The UK is one of the highest production cost areas in the world, and when you talk about cost per bbl, obviously mature fields with low production, this rate increases. There are huge differences in costs, field by field.
This page does not include UK, but shows breakeven price which includes oil producer government spending which is highly reliant on oil, UK is not.
This page gives cost of producing and production per day.
I think there is a lot of truth in both what SLF3 says and Mitchaa, and this is really not the place to be debating this, but in my opinion to have a successful and continuing North Sea everyone needs to work together to make it sustainable for as long as possible to protect jobs.
I have been working offshore since early eighties, but my last chopper flight was over 2 years ago, and I flew mainly in the Puma family from Mk1 to EC225, and my son now flies in the 225 (which is a huge worry for me). However, the pilots on here are spending much more time in them than the workforce (and therefore more at risk).
There have been huge safety improvements on the platforms in my time, and a lot of effort now goes on asset integrity, and detection and shutdown systems, safety case, MAH prevention etc, but in recent years we have been losing people in helicopter accidents, at an alarming rate. Even the ditchings, we got lucky with the weather conditions. I don't think it's only North Sea where we have been losing people in helicopters.
Since Friday my thoughts have been with the families of those lost, and for the lost, I can only remember that joyous feeling when you see land in the inbound flight and are so looking forward to seeing the family again. I hoped their end would be sudden, but sadly it seems they maybe had an awful last 10 seconds.
With the grounding, please lets hope we have spare capacity on other types, and we don't stretch the other types and those that fly them to the limit also.