ABSTRACT
By January 1996 the architects of the Cost Reduction Initiative could claim virtually complete success in their original objectives. Within three years costs had been brought down by at least a third in most areas of capital expenditure. The refurbishment of the two great pipeline infrastructures was largely complete. Very considerable progress had been made in linking into this infrastructure outlying wells using non-staffed, subsea collection systems and improving the production from the old Brent and Forties fields. It was this additional production which had contributed to the record output levels of 1995 – with the proportionate amount of oil going through the pipelines now back to its early 1980s levels. The amount of gas flowing was far greater. At the January 1996 CRINE Conference John D’Ancona, one of the scheme’s principal architects during his period in the Department of Trade and Industry, claimed ‘no major change of culture and practice has ever overtaken the oil and gas industry as quickly as CRINE. In a few short years the whole approach to development in the UKCS has been revolutionised and the influence of CRINE and CRINE thinking is now taking hold all over the world’. 1
