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North Sea Oil. A History

North Sea Oil. A History (60 Years of Triumph and Tragedy) was published by the Amberley Press on 15th of July.

The cover photograph is of the Thistle Platform in the early 1980s. The ship backed up under the crane is the Stirling Sword, a ship which was far too small to be up there in those hostile waters. But this is not a book about ships, it is about the extraordinary process of exploration, development and production in recovery of hydrocarbons from under the choppy waters of the North Sea.

This is an important book. Much of the information is first hand because I, as the author, was out there braving the adverse weather and dealing directly with the rigs and structures involved. I, and my ship and my crew, helped support the construction of Forties, Brent, Ninian and Thistle. I was part of the investigation team for Chevron looking into the loss of the Bourbon Dolphin, and more. And people tell me that it is an exciting read.

Order it from Amberley today! Go to their site at - https://www.amberley-books.com/north-sea-oil.html

And to read the Daily Mirror feature click here: Daily Mirror 10 Sept

Here is the Normand Progress entering Aberdeen in 2007. The ship is a UT 742 extremely powerful when it and its sister ship entered service in 1999, and tending to be used for pulling trenching devices. The small, and rather hazard prone structure in the centre of the channel was a small drilling rig, checking the seabed, apparently. During its quite long stay in the channel no one ran into it, although it did lose a leg when moving from one place to another.