Swept by waves up to 90 ft. high and wind gusts of hurricane velocity, Europe's North Sea is one of the world's most inhospitable places to look for oil and gas. Since drilling began there more than a decade ago, in a gamble by five nations to wrest black gold from Northern Europe's front yard, at least 21 lives have been lost in drownings and other mishaps. The North Sea has also been terribly unforgiving of mechanical mistakes. Supporting buoyancy tanks ruptured last year on a new gas-production platform, sending its legs crashing to the seabed—in the wrong place. All efforts to reposition the badly damaged platform have failed, and it will probably have to be blown up to avoid becoming a nuisance to shipping. Estimated cost of the job: $100 million.
Such setbacks help to make North Sea's economic climate as treacherous as its meteorology. Development costs, paced by outlays for labor and expensive equipment (see color), have in many cases doubled, or even tripled, in the past two years. Through 1980, costs could reach $35 billion for Britain and Norway alone, or $11 billion more than the U.S. spent to land a man on the moon. Major U.S. oil companies, including Chevron, Amoco, Exxon, Texaco and others are drilling in the North Sea. But rigs are now in surplus, and the pace of exploration is expected to slow. One Norwegian oilman says flatly that "the North Sea is not a bonanza."
Buried Treasure. But the oil exploiters are pressing ahead anyway, perhaps with less euphoria than in earlier years but with more experience, maturity and confidence. Though only a trickle of oil is being pumped now, oilmen expect crude to flow in ever increasing quantities from an undersea supply estimated at 40 billion bbl., two to four times the recoverable reserves from Alaska's North Slope. Some experts say the total could be 70 billion bbl.—roughly equal to the so-far proven reserves of Kuwait—or even 150 billion bbl.
Whatever the figure, the stakes are high. In Britain, North Sea oil stands for nothing less than national survival, or so politicians have maintained for a decade. It offers an opportunity for Britain to become not only self-sufficient in energy but also a modest exporter, probably in the 1980s, pumping oil revenues into its sick economy, wiping out its balance of payments deficit and reversing 30 years of economic decline. Critics say the oil will afford no such panacea; they assert that Britain's problems run deeper than any cure offered by the North Sea. But even they concede that the oil could bring an important economic pick-me-up.
For the Norwegians, already rich in money and energy supplies, North Sea oil means a chance to become richer still as the "blue-eyed Arabs of the North." By the 1980s, Norway could be producing 1.8 million bbl. daily—ten times its domestic needs—and exporting as much oil as Iraq and Libya do now. For the other North Sea participants—Denmark, The Netherlands and West Germany—the waters already promise abundant oil and natural gas. It was in Holland, in fact, that a giant onshore gas discovery in 1959 pointed rightly to further riches under the North Sea.