Charting the development of the North Sea Oil business from the early days, when oil companies hired seismic ships to go out and use dynamite to try to determine whether there was any oil out there, to the modern day, this is a fascinating history of oil and gas exploration, development and production in the North Sea. This was a drama enacted out of sight of land, in the freezing waters of one of the world’s most hostile seas. All the major oil companies wanted to get in on the act, as well as the traditional Gulf of Mexico ship operators, and the British shipping industry.

Legislation was always frantically trying to catch up with events – but without holding the oil companies back – leading to what read like back-of-an-envelope calculations such as: ‘The emergency plans for the installation must ensure that individuals working in such areas of the platforms have access to life jackets and immersion suits which will enable a thin man – more susceptible to hypothermia than a fat one – to survive for three hours in the water.’

It is a story of appalling conditions, monumental feats of engineering and a new frontier in the race for energy independence.

'It is a tale of grit, endurance and extraordinary technical innovation, as well as distress when things have gone wrong and lives have been lost.' -- Tugs and Towing News, August 2025
'A superb book that brings the story of the industry to a wider audience and makes the invisible visible.' -- Undiscovered Scotland, August 2025

Victor Gibson is a former master mariner who commanded offshore vessels working in the North Sea between 1975 and 1986. He wrote a guide for shipmasters involved in the offshore industry, Supply Ship Operations, published by Butterworth Heinemann, and subsequently compiled technical documentation for a number of drilling rig owners, as well as contributing articles to specialist journals and acting as a marine representative for rig moves.