JL Daeschler, North Sea pioneer and BOE contributor, met this week with Jim Fraser, an Aberdonian PhD Researcher working at the University of Edinburgh.
Jim is investigating how North Sea oil and gas has transformed social and cultural life in Aberdeen, and what the future holds for the region considering the current uncertainty within the North Sea industry. Who better to learn from than JL, an important figure in North Sea oil and gas development?
Our best to Jim as he pursues this important research.
The world’s first floating production unit and the North Sea’s first production facility was in the Argyll field in the UK sector of the North Sea.
JL Daeschler made a presentation on the project at Offshore Europe 1977. See the attached summary.
As JL highlights in the attachment, the press focused on the the perceived negative – the rather high water cut. JL addressed the water production issue by carefully designing the deck handling facilities.
Per JL, “we had some fun for 2 years getting the separator to work in +/- 3 degree pitch and roll, then had the additional water handling challenge.”
The team worked it out. JL can laugh about the challenges now. He proudly notes that “the field produced for 20 years + thanks to evolving technology and first class engineers and contractors.” Such was the life of a pioneering offshore engineer.
This interesting Sunday Times (UK) piece was shared by JL Daeschler. A key point in the quote below is that you can’t neglect the gas (dispatchable energy) network when you increase the contribution of intermittent renewables.
When wind and solar generation are low, the nation switches on the gas — and in a big way. Take January 5 this year, when gas-fired generation jumped from 2.3GW to 26.1GW in the space of a day — enough to power 19 million homes. The upshot is that “less gas use doesn’t mean less gas network,” as one industry source puts it.
As Alex Epstein has frequently asserted “solar and wind aren’t real power sources, they’re intermittent fuel-savers.”
Winter Storm Fern (1/23-31/2026) affected much of the US stretching from the Southern Plains and the Gulf Coast through the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and New England. Power demand surged, and solar and wind power generation were minimal. (Alex Epstein charts below)
Our guy in Scotland, JL Daeschler, reminds Sunday Times readers that the UK can’t simply summon the return of the long neglected North Sea oil industry.
The editors deleted this sentence from JL’s letter: “Thank you Norway and USA for supplying us energy.” 😉
The West of Shetland area has high oil and gas resource potential. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen are advocating a tailored management system to facilitate development.
North Sea pioneer JL Daeschler comments on the passing of Sir Ian Wood: “A great North Seas leader who had an amazing career. He founded the Wood Group, an internationally important engineering firm. Mustang Engineering, well known to the US offshore industry, became part of the Wood Group in 2000.”
I knew Ian in the early North Sea development stage. He became Sir Ian Wood. We used to chat at various conferences in Houston, Stavanger, and Aberdeen. Ian was an energetic man, who had a friendly a approach to our North Sea challenges. He was a true Aberdonian entrepreneur who employed 1000’s in offshore related disciplines worldwide.
Sir Ian turned his father’s fishing business into the Wood Group oil giant, leading the way as Aberdeen blossomed into Europe’s energy capital. When Sir Ian announced his retirement in 2012, Wood Group employed 41,000 people in 50 countries.
Some of us remember when the UK and Norway were friendly North Sea oil and gas rivals – competing to be tops in production, technology, safety, and even promotion at conferences like OTC. Take a look at the production chart below and note the UK’s production leadership followed by the extraordinary decline.
So what happened? Norway may have better oil and gas resource potential, but that is only part of the story. While Norway was managing their offshore sector to succeed, the UK was seemingly managing theirs to fail.
Norway’s North Sea remains far more active because the government promotes exploration through predictable licensing, cost-recovery incentives, and a focus on adding resources to existing infrastructure.
The UK, by contrast, has shifted toward limited development and decommissioning. In recent years, the UK’s windfall tax on oil and gas profits was raised to 78 percent, and licences for exploratory drilling in new areas were banned.
The stark policy differences are evident in the exploration drilling numbers – sustained drilling vs. sustained decline (charts below).
Norwegian Continental Shelf Directorate dataUK NSTA data:exploration wells spudded with original wellbore intent classified as “exploration” (offshore UK includes geological sidetracks).
“Claim: Hundreds of North Sea licences have delivered only “36 days of gas”, proving new drilling does not improve energy security.
“This actually proves the opposite. In a mature basin like the North Sea, you need a constant churn of investment and new licences just to stand still. Without ongoing activity, decline accelerates and import dependence rises faster. That is why countries like Norway continue to license and develop new projects. Their approach allows them to replace what they produce and manage decline more effectively. In industry terms, this is measured through the reserves replacement ratio – how much new resource is added compared with what is produced. Norway consistently produces a higher reserves replacement ratio than the UK. Over the 5 year period 2019-2024, through exploration, Norway replaced on average 46% of the reserves that were produced, the UK however, replaced just 14%.“
“Today, the North Sea still provides over half of the UK’s oil and gas needs. With the right conditions, we can sustain production for longer, reduce exposure to imports, and manage the transition more securely. Without licensing and investment, the UK simply becomes reliant on overseas supplies sooner – regardless of demand falling.“
Claim: 93% of UK North Sea oil and gas has already been extracted, so new drilling makes little difference.
“Official projections show several billion barrels of oil and gas still expected to be produced between now and 2050. Independent analysis commissioned by OEUK shows that, with the right conditions, significantly more could be delivered from known projects and discoveries.“
“And even beyond that, the UK’s own regulator identifies large volumes of oil and gas in:
approved projects
existing discoveries
areas that haven’t yet been developed“
Pressure is mounting on the UK govt to approve the Rosebank and Jackdaw projects and ease exploration restrictions. Will it work?
Per JL Daeschler, Sedco’s Far East, North Sea, and South America operations were all run from Dallas in the late 60’s. In 1970, an old schoolhouse became Sedco’s corporate headquarters (see picture and narrative pasted above). Thank you Bill Clements for saving this historic building – what a beautiful headquarters for the challenging and booming offshore industry!
JL: After 2 years with SEDCO in Miri, East Malaysia (1971) I moved to Brownsville Tx. But in 1979 I returned to the old school house in Dallas in secondment to Sedco Hamilton Production Services from Hamilton Brothers Oil & Gas. The main objective of the joint venture was promotion of floating production systems and in particular use of semi sub technology. One project assignment was the BP “Buchan” field in the North Sea. (Note: this work was a precursor to the deepwater floating production units that are now the method of choice for deepwater development in the Gulf.)
JL is pictured (right below) on the Sedco 135 during operations offshore East Malaysia.
Wisdom from JL: Rules were pretty simple, as you can read on the rig wall in the picture. No App, pin, or password…. In fact no internet and mobile phone, just a radio operator.
Safety was grounded in the attitude and respect of 100 + people living and working together (47 working / 47 sleeping and 6 managing and protecting others. More difficult was the integration of the visiting contractors, logging/cementing / diving / VIPs. (Still true today!) No division amongst ages, nationality ( sometimes 6 of them) religions, Job position , and ethnicity. Just get along and do what you get paid for! Safety issues were dealt with immediately with short, unscheduled “toolbox” meetings – less reporting and more fixing.
(As an aside, Dan Bourgeois and I were on assignment to Petronas in 1977 and visited their East Malaysian operations. Does anyone in Petronas remember us? 😉)
Bill Clements founded the Southeast Drilling Company (SEDCO) in 1947 with two partners and a loan. Clements grew the business from three used drilling rigs into a global leader and a deepwater pioneer. Through SEDCO, Clements developed strong international relationships that included the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. Clements went on on to serve as Deputy Secretary of Defense. He served as Governor of Texas from 1979-91.
BOE contributor and pioneering subsea engineer, JL Daeschler, fondly recalls working for Clements:
“He looked after the employees well, knew everyone by name on all his rigs, and was very encouraging. He was a great leader for the emerging deepwater industry. I often discussed a project with him on early Saturday morning office calls. Despite worldwide rig locations and time differences, he was able to read and digest all the morning reports. He conducted crisp executive meetings every Friday – very few speakers and to the point. He was no time waster. I learned a lot!
JL Daeschler, other North Sea veterans, and those of us who once admired the UK offshore program, lament the sad plight of their oil and gas industry and the destruction of the economy in northeast Scotland.
Incomprehensibly, the UK has retained the Energy Profits Levy, which requires North Sea operators to hand over 78% of their diminished profits to the Treasury. Most have regrettably chosen to do business elsewhere. Investment in the UK North Sea is at a record low and a study from Robert Gordon University says jobs are being “quietly” lost at a rate of 1,000 a month.
The UK government is grudgingly allowing some tieback production to existing facilities, but this will do little to stem the industry’s decline. JL notes that this limited infield development is not the type of new field investment needed to grow production and sustain the service industry (rigs, boats, helicopters, equipment, etc.).
“The term energy transition somehow sounds like it is a well-lubricated slide from one reality to another. In fact, it will be far more complex: Throughout history, energy transitions have been difficult, and this one is even more challenging than any previous shift.”
Related article in the WSJ: “Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions—and Crippled the Economy”
“European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions. Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.”
“Europe largely took an “or” strategy: It raced to replace fossil fuels with solar, wind and biomass by taxing carbon heavily, subsidizing renewables and closing scores of fossil-fuel power plants. Britain, which pioneered the use of coal for energy, last year became the first large industrialized country to shut all of its coal-fired power plants. It has also banned new offshore oil-and-gas drilling. Denmark plans to eliminate gas for home heating by 2035. Around one-fifth of Germany’s municipal utilities plan to shut down their gas networks in coming years, according to an October survey by the utilities’ trade association.”
JL Daeschler informs that UK offshore wind energy is 82% foreign-owned. Foreign companies are thus the primary beneficiaries of the UK’s generous renewable energy subsidies (chart below).
“We have been warning for some time that it is crazy for a developed economy to try and run its electricity generation system using technologies that are dependent on the weather. Even though there has been only a relatively modest decline in wind output this year, the operators and owners of wind farms are learning the hard way that it is very difficult to run a business that is at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather. Many of these companies are up to their eyeballs in debt. They better hope the wind blows hard this Autumn and Winter so they can collect higher subsidies, or they will be in real trouble.“
We have consistently raised concerns about decommissioning financial assurance for offshore wind facilities. Turner echoes those concerns noting that the wind industry’s “perilous finances are an even bigger reason to insist that proper funds are set aside to fund decommissioning or the long-suffering taxpayer will be on the hook for another hidden cost of renewables.“
