LONDON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Britain's oil and gas output rosein 2015 for the first time since the turn of the millennium,industry body Oil & Gas UK said on Monday, reversing a decliningtrend but coming as oil prices are trading at a seven-year low.
The industry group, which represents oil producers active inthe North Sea such as BP, Shell or ExxonMobil, expects British oil and gas production to have risen7-8 percent, much higher than a 3-4 percent increase itpredicted in September.
Britain's oil and gas output has more than halved in thepast 15 years due to easy-to-reach resources running low and alack of investment in new areas.
But a renewed push to explore new areas of the North Seaover the past four years has meant new fields started up in2015, including Taqa's Cladhan oil field inresource-rich waters near the Shetland Islands, and boostedoutput year on year.
"The industry-wide focus on improving production efficiencycoupled with investments of more than 50 billion pounds over thelast four years to bring new fields on stream across the lasttwelve months is paying off and yielding a better result," saidOil and Gas UK chief executive Deirdre Michie in a statement.
Final production figures, released by the government, werenot yet available but Oil and Gas UK said it had based itsestimate on data for the first 10 months of 2015 and averageproduction assumptions for November and December.
Britain is estimated to have another 200 billion pounds ($295.38 billion) worth of oil and gas trapped in the North Seaand to tap these resources the government has issued a series oftax incentives and tasked a new regulator with helping companiessqueeze as much as possible out of the ground.
The rise in oil and gas production comes as a global supplyglut has lead to a crash in oil prices to the lowest level inseven years.
Major oil producers active across the world ramped up crudeoutput in 2015 as investments in new technologies brought newfields on stream.
While many new fields in the North Sea were approved at atime when oil was trading globally at more than $100 a barrel,operators are currently facing prices of around $38 a barrel.
Michie warned that many more North Sea oil and gas workerswill lose their jobs this year as companies continue to rein incosts. ($1 = 0.6771 pounds) (Reporting by Karolin Schaps, editing by Willam Hardy)
