My memory has been jogged by the news that oil production is to start at Ghana's Jubilee field operated by Tullow Oil Plc (LON:TLW) .

Many years ago, the Ninian field was one of the first North Sea oil fields into production. It was an exciting time. Great Britain was becoming an oil producer. The Exploration companies involved were about to metamorphose into Producing Companies and start a stellar ascent to corporate greatness. Those like me who worked for them were looking at glittering careers just opening up. It was a good time all round.

The opening ceremony of the producing operation was carried out by the Queen no less. With TV cameras watching, she stood in front of a complex and beautifully crafted control panel and pressed a red button. The valves opened. The oil flowed. A horizontal section of one of the steel pipes had been replaced with a plexiglass window. The TV picture focussed on the window. A black line appeared and moved slowly across from right to left and the plexiglass went dark. Oil was flowing.

It was only afterwards that one of the engineers who was involved let me into a secret. If you looked again at the video of the event, the end of the black column of flowing oil appeared to have a well defined surface at right angles to the pipe - like the head of a piston - as it moved along the pipe and across the window. How exactly was that accomplished?

My colleague explained that when you open a real valve and allow real oil to flow through a transparent pipe, it looks like a splodgy mess. Someone had deemed that unacceptable for such a grand occasion. The complex valve was a stage prop. There was no oil. There was nothing connected to the red button. When the royal digit flipped the switch, a piece of black cardboard was pulled across the window with a piece of fishing line. That's why it appeared to move slowly and jerkily and without the face of the column ever losing its perpendicular form. Real oil production started at a time convenient to the production engineers and without any fanfare.

Smoke and mirrors. The oil industry can do them as well as anyone.

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