FOR oil fields that were supposed to be running dry years ago, there seems to be an awful lot of oil left under the North Sea.

Celebrating 50 years of production in the North Sea yesterday, oil and gas giant Shell chose the occasion to say that it could be in the North Sea for another 50 years.

Coming just days after Nexen announced the start of Phase 2 of its Buzzard platform project – the UK’s highest producing oil field – Shell’s declaration shows that while it is past its peak production, the North Sea off Scotland will continue to produce oil and gas for many years to come.

Shell’s first North Sea production started at the Leman gas field in 1968, and the company has been an ever-present in the region since then, with the oil produced at its Brent field, which is now winding down, becoming the benchmark price for oil sales across the globe.

Shell recently disposed of several UK Continental Shelf assets, including last year’s $3 billion sale of its interests in several producing fields to Chrysaor which immediately became the North Sea’s largest independent exploration and production company.

Shell’s North Sea boss, Steve Phimister, UK upstream vice president, told Energy Voice that the business was in a good position for “years to come” and will continue to invest “between $600-800 million of new capital every year” to grow the business.

Speaking aboard the company’s Shearwater Platform, Phimister said: “We’re definitely committed to the North Sea and to the UK sector in particular. We have over the last few years gone through a lot of change, we turned the company around as we weren’t in the place we wanted to be.

“We’re now a lot more productive, a lot more efficient and definitely lower cost. Our production costs today are a third of what they were four or five years ago.

“We’ll go on investing somewhere between $600-800million of new capital every year to grow our business.

“We’re very proud of our business here, particularly the good shape it’s in these days and the future we think we have – maybe another 50 years.”

While other major firms are known to be lining up the sale of assets in the North Sea, there appears to be no shortage of investors putting money into oil exploration and production off Scotland.

It was reported yesterday that Neptune Energy is buying stakes North Sea fields from Apache, the US firm based in Houston, Texas, for an undisclosed sum.

Neptune is to buy 50% of the Isabella prospect and 35% of the Seagull project.

The Isabella prospect is considered one of the largest undrilled exploration opportunities in the Central North Sea, with drilling operations planned for next year.

Neptune chief executive Jim House said in a statement: “In line with our strategy of expanding positions in key jurisdictions, Seagull and Isabella are both high-quality opportunities which complement our existing assets within the broader North Sea theatre of operations.”