North Sea hydrocarbon plays and their resources

Exploration in the North Sea since 1964 has involved the drilling of 2617 new field wildcat wells and resulted in 722 discoveries. These discoveries, plus the 77 accompanying onshore finds, have originally recoverable hydrocarbon resources totalling 100 billion barrels oil equivalent. There are two main families of hydrocarbon plays when grouped according to their source rocks. In the centre and north of the North Sea, oil and gas finds are associated with a late Jurassic to early Cretaceous rift system buried beneath a Cretaceous and Tertiary cover.