UK onshore oil exploration, 1930–1964

The earliest attempts to find oil in Britain, dating from 1918–1922, based on anticlines flanking the Pennines, were largely unsuccessful. Renewal of exploration in the 1930s, aimed at a broader range of prospects, met with much criticism but went ahead after nationalization of the unknown and undiscovered oil resources (1934). The south of England ranked as first priority but the initial drilling of the new campaign carried out in 1935–1937 yielded only minor quantities of oil and gas. Attention was transferred in 1938 to Upper Palaeozoic prospects in the Midlands and north, resulting in small gas and oil discoveries in Scotland and Yorkshire, and discovery of a series of commerical oilfields in the Upper Carboniferous of Nottinghamshire. In the 1950s the first commercial discovery in the Jurassic was made at Kimmeridge in Dorset. Further Carboniferous discoveries were made in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, and a series of fresh objectives defined by seismic reflection were drilled in the Mesozoic basin of southern England. This phase of exploration was terminated at the end of 1964 by adverse fiscal changes. Continuation of effective exploration operations remained uneconomic until the oil price rise in 1973.