Economic Report 1999 Index

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UKCS Reserves Most estimates of the UKCS reserves indicate there are substantially more recoverable reserves remaining to be produced than the 26 billion barrels of oil equivalent that have already been produced to date, as indicated by Figure 14. Figure 14 - UKCS Reserves - Billion Barrels of Oil Equivalent A further 16-20 billion boe remain in fields which are either already in production or under development, and yet to be found is anticipated to be an additional 13 billion boe. There is a range of uncertainty in these future reserves estimates, particularly in the yet to find category (the Brown Book reports a range of 5 to 30 billion boe). The remaining prize is therefore very large, and the challenge facing the industry is to increase recovery from existing fields, and to find and produce economically the remaining resources from ever smaller fields.