This month marks a historic but largely forgotten moment in the history of the oil sector, and something that is unlikely to ever be repeated if forecasts for the demise of the world’s most valuable fossil fuel prove accurate. Fifty years ago, BP — then known as British Petroleum and majority state-owned — discovered oil off the coast of Scotland in the once-mighty Forties field with the help of a £370m loan. The financing would be equivalent to £5.5bn in today’s money from the then cash-strapped government of Harold Wilson. In its heyday during the late 1970s, the cluster of wells located 110 miles off the coast of Aberdeen were producing well over 500,000 barrels per day of high-quality crude. The prolific field — which once made the North Sea one of the world’s most important petroleum basins — has pumped over 2.4bn barrels of oil in its lifetime […]