The technical threshold for offshore oilfield exploitation is quite high.
But this is precisely the strength of developed countries in Europe.
However, after years of oil and gas exploitation, Beihai Oilfield, once the energy heart of Europe, is facing the fate of gradual depletion.
Beihai, located between shetland islands, Netherlands lowlands, Dutch Peninsula and the southern tip of Scandinavia, is the location of super oil fields, with a total area of about 575,000 square kilometers. If Phillips Oil Company hadn't put all its eggs in one basket to drill the last well at 1969, the fate of this super oil field might only be buried in the unknown deep sea forever.
Neighboring countries are the economic benchmarks of Europe.
There is a big oil field between them, which is really suitable.
Before the 1960s and 1970s? The "poor oil country hat" has always been the biggest energy problem that puzzles western European countries. Although the Soviet Union, the closest to Western Europe, is a big oil producer, in the context of the Cold War, ideological opposition and national security concerns prevented Europe from importing oil from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is close at hand, and so is the Middle East.
But in geopolitics, there are always great risks.
The operation of industrial society is inseparable from oil, but the lifeline is in the hands of others ▼
In order to develop the economy, poor oil? Western European countries have started a battle for oil. Britain strengthened its control over the Middle East, the Netherlands tried to maintain its special position in Indonesia, while France dug wells to find oil in French Guiana (France's overseas territory in South America) and vigorously expanded its oil import channels.
Among them, the operation focus is on the Middle East with huge production capacity.
And Britain is also the former sovereign state of the Middle East countries.
The local oil industry has a British share ▼
However, under the impact of the national liberation movement in the 1960s, Western Europe? Male-dominated country? The influence is not what it used to be. Far from responding to this call, the major energy sources in the Middle East have joined forces to implement this plan in western countries? Oil embargo? .
Suddenly triggered an oil embargo.
Forcing Americans to get gas ration tickets.
For western Europe, which hardly produces oil, the risk is too great.
In order to cope with the severe oil shortage, European countries led by Britain have to turn their attention to the North Sea, which has not been developed on a large scale.
However, the North Sea has been neglected for a long time because of the exposed bedrock on the surrounding land and the harsh marine conditions. Moreover, from the perspective of oil exploitation, the North Sea is really not a good place for exploration because of its complex seabed topography and harsh maritime climate.
It is much more difficult to build such a big thing than to produce oil on land.
In order to exploit oil in a short time, Britain liberalized the exploration right of Beihai Oilfield. First, it divided one third of the sea area in the North Sea into 960 blocks (each block is about 259 square kilometers), and issued exploration licenses to oil development enterprises all over the world by way of bidding.
To the British government's annoyance, even though Britain made huge concessions on oil exploration rights, the world's major oil companies were still not interested in it at that time. By the end of the tender, 60% of the sea area is still unattended.
In the development of oil and natural gas resources in the North Sea
Oil and gas resources along the coast of Holland and Germany were discovered earlier.
The British believe that there are also large oil fields in their exclusive economic zone.
But it's hard to say whether it can be found ▼
Not only that, after Britain liberalized its exploration rights, dozens of oil companies that participated in the bidding failed to produce an oil well that could be put into production and fell into a loss situation one after another. Because there has been no oil exploitation for several years, there is no oil in the North Sea. It began to spread in Europe, stirring the sensitive nerves of all parties.
Until1969,65438+February, Phillips Oil Company, which spent more than 30 million dollars in exploration for three years, was no longer able to bear the exploration losses of Beihai Oilfield. So the management of the company decided to give up Beihai after drilling the last well? Retreat back to camp? .
Then they came to a lucky place, right here.
It is this hopeless well that has brought a glimmer of life to Beihai Oilfield and changed the energy pattern in Europe.
The last well drilled by Phillips Oil Company happened to be located in? Ekofisk oil field? Above. The proven Ekofisk oilfield is about 13 km long from north to south, about 7 km wide from east to west, with recoverable oil reserves of 200-300 million tons and recoverable natural gas reserves of 1072 million cubic meters.
Location of Ekofisk Oilfield ▼
This good news gave a shot in the arm to the enterprises exploring in Beihai at that time. Soon after, a number of oil companies entered the North Sea oil field one after another, and set out on the British side near Norwegian waters.
From 197 1 to 1975, Beihai Oilfield entered the harvest period of oil and gas exploration. Brent oil field, Oak oil field, ohrel oil field, Piper oil field, Morant oil field and Nignan oil field have been discovered successively in British waters. In Norwegian waters, oil and gas fields such as Stafford Oilfield and Espen Oilfield have been discovered. Many oil and gas fields have also been discovered in the waters of Denmark, the Netherlands and other countries.
In fact, there are quite a few oil fields in this North Sea ▼
As a result, Beihai Oilfield, which combines superior geographical location and high standard crude oil quality, was formally born, gradually developed into a world-famous giant oil and gas producing area, and profoundly affected the international oil trading market.
Why else is Brent crude oil so famous?
Europe's energy center
In fact, the development of edible oil in Beihai Oilfield was assisted by the historical process in Europe.
After World War II, western countries entered the golden age of rapid development. During this period, the consumption of oil increased sharply, and gradually replaced coal as the first energy source in the world, and the industrial equipment in European countries began to upgrade from coal-driven to oil-driven
After all, the North Sea is the essence of Europe.
You can be an industrial tycoon or an oil trench.
What could be better than this?
In the short term, a large number of energy substitutes are a big headache for Europe with little oil. In addition, at that time, Western Europe was in a state of economic stagflation, and only a stable and low-cost oil supply could enable Western European countries to ensure national economic security and political stability.
Before trying to find oil, the division of the North Sea first became a thorny issue for Britain and Norway.
This problem is very complicated.
For example, the platform is here, but the oil on the opposite side is pumped. Whose is it?
Most of the North Sea between Britain and continental Europe is the exclusive economic zone of Britain and Norway, while the exclusive economic zones of Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands are in the southeast. Britain and Norway have the largest border in the North Sea, so the two countries have the biggest differences on this issue.
Oil fields are also concentrated in the middle, which is quite tricky ▼
Due to 62 north latitude? The northern sea area is directly related to Norway and the Soviet Union, and the Soviet naval submarine base is in Murmansk. For fear that the Soviet Union might suspect Norway of monitoring the movements of its navy through exploration in the North Sea, Norway has been afraid to rashly propose sea area division and oil exploration in the North Sea.
Therefore, in the process of dividing the North Sea oil field, the Norwegian government always makes things difficult for various reasons, with the intention of delaying the development of North Sea oil. In this case, the British government, which lacks oil, can't sit still. After a certain degree of compromise, it hastily accepted the division of 35% control rights in Beihai.
After solving the thorny problem of sea area division, Beihai Oilfield has gradually become a major energy supplier in Europe since the 1970s, and made Britain, which once needed to import 99% oil, the fifth largest oil and gas exporter in the world.
British export structure in 20 18 years
Crude oil still accounts for 5.7%, excluding other petroleum products.
(Photo: OEC)▼
Moreover, because of its high quality and stable output, Beihai Petroleum quickly gained the favor of European countries. The excavation of Beihai Oilfield has helped the economies of Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark in a weak period, enabling Britain to use Brent oil in the North Sea as the market reference price, thus becoming the center of global oil futures trading.
In addition, compared with the oil countries in the Middle East,
European countries have complete capabilities from offshore equipment to petroleum refining.
It is also its own oil field, which can eat the profits of the whole industry.
From 1969, Ekofisk oilfield was discovered in the central graben in the middle, and Brent oilfield was discovered in the Viking graben in the north. In less than ten years, the climax of exploration and development of Beihai oil and gas field has made it one of the largest oil and gas producing areas in the world.
According to the data published by BP in 1974, the proven oil reserves of Europe in the North Sea at that time reached 5.7 billion tons. Natural gas reserves have reached 3.53 trillion cubic meters. Such a large amount of energy reserves directly promoted the development of Aberdeen, the third largest city in Scotland, making it an oil industry center integrating storage, refining and transportation. Europe's oil capital? The reputation of.
A large number of oil and gas fields in the north lead to Aberdeen.
It has made the developed energy industry here.
What is the future of the dry North Sea?
In recent ten years, the output of Beihai Oilfield has been getting lower and lower under the uninterrupted exploitation of Britain, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark. Even with the latest mining technology, its daily crude oil output has dropped from the peak of 6 million barrels to more than 2 million barrels.
Oil production of major oil fields in Norway
After the peak, an unstoppable landslide.
In order to maintain oil production, oil companies have to increase their exploration efforts in the North Sea to find new oil fields. However, the newly discovered oil fields can't be compared with the big oil fields discovered in 1970s and 1980s, and even can't make up for the declining output gap of the old oil fields.
It is inevitable that new oil fields will gradually decline after the peak of production capacity.
Therefore, large companies will continue to invest in new oil and gas fields.
So as to keep the overall stable supply for a longer period of time.
Have a legendary oil field? For Brent oilfield, the output of Brent oilfield, which was as high as 400,000 barrels per day, began to drop sharply after 1990s. By 20 15, two of the three platforms in Brent Oilfield stopped production, and the daily output of the only platform was less than 1000 barrels per day.
Not only that, the number of newly discovered oil and gas in Britain is also decreasing sharply. According to the standards of the British Department of Energy and Climate Change, only four large oil and gas fields were discovered in Britain in 20 10, which was not only significantly less than that in 2009 13, but also fell to the bottom for many years.
An abandoned natural gas platform
Huge industrial landscape
Similar to the situation in neighboring Britain, Norway's newly proven oil and gas resources have been declining year after year, and almost no large oil and gas fields have been found in the past decade. According to the statistics of the Norwegian Petroleum Council, in 2065, only 16 and 438+00 were newly discovered in Norway, far lower than the 28 in 2009.
Moreover, the development of submarine oil fields takes a long time, from rough seismic wave physical exploration to detailed drilling core sample exploration, to equipment installation, cost accounting, development license application and so on. It often takes more than five to ten years.
Of course, it is because of the difficulty and high cost.
This kind of large-scale offshore equipment itself is a big market with high threshold.
China is also accelerating its catch-up in this respect.
In addition to the decreasing oil reserves, high taxes and high environmental protection requirements are also a major reason for cracking down on Beihai Oilfield.
Due to the overall economic downturn, the large amount of taxes paid by the oil and gas industry to the British government has become more and more important. In order to make up for the lack of fiscal revenue, the British government increased taxes on the oil and gas industry. Under the increasingly strict environmental protection treaty, the oil development enterprises in Beihai have to increase their costs to meet the environmental protection regulations.
If the cost of wind power can be reduced again and again
Europe may further reduce the energy share of oil and gas.
20 1 1 The British government changed the tax structure and tax rate of oil production activities on the British continental shelf, and the new tax policy greatly increased the tax rate of the British oil and gas industry, which led to the increasingly weak competitiveness of the oil and gas industry in the British North Sea.
Coupled with the influence of low-priced shale oil in the United States and low international oil prices, Beihai Oilfield, which has already had high exploitation cost, has fallen into a situation of barrel-by-barrel exploitation without solution.
As peers, Gulf countries have lower mining costs.
But oil and gas is only an industry in Europe and a national pillar in the Middle East.
They are under greater pressure and the transition is more difficult.
If we can't intensify oil exploration and look for new oil fields, Beihai oil field, which is in its twilight years, can't escape the fate of exhaustion. By then, the 50-year-old North Sea oil industry may withdraw from the historical stage in the near future, and the energy security of western European countries may depend on the faces of Russia and the Middle East.