The County of Dorsetshire
OS Map Grid Ref: ST721015
The British Isles, although small in extent, are very rich in their geological diversity which leads to a great diversity of not only landscape, but flora and fauna as well. Dorset,
like many counties in England, has its share of this diversity. Among other things, its rocks are famous for the imprints of
fossils which they carry, especially along the rocky coasts where the land often rises with great beauty, sheer from the waves of the English Channel. Indeed, the tongue-twisting rhyme,
"She sells sea-shells on the sea shore, the shells that she sells are sea-shells I'm sure", known by almost every child in the country, has its origins in
Lyme Regis at the western extremity of
the county where
Mary Anning earned her living by collecting and
selling the local fossils in the 19th century.
Yet, as well as the familiar ammonites, ichthyosaurs and dinosaur footprints as well as plant remains
which are so abundant in the county, nature has also seen fit to leave other fossil treasures deep
beneath Dorset's soils, fossils not of such curiosity value it may be, but of scientific interest and
most off all, of great economic interest - that precious fossil fuel which we call ' oil '.
Indeed, the Wytch Farm oil reservoir beneath and to the west of (the itself remarkable) Poole Harbour,
is the largest to be found beneath any European soil.
The exploration of this mineral wealth, the black gold which drives our industrialised society, came
of age during the last quarter of the 20th century and thrives and matures still. Yet this comming
of age was a noisy process, not least because the oil men wished to trample and intrude upon an area
of great natural beauty, biological diversity and scientific interest. It is perhaps this noisy
birth of a successful large-scale oil industry in the county while has dimmed the memory of previous
efforts to claim these riches - efforts stretching back to the middle of the 19th century.
The Wytch Farm oil field is the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe. It produces some 100,000
barrels per day from the Sherwood Triassic and Bridport Jurassic sandstones but half of the recoverable
reserves extend offshore, under the waters of Poole Harbour.
Originally, BP had planned to build an artificial island in the harbour at a capital cost of $ 260 million
to develop the Wytch Farm field's offshore reserves with the first oil forecast to be produced by the
venture in 1996. Late in 1991 however, they decided that extended reach drilling could not only reduce
the capital expenditure by 50 per cent but also advance the first oil produced by three years to 1993 - it
this is the option which they pursued. This resulted in the drilling of BP and partners'
M11SPY well
into the oilfield - the extended reach drilling project which achieving the world's longest stepout.
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The Wytch Farm oilfield is operated by BP Exploration on behalf of its
partners, ARCO British Ltd, Premier Oil Exploration Ltd, ONEPM Petroleum, Clyde
Petroleum (Dorset) Ltd and Talisman North Sea Ltd.
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With half of the recoverable reserves of the Wytch Farm oil field lying beneath the waters of
Poole Harbour BP originally intended to build an artificial island
in the harbour to exploit these reserves. Instead, the company opted for the extended reach drilling
beneath the waters of the harbour as both cheaper and bringing the oil into production faster. It is
the result of this decision which caused the record-breaking M11 well, the 14th extended reach well
on the Wytch Farm site as part of the projectcommencing in April 1993, to be drilled.
The M11 well took 173 days to drill and case taking it to a total depth of 34,967 ft (10,658 m) with
a true vertical depth of 5,266 ft (1,605 m). The stepout under the waters of Poole Harbour -
the remarkeable engineering feat - was 33,181-ft (10,114-m). It was the first to break the 10-km
mark and exceeded the previous record by 6,729 ft (2,051 m).
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| | | The M11 well was drilled as part of the Stage III development of the offshore section of the field's Sherwood reservoir. It was for this project that BP received the Queen's Award for Environmental Achievement in April 1995.
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The experience which BP gained drilling the M11 means that repeating such a project would be much
easier and cheaper and it has made possible projects which it would not have seriously considered
previously. The ability demonstarted here to drill out to such an extended reach also has vast
implications for reaching other oil deposits economically elsewhere in the world.
| 1859 | | Drilling of the first well in the world specifically for obtaining oil (USA) | | BAAAGBZQ |
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Geology of the Country Around Weymouth, Swanage, Corfe and Lulworth
by WJ Arkell, 1947
The Kimmeridge Venture
by D Sherry, 1974
The history of the oil industry at Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset.
Oil in Dorset
by D Sherry, 1971
Fieldwork in Purbeck
by D Sherry, publisher Purbeck Press (2nd ed.), 1974
Dorset Shore
by T Woolf, publisher Purbeck Press, 1974
Recommend a Book for this Page
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