The UK's imports of crude and natural gas liquids last year exceeded domestic crude production for the first time since 1978 after field declines and outages saw output drop over 17% on the year, UK government figures showed Thursday.
Total imports of crude and NGL's widened by 6% to 50.99 million mt in 2011, while crude production shrank by 16.3% to 48.58 million mt as maintenance and other production issues exacerbated natural field declines, Department of Energy and Climate Change data showed Thursday.
Despite a 24% slide in UK oil exports during the year, total UK crude and NGL production of 51.98 million mt still exceeded net imports of 21.3 million mt, the figures show.
Net imports of crude oil and petroleum products widened to 19.2 million mt in 2011, compared with 10.3 million mt in 2010.
The UK also remained a net exporter of petroleum products, however, with net exports of 5.2 million mt, the highest surplus since 2005.
UK oil production has fallen steadily since reaching a peak of 137.1 million mt in 1999.
