Key figures
60,083 tonnes
72,911 m3
14,794 barrels of oil per day
1.63% of total UK production
Total UK onshore production in January 2021 was 95% that of January 2020 and 92% of January 2019.
The data in this post is published by the Oil & Gas Authority, three months in arrears.
Top 20 producing fields
Wytch Farm (Dorset): January 2021 was down slightly (0.15%) on December 2020 but up on November 2020.
Singleton (West Sussex): January 2021 was down 6% on December 2020 and down 7% on November 2020.
Welton (Lincolnshire) January 2021 was the highest production figure since June 2020, up 4% on December 2020 and November 2020. A water reinjection project at the field went onstream in January 2021.
Horse Hill (Surrey), the UK’s newest producing onshore field, was up 25% on December 2020, just above the level reached in November 2020 but less than half the field’s peak in April 2020.
There were gains in January 2021 on the previous month at Gainsborough (up 10%); Cold Hanworth (up 13%); and Goodworth (up 56%). Production fell compared with December 2020 at Beckingham (Surrey), down 16%, and at Kimmeridge (Dorset), down 12%.
Top producing companies
The UK’s largest onshore oil producer remained, not surprisingly, Perenco, the operator of Wytch Farm, the biggest producing onshore oil field.
Perenco extracted 84% of UK onshore oil in January 2021, a level that has been near stable for the past year.
The second ranking onshore producer, IGas, extracted 12% of UK onshore oil in January 2021. This was down on December 2020 (13%) but the same as January 2020.
Angus Energy (Brockham, Surrey and Balcombe and Lidsey, West Sussex) produced no oil in January 2021. This was the 10th consecutive month of no oil production by the company.
Water
In January 2021, UK onshore oil fields produced 334,518 barrels of water per day. This compares with 14,794 barrels of oil per day.
The proportion of produced water to the total fluid production, known as the water cut, ranged from 96% at Wytch Farm to 0.5% at Keddington, in Lincolnshire. The average water cut for UK onshore fields in January 2021 was 60%.
The Horse Hill field, where an autumn workover aimed to solve a water problem, saw the water cut rise from 28% in November 2020, to 30% in December 2020 and 35% in January 2021.
Produced water is often reinjected into oil fields to reduce the cost of disposal and to increase formation pressure. In January 2021, 1,644,544m3 of water was reinjected in the UK onshore. Almost all (99%) was at Wytch Farm.
Updated 2/6/2021 to correct water cut at Horse Hill
https://knowledge.energyinst.org/search/record?id=58936
”The total net crude oil imports (imports minus exports) in 2018 was 3.3 million tonnes”
Imagine.
3.3mln tonnes transported to UK from all over the world in 2018.
What kind of pollution and danger to nature transportation of 3.3mln tonnes creates?
Is it really not better to have it produced locally?
Or, put alternatively, December 2020 was up on November, January 2012 was up on December 2020.
See, it can be done, and Aaron will be pleased to see the chances of another maritime disaster diminished, and maritime emissions reduced-which are very significant. As for the Suez Canal, best to block out that memory.