Isaac Newton From the 17th-century mathematician Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity, to the achievement of Watson and Crick, who unravelled the ‘double helix’ structure of DNA in 1953, British scientists have always been up there with the world’s greatest. From the first steam engine to the jet engine; the first computer to the world wide web; the telephone, television and light bulb; penicillin, vaccination and Viagra; the chocolate bar, and the gin and tonic; not to mention the flushing toilet, the UK has been and remains one of the most creative and productive societies on the planet. As the first country to industrialize, Britain’s achievements as a world superpower in the 18th and 19th centuries resonate to this day in its status as one of the most globalized of countries. The nation punches well above its weight in international bodies from the Commonwealth of Nations to the European Union, the G7, the G8, the G20, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations... among others.
And nowhere is this more evident than in the British offshore industry. In fact, as we shall see, it is a Scottish chemist, James Young, who is credited with the first commercial extraction of North Sea oil.... Plenty of potential Offshore production peaked in 1999 and was, until a significantly greater slump in 2011, declining by around five per cent annually. However, even in its twilight years, the UK North Sea is still producing considerable volumes and is estimated to hold some 24bn barrels of oil equivalent as yet unrecovered. It is without a doubt a mature industry. The sector contributes more than a quarter of all corporation tax paid to UK government coffers and supports some 440,000 jobs. In fact, it is estimated that every billion pounds spent on offshore goods and services supports about 20,000 jobs in the UK. Of those employed in the industry, 32,000 work directly for oil and gas companies and major contractors, 207,000 in the wider supply chain, and perhaps another 100,000 each in jobs generated by the economic activity of employees and exports of goods and services. But successful exploration and the discovery of new reserves has not kept pace with the depletion of existing fields. A 2009 parliamentary committee report on energy and climate change had stated that, in determining policy on the UK oil and gas sector, the government needed to make security of energy supply the priority, with oil and gas continuing to make a major contribution to that
ACROSS THE NORTH SEA
chapter ONE
Even today, with just one per cent of the world’s population, the UK accounts for over 12 per cent of all citations in scientific papers. No wonder the UK government sees science and innovation as a key export in today’s highly competitive global economy. During the past decade or so, the numbers of patent applications, spin-out companies (set up by universities when their research generates a commercially-viable product), and returns from licensing income have increased four-fold or more. The quality of the UK’s skills base is cited by most R&D-intensive companies
as the biggest factor behind any decision to invest in the country.
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