Britain: Sinking of the Sea Gem

It was a great day, early last month, aboard British Petroleum's offshore drilling rig Sea Gem, anchored 42 miles off the coast of Britain in the North Sea. Flow tests of the natural-gas pocket discovered at the site showed a capacity of 10 million cu. ft. a day, enough to supply the fuel needs of a town of 300,000 people and to prompt Britain's Minister of Power, Frederick Lee, to recommend building an undersea pipeline (at some $250,000 per mile) to bring the gas to land by late 1967 or early 1968.

Then, last week, disaster struck. As the 32-man crew was lowering Sea Gem so that it could be towed to a new site, two of its ten legs suddenly collapsed and the platform sank, leaving five men dead and eight others missing. With it, Britain's hopes for a quick commercialization of the North Sea gas reserves received a setback. British Petroleum has a second rig under construction, but it will not be ready until late spring.

The Sea Gem tragedy underscores the great gambles being run in the quest for gas under the North Sea, the most treacherous body of water ever ventured into with offshore drilling rigs. That fact not only heightens the danger to crewmen but vastly increases the expense. The sturdier rigs required cost as much as $10 million apiece; to drill a well costs another $2,000,000. Not every well is a strike, nor is every strike a commercial proposition: Continental Oil Co. of England, the only other company that has struck gas in Britain's portion of the North Sea, recently abandoned its strike less than two weeks after finding it.

Three other drilling groups—Shell-Esso, Signal and Phillips—will shortly be joined by Rycade and the Burmah Oil Group. Among them, 23 consortiums have ordered some dozen drilling rigs, will spend more than $300 million exploring the British North Sea by 1969. There is every indication that their huge gamble will ultimately pay off. What they are playing for is a major gas field —some think it may prove to be the world's biggest—that is located on the very doorstep of one of the world's fastest growing energy markets: Western Europe.