Oil Companies at Last See Path to Profits After Painful Spell<br />“I feel good about the North Sea, to tell you the truth,” Mark J. Thomas, North Sea regional president<br />for the oil giant BP, said in an interview at the company’s offices near Aberdeen’s airport.<br />“Before, what we would have had to do is scrabble through piles of papers<br />and reports,” said Dave Lynch, BP’s vice president for reservoir development in the North Sea.<br />“It is difficult when prices are really high, because you are really scrambling,” said Greta<br />Lydecker, Chevron’s managing director for exploration and production in the region.<br />Companies now reckon that current price levels will most likely persist, and<br />that the $100 oil of a few years ago was “a great aberration,” Daniel Yergin, the oil historian, said in an interview.<br />Companies began embracing data analysis not just to locate pockets of oil<br />and gas deep beneath the sea floor, but also to improve production efficiency.<br />BP and Chevron are gingerly experimenting with taking some employees from offshore production platforms and having them do their jobs remotely on the mainland, a change<br />that would cut the hefty costs of flying them on helicopters and providing them with food and other necessities.
