| Summary: | <p>The conference ‘50 Years of Learning – A Platform for Present Value and Future Success’ was the eighth in a series that has accompanied the exploration and development of the offshore oil and gas resources of NW Europe since 1974. The 2015 event was timed to mark the 50th anniversary of the first commercial offshore discovery in the North Sea: the West Sole gas field in Block 48/6 off the Humber estuary in the UK sector in 1965 (Winter and King 1991). BP have the honour of being the operator of that discovery well. The conference also coincided with a collapse in oil prices. The Brent crude oil price during the meeting, on 28 September 2015, was 48 dollars per barrel, which compares with 109 dollars on the day of the first Technical Committee meeting on 16 August 2013! In such circumstances, the steadfastness of the conference's three sponsoring organizations – The Energy Institute, The Geological Society of London and the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain – is to be admired. As, of course, is the generous support, in straitened circumstances, of the corporate sponsors.</p>
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