North Sea oil production 'could rise in short-term' With high oil prices of at least $90 per barrel, output from the UK could rise to 1.4m barrels per day (bpd) in 2017 as large new fields are developed, the University of Aberdeen study found. Last year production fell more than 17pc to 1.04mpbd. Gas production could also increase, until 2015, but would show a "quite brisk" decline rate over the rest of the decade before the development of more fields would help to moderate the fall, the report by Professor Alexander Kemp and Linda Stephen said. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has said it expects oil and gas production declines to continue, albeit at a slower rate than in 2011. Despite the University of Aberdeen's short-term bullishness, the report forecast that total oil and gas production over the next three decades was likely to come in at 16.8bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe), below DECC's central estimate of 20bn boe and top estimate of 33bn boe. Those forecasts were despite factoring in the "substantial" effect of tax breaks already announced by the Government over the past year, which were likely to be felt in the long term because they mostly affected expensive, difficult-to-exploit fields. "On current trends and performance the ultimate potential will not be achieved over the next 30 years or even by 2050, when 17.5 bn boe could be produced," the report warned. But well before that time much of the infrastructure will have become uneconomic and its absence will make it much more difficult to ensure the economic development of the small fields, which will dominate the population of undeveloped discoveries. Securing the full potential of the North Sea would require oil companies to increase exploration efforts, reduce unplanned shutdowns of fields and extend the lifetime of ageing infrastructure, it warned.