Description
Forties Alpha Oil Platform in a Forties Gale, is a large 120cm x 120cm acrylic painting on canvas, with a complex mount and name plate.
Forties Alpha Oil Platform is a large, 1m x 1m, acrylic on canvas. It depicts the Forties Alpha Oil Platform on a grey Winters day with high winds and high seas, common in the platform’s location. The commissioner of the painting was onboard the Forties Alpha Oil Platform during her heyday and has fond memories of the rig and crew. This depiction was painted during the Winter of 2015 as a celebration of the rig and the weather it endures.
The Forties Oil Field is the largest oil field in the North Sea, 110 miles east of Aberdeen. It was discovered in 1970 and first produced oil in 1975 under ownership of British Petroleum, now called BP.
BP had made the announcement to the press on 7 October 1970, that oil had been struck 110 miles (180 km) east-northeast of Aberdeen in 350 feet (110 m) of water. Production is from the Paleocene Forties Formation sandstones over a 90 km2 area making it a “giant oil field”. BP’s semi-submersible drilling rig Sea Quest hit crude oil at 11,000 feet (3,400 m) in the Upper Tertiary sandstone.
The field is now operated by Apache Corporation, who bought the field, immediately initiated an intensive re-evalutation of the field and found a further 800 million barrels (130 million cubic metres), extending the field’s life by at least twenty years, making the investment by Apache a very profitable one.