Long Forties is a zone of the northern

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

that is fairly consistently deep.

Extent

Long Forties are between the northeast coasts of

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

and the southwest coast of

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

, centred about 57°N 0°30′E; compare to the Broad Fourteens.

Alternative terms

Forties

The Shipping Forecast area Forties approximates to Long Forties, though with neater boundaries. The north of the latter falls in Viking.

Fladen Grounds

Fladen Grounds is the next more northern, eastern and deeper part of the sea. The Dutch weather service KNMI, and Norwegian equivalent, use their tongues' similar names for and meaning Fladen Grounds instead of Forties and most of

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

. The Swedish weather institute, which reported for this zone until 2005 followed these leads.

Etymology

When depth sounding (originally fathoming with rope and plumb weight), the recorded depth would for a long haul remain 40 fathoms. On a traditional imperial measurements

nautical chart A nautical chart or hydrographic chart is a graphic representation of a sea region or water body and adjacent coasts or river bank, banks. Depending on the scale (map), scale of the chart, it may show depths of water (bathymetry) and heights of ...

, a great zone with many "40"s appears.

Geology

The Forties Oil Field is the largest

oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the prese ...

of the sea, east of

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

. It was discovered in 1970 and first produced oil in 1975 under ownership of British Petroleum. The Forties Formation consists of a lower Shale Member and an upper Sandstone Member, which were deposited in a "middle and lower submarine fan environment". The initial development plan included a "complete replacement seawater injection system" starting in 1975. When the field was sold in 2003, reservoir engineers estimated the STOIIP (original oil in place) was .Hill, P.J., and Wood, G.V., 1980, Geology of the Forties Field, U.K. Continental Shelf, North Sea, in Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade:1968-1978, AAPG Memoir 30, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, , p. 81.

References

{{coord, 57, 00, N, 0, 30, E, source:enwiki-plaintext-parser, display=title Geography of Europe North Sea Shipping Forecast areas