Maximising economic benefit by maximising recovery is now the key goal of the North Sea oil and gas industry.
After 40-plus years of relentless hydrocarbon exploration, much of the most accessible reserves on the UK Continental Shelf are exhausted or severely depleted.
Billions of pounds of investment continue to pour in for major field revisions such as BP’s Quad 204 project west of Shetland, but for every large-scale development there are numerous smaller operators chasing diminishing returns elsewhere.
Huge leaps forward in technology have helped exploration in awkward and inaccessible environments, but they cost huge amounts of money to implement.
Meanwhile, long-standing infrastructure which is at, or nearing, the end of its working life after being battered for decades by the worst the North Sea can throw at it is having to be decommissioned.
That is a mammoth and expensive task in itself.
It has been clear for some time that the industry has been at a crossroads, and Energy Secretary Ed Davey this week stepped in to order a review.
I don’t doubt the initial reaction of many industry workers was to cast an askance look at the thought of a faceless Whitehall bureaucrat poking his or her nose into areas where it isn’t welcome.
But thankfully that is not the path which has been taken on this occasion.
Instead, industry veteran Sir Ian Wood, who stood down from the firm that bears his name last year to enjoy a much deserved retirement, has been drafted in to masterplan the future of the oil and gas sector.
It is a role the Scottish billionaire is more than qualified to fill after spending decades overseeing the growth of Wood Group, one of the world’s foremost energy services companies.
He more than knows his onions, has the respect of his peers and, perhaps most importantly of all, is truly interested in seeing the industry progress.
The Wood review the first of its kind since the early 1990s will be wide ranging, and I hope Sir Ian will deliver the clear road map the energy sector needs to ensure future prosperity.
An industry that supports 440,000 well-paid UK jobs and delivers billions in tax revenues to the Treasury depends on it. So much for an easy life.
* Bank of Scotland chief economist Professor Donald MacRae is not a man whose public pronouncements are characterised by hyperbole.
So when he said new economic data for May was evidence that Scotland’s economic recovery was “becoming more strongly embedded with every passing month”, I sat up and took note.
The bank’s latest purchasing managers’ index study found Scottish businesses enjoyed robust increases in workloads over the four-week period in question, while recruitment increased at the strongest rate for more than a year.
The manufacturing and all-important services sectors were found to be particularly strong, and the overall PMI measure came in at its highest level for more than two years.
Professor MacRae and most other observers have now been reporting an upturn in confidence among Scottish businesses for some months.
A full-scale recovery may still be some distance off on the horizon, but it is gratifying to see the much-talked about green shoots of recovery starting to bed-in further.