West of Shetlands offers oil and gas value says GlobalData

The oil and gas industry has been active in the West of Shetlands (WoS) area for the last 40 years, with interest in the area and licensing rounds significantly increasing in the past two decades.

GlobalData upstream oil and gas analyst Daniel Rogers says: “The WoS basin in comparison to the North Sea basins has been relatively under-explored. The extreme water depths, challenging subsurface, and lack of knowledge and experience in the basin lead to higher risk than the North Sea exploration. That being said, there is currently vast acreage open to explorers and yet-to-find volumes are significant.”

Although the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) considered the Central North Sea as the largest yet-to-find potential on the UK Continental Shelf, new research from GlobalData found that for the last four years BP and Shell’s oil and gas production in the WoS has risen and it will overtake North Sea as future-major producing basin in UK.

Rogers concludes: “There remains significant value to be captured within the North Sea particularly through near field exploration and marginal field developments, however, the West of Shetlands remains more attractive for operators willing to take higher exploration risks necessary to discover fields large enough to compete for capital within highly competitive global portfolios.”