Oil Companies at Last See Path to Profits After Painful Spell
“I feel good about the North Sea, to tell you the truth,” Mark J. Thomas, North Sea regional president
for the oil giant BP, said in an interview at the company’s offices near Aberdeen’s airport.
“Before, what we would have had to do is scrabble through piles of papers
and reports,” said Dave Lynch, BP’s vice president for reservoir development in the North Sea.
“It is difficult when prices are really high, because you are really scrambling,” said Greta
Lydecker, Chevron’s managing director for exploration and production in the region.
Companies now reckon that current price levels will most likely persist, and
that the $100 oil of a few years ago was “a great aberration,” Daniel Yergin, the oil historian, said in an interview.
Companies began embracing data analysis not just to locate pockets of oil
and gas deep beneath the sea floor, but also to improve production efficiency.
BP and Chevron are gingerly experimenting with taking some employees from offshore production platforms and having them do their jobs remotely on the mainland, a change
that would cut the hefty costs of flying them on helicopters and providing them with food and other necessities.