Mittelplate

Mittelplate is Germany's largest oil field, from the shore, in the environmentally important Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Parks tidal flats. The development of the field was done by a consortium of RWE Dea and Wintershall. By the 20th anniversary of the start of production, (about 146 million barrels) of crude had been produced from the field. Mittelplate field holds nearly 65% of Germany's crude oil reserves.

==History== The field was discovered in 1981 through the Mittelplate 1 well, which confirmed that the reservoir contained of crude oil. As early as the 1950s, geologists suspected the presence of oil off the German coast. Preliminary test drilling in the 1960s did indeed turn up indications of oil, though not in economically profitable quantities. The oil crisis of 1973 and 1979 raised awareness of indigenous oil sources. In 1980 and 1981, exploration wells in the Mittelplate vicinity found oil in several sandstone layers. Due to the location of the field in an ecologically sensitive area, hydrographic, hydrodynamic and meteorological studies modelling storm, wave and ice-flow conditions were done, with the result that an artificial island holding a drilling and production facility was built in 1985.