About & sources

Brent & Beyond is a free, non-commercial map of North Sea energy from 1975 to today: UK oil and gas fields, installations, pipelines, offshore wind and tidal energy, tied to a monthly time slider.

Attribution

Contains information provided by the North Sea Transition Authority and/or other third parties (NSTA licence: non-commercial use) · Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, incl. from Crown Estate Scotland and HMRC · Contains data provided by The Crown Estate that is protected by copyright and database rights · Turbines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited 2026

Sources, licences and lags

• Oil & gas production, fields, installations, pipelines: North Sea Transition Authority open data (ArcGIS feature services: PPRS field production, Offshore hydrocarbon fields, UKCS surface infrastructure, pipelines). Licence: NSTA User Agreement, which allows non-commercial use only. Contains information provided by the North Sea Transition Authority and/or other third parties.
• Scottish offshore wind and tidal leases: Crown Estate Scotland Spatial Hub. Contains public sector information, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, from Crown Estate Scotland.
• Individual wind turbine positions: © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0. Extracted through the Overpass API (nodes tagged generator:source=wind) and matched to Crown Estate / Crown Estate Scotland lease areas. Tags such as model and status are the volunteers' own and may not match operators' as-built records.
• Per-wind-farm generation: Elexon Insights B1610 (actual generation per BMU). Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited copyright and database right 2026. Used under the BMRS data licence; this does not imply Elexon's endorsement.
• Dogger Bank and Sofia project details: SSE Renewables, Dogger Bank Wind Farm weekly notices of operations, RWE press release (11 Jun 2026), offshorewind.biz and HVDC World, all cited in each panel.
• English, Welsh and NI wind sites: The Crown Estate Wind Site Agreements. Contains data provided by The Crown Estate that is protected by copyright and database rights. (TCE Open Data Licence (GIS) v1.1)
• Offshore wind capacity: DESNZ, Energy Trends table 6.1, renewable electricity capacity and generation (published 29 Sep 2026; UK offshore wind, seabed plus floating, cumulative installed capacity at the end of each quarter from 2010). Accredited Official Statistics. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Exchequer receipts: HMRC, Statistics of government revenues from UK oil and gas production (Sep 2025 tables). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Tidal facts: Orbital Marine Power (12 Oct 2026 release), EMEC, euro-tides.eu. These are cited facts; no text or images are reused from them.
• Photos: where possible, openly licensed images (CC0, public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA, OGL) from Wikimedia Commons (including Geograph Britain and Ireland uploads) and from Flickr where the photographer's licence allows reuse. Where no openly licensed photo exists, the site uses photos that operators, field partners or contractors published for press and PR purposes; these remain the owners' copyright. Every photo is resized and hosted here, and is credited under the image with its author or owner, licence and a link to the source page. Yard, harbour and decommissioning photos are labelled as such.
• Image removal requests: if you own an image shown here and would like it credited differently or removed, contact us to request removal at [email protected] and it will be taken down promptly.
• Tie-backs and hosts: inferred from NSTA pipeline geometry (production pipelines traced from the field to the nearest surface installation). A ✓ marks a link checked against operator, regulator or trade-press sources, which are linked in the field panel.
• Major events: curated by hand. Each event cites its sources in its panel: AAIB reports (GOV.UK, OGL v3), HSE, The National Archives, BBC, Energy Voice and Wikipedia. Locations are approximate. Fatality counts come from the official report where there is one.
• Brent crude price: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Europe Brent Spot Price FOB (series RBRTE, monthly, May 1987 onwards). This is the same series FRED republishes as MCOILBRENTEU. Source: U.S. EIA. US government data is generally in the public domain. Prices before May 1987 are not shown, because we have not yet found a monthly source with a clear licence.
• Inflation adjustment: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U (all items, US city average, not seasonally adjusted, CUUR0000SA0), via the BLS public API. "Real $" means dollars at the latest CPI month's prices.
• Onshore oil and gas network: NSTA open data has no onshore pipeline layer. FPS onshore stations and lines come from INEOS FPS, Technical; Mossmorran and the St Fergus NGL line come from Wikipedia. Onshore routes are drawn as schematic straight lines, not surveyed routes. Offshore pipelines, terminals and compression/riser platforms come from NSTA.
• Basemap: OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Map library: MapLibre GL JS (BSD).

Method notes

• Field output is the sum of PPRS reporting units per field for offshore fields: oil + condensate (kb/d) + gas (associated + dry, mmscf/d) ÷ 5.8 → kboe/d. The 5.8 Mscf/boe factor is an assumption we have chosen; we have not yet confirmed NSTA's convention.
• The latest month is shown as provisional. Operators can resubmit, and NSTA publishes about 2.5 months after the month ends.
• Wind and tidal layers show lease and project status today. They are not yet tied to the time slider.

A free, non-commercial public resource: no ads and no paid tier.