British Oil Industry On The Verge Of “Collapse”.
The United Kingdom’s oil industry is taking a beating from low oil prices, so much so that it is “close to collapse.”
That comes from the head of the Association of UK Independent Oil and Gas Exploration Companies, otherwise known as Brindex. Robin Allan, the chairman of Brindex, says that the number of new oil projects that are profitable at $60 per barrel is close to zero.
“It’s almost impossible to make money at these oil prices,” Allan told the BBC in an interview. “It’s a huge crisis.”
The United Kingdom has been a significant oil producer in the past, driven mostly by offshore oil platforms in the North Sea. However, North Sea output has been in decline since the late 1990’s, with the industry unable to log substantial new discoveries to offset declining production from aging fields. Production has fallen by 40 percent in just the last four years. U.K. oil production, now below 1 million barrels per day, is less than half of what it was in 1998.
