 2014 successfully improved asset reliability and performance. Furthermore, operators have postponed non-essential maintenance to focus on maximising asset uptime to support revenues at lower prices.

Last year saw the first annual increase in production for 15 years.

Figure 30: Monthly Production

140

120

100

80

60

40

Production (Million boe)

20

0

Jul-11

Jul-05

Jul-06

Jul-07

Jul-08

Jul-09

Jul-10

Jul-12

Jul-13

Jul-14

Jul-15

Jan-05

Jan-06

Jan-07

Jan-08

Jan-09

Jan-10

Jan-11

Jan-12

Jan-13

Jan-14

Jan-15

Jan-16

Source: BEIS, DUKES

24 Production efficiency is the total annual production divided by the maximum production potential of all fields on the UKCS.

42