Oil & gas industry: North sea oil: A tale of two countries: The North Sea oil boom of the 1980s created colossal revenues for the United Kingdom and its neighbour Norway. Today, as both nations move towards a fossil-free future, we examine how the aftermath of the boom has unfolded on both sides of the North Sea

BACK IN THE 1980s, for a whole golden decade it seemed that the sun would never set on the prosperity North Sea exploration brought to the United Kingdom and Norway. Both nations gratefully cashed in on a new gold rush ushered in by the alignment of two factors. First, the price of oil had rocketed since the global political shocks of the Arab-Israeli War of 1973–4 and the Iranian Revolution of 1978–9. Second, while consumers sought an alternative to dealing with the inflated markets of the Middle East, rapid exploration of the North Sea's continental shelf meant that economically viable oilfields were coming on stream at considerable pace.