AAPG Site Search | Home > EXPLORER > ARCHIVES > April 2002 > Northwest Europe potential > What does it mean?

Return to main story

What does all this realignment in the upstream business in Northwest Europe mean in terms of performance?

According to Ian Norbury, with Paras Consulting, with a couple of exceptions, the larger companies have delivered better performance over the six-year study period.

"Many of the larger companies have retrenched and their levels of investment per unit of production were below average," he said. "Despite this, eight of the 10 largest companies are in the top half of our performance league table."

He said there are several reasons for this higher than average performance by large companies:

Quality of assets.

They have concentrated on and around existing assets to enhance reserves, production and revenues at relatively low cost.

They focused on maximizing the value of earlier investments and owned infrastructure by increasing throughput via low-cost satellite developments.

They have driven the cost base down and improved earnings performance.

These companies have reduced exploration in mature areas other than value-based, near-field exploration close to owned infrastructure — but they also have maintained exposure to potentially high-impact plays in deepwater along the Atlantic Margin.

Several large firms have divested non-core or high-cost/low potential reward mature properties to concentrate financial and technical resources on higher reward projects — and therefore have enjoyed the benefits of rationalization.

"Northwest Europe is still core to these companies because of the production and cash flow, but they are unable, in the long term, to replace reserves and production organically at an acceptable risk and cost," Norbury said.

Of course, he added, these companies have some inherent advantages that drive performance:

• They benefit from strong legacy asset positions because of their early involvement in the region.
• They have large inventories of investment options globally and can continually high-grade to generate better performance and results.
• They have applied rigorous processes for cost control and enjoy low unit costs across a large production base in the region.

— KATHY SHIRLEY