UK oil and natural gas production each fell by more than 14% last year asnatural field declines in the North Sea and a number of outages continuedto shrink output, UK government figures showed Thursday.
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Register NowProduction of crude and natural gas liquids totalled 44.52 million mt(922,196 b/d) in 2012, 14.3% below 51.97 million mt in 2011, the Department ofEnergy and Climate Change said citing provisional data.
Maintenance at the large Buzzard field, the St Fergus associated gasterminal and the continued shut in of Total's Elgin field due to gas leak inMarch 2012, continued to hurt output last year, DECC said.
In December, oil production totalled 3.91 million mt, up from 3.55million b/d in November, but down from 4.32 million in December 2011, DECCsaid.
Over recent years, the UK's mature North Sea fields have seen declinerates average 6% a year. But output slumped more than 17% in 2011 exacerbatedby maintenance outages and weak gas demand.
As a result, the UK's oil imports in 2011 exceeded domestic productionfor the first time since 1978.
UK oil production has fallen steadily since reaching a peak of 137.1million mt in 1999 when the country's exports hit a high of 54.76 million mt.
The country became a net importer of crude oil on an annual basis in 2005and a net importer of oil and products in the following year.
PRODUCT IMPORTS RISE
In 2012, the UK increased its import dependence for both crude oil andNGL's by 8.9%, the DECC said, with total imports growing 4.5 million mt to55.06 million mt, the highest since 2004.
Imports of petroleum products increased by 11.9% in 2012 compared with2011, while exports fell 2.6%, reflecting the closure of Petroplus'Coryton refinery, the DECC said.
Overall, net imports of oil products widened by almost a third to 24.7million mt last year, up from 18.8 million mt in 2011, according to the data.
Despite the rise, the UK remained a net exporter of petroleum productsby 1.5 million mt, it said.
The UK's production of gas fell 14.1% to 41.01 billion cubic meters lastyear, the lowest since 1985, DECC said.
It said the fall, which follows a record fall of 20.8% in 2011, reflectslong term decline and the shut down of the Elgin/ Franklin fields in March2012.
The UK's net imports of gas rose 0.6% last year to 37.12 billion cu mand the country's net import dependency rate is estimated to have increasedto 47%, DECC said.
Gas exports and imports were, respectively, 21.5% and 6.3% lower than in2011.
--Robert Perkins, robert_perkins@platts.com
--Edited by Jeff Barber, jeff_barber@platts.com