Oil & Gas UK Economic Report 2015

Drive to Improve Production Efficiency Over the last couple of years, production from existing assets has benefited from an industry drive to improve production efficiency, which rose from 60 per cent in 2012 to 65 per cent in 2014. It is estimated that this contributed to an additional 70 million boe since 2012. As Figure 46 shows, the rapid increase in both unplanned plant losses and planned shutdowns contributed the

most to the preceding decline in production efficiency. Unplanned plant losses have recently begun to fall, but still remain the largest cause of lost production, with compression issues being the biggest underlying contributory factor. Planned shutdowns have increased in the last few years as operators seek to improve asset reliability in the long term so that the plants are less prone to unplanned outages.

Figure 46: Production Potential

100

90

80

Planned Plant Losses

70

Export Losses

60

Reservoir Losses

Wellwork Losses

50

Planned Shutdown Losses

40

Unplanned Plant Losses

30

Actual Production

20

Percentage of Production Potential (%)

10

0

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Source: DECC

60

ECONOMIC REPORT 2015