The Dwindling of a City
The climate crisis is fairly clean cut for most of us. We need to stop the emissions and cut down on fossil fuel reliance. Save our planet, and safeguard if for future generations. Scotland is fairly unique, as a country it omits a lot of carbon but additionally it has a very well established oil and gas industry. It proudly shows off a new eclectic bus initiative while also granting a licence for a new oil field. For years many have succeeded in hiding the shameful reality of how much carbon output Scotland is truly responsible for. But now we know it has to stop, the oil industry needs to wind down. Yet in the North-East feelings are more complicated and the thought of the oil and gas industry moving on leaves many with trepidations.
North Sea O&G industry spends £1.6bln on decommissioning in 2022. Image: Jan-Run Smenes Reite (pexels).
Aberdeen is currently sitting on a knives edge. The threat of new windfall taxes being imposed on the oil and gas industry is not sitting well with the city and the surrounding areas. Quite frankly it’s got itself into a right situation. The prospect of the new taxes and the overall winding down of the industry will leave thousands without a job because just about the whole city is propped up on oil and gas, and the cracks are already showing.
I grew up in a town just outside of Aberdeen (which proudly displays “subsea capital of Europe” on its welcome sign) and oil and gas was essentially a part of my childhood, like many growing up in this area. I had a parent working in the industry, my neighbours, my friend’s parents mostly all worked in the industry. Even if you don’t work in the oil and gas industry there is usually a connection, be that working in retail or hospitality, or marketing or construction. Although I moved away from Aberdeen the majority of people in my school who stayed put now work in oil.
If the oil is doing good- Aberdeen is doing good. If the price of oil drops- Aberdeen is doing bad. There’s nowhere else in Scotland or the UK where people will use the price of oil as a marker of time, like we do for Covid.
“just as Scotland and the rest of the UK were starting to recover the price of oil in 2014 nosedived and stayed low for several years, many argue the industry in Aberdeen never fully recovered from this.”
It’s a micro economy in a way. As a child growing up we were generally shielded from the 2008 financial crash, apart from the obvious interest rates etc there was no huge impact on the granite city. In fact in 2008 oil increased to $150 a barrel and Aberdeen was booming. Overall the city had been riding a high for many decades, the high-street was packed, the car dealerships were doing good business, new hotels and houses were going up at a rate of noughts.
But just as Scotland and the rest of the UK were starting to recover the price of oil in 2014 nosedived and stayed low for several years, many argue the industry in Aberdeen never fully recovered from this. In a matter of months some companies had to close whole floors of their offices as that many people had been let go. Every Friday many went in wondering if that might be their last day and without doubt a handful of people would be made redundant. Everyone knew someone who had been let go.
It’s had a little pick-up since then but nothing to revive it. And why would we really want that because not only does Scotland need to stop relying so much on fossil fuels we need to stop being one of the countries at the centre of this mess. The problem is oil and gas is embedded into the DNA of Aberdeen and the surrounding areas.
As you could imagine there is not overwhelming support for transitioning to green energy in Aberdeen and especially among those who work in oil. But can you blame them? Thousands of jobs are on the line, the economic impact would be huge. Afterall the people of Aberdeen didn’t choose to create an industry there. And the alternatives offered to them aren’t exactly well thought through.
Quite frankly I am worried for Aberdeen. I look at the surrounding town I grew up in “the subsea capital of Europe” and genuinely think give it a decade and this will look like an ex-mining town. Once a place you struggled to get a house now has boarded up shops, crime on the rise as well as poverty, an empty shell of what it used to be.
And the decline is already plain to see. The Aberdeen high-street has disintegrated faster than many others and it’s really struggled to attract new businesses to the centre. Instead its filled with vape and tat shops.
The hospitality sector has also noticed a remarkable difference. Hotels in the surrounding areas could often rely on plentiful corporate bookings now have to get by on much less income and staff.
The absolute contempt in Aberdeen for any taxes or large scale move to green energies deep down is because many know that a green transition no longer entails taking small steps, it means jumping off a two-storey building. We are not at the beginning of renewables we are now at a stage where industries and knowledge have been formed and Aberdeen is not at the centre of that. The power and influence of those working in oil is dwindling.
The oil industry in Aberdeen cannot continue the way it is and people know that, but many are doing everything in their power to stop the inevitable. In the meantime this means the city will be even less prepared, because even I don’t believe Labour’s plan for a skills passport I don’t think they grasp the urgency of this situation or who is really in control.
“Imagine if all that effort and money that was spent on lobbying was put towards ensuring government had a plan, and invested in the area for green energy.”
Who’s in control? Well oil companies. They’ve spent billions on lobbying the Scottish and the UK government to make sure this carries on, letting this city become more and more vulnerable as the likes of Shell and BP suck it of all of it’s resources and options. They’ve got the likes of UNITE campaigning for them, the local papers etc. Feeding people some greenwashing garbage that they’re also investing in renewables, that they’re doing enough to keep the ‘eco nuts’ at bay so they can carry-on as usual.
But at the end of the day they don’t care. Closing down a platform hurts them in the pocket for a bit, but that’s all. We saw the ruthlessness in 2014-2016 where everyone from the cleaner to the upper management would be shuffled into a hall and told they no longer have a job. They may have stuck around then but this time they’ll head off to Qatar or Brazil.
What we see before us is a last-ditch attempt to get the oil and gas workforce to re-train in renewables but it is in no way a coordinated long-term plan to stop the North-east resembling an old mining area. Imagine if all that effort and money that was spent on lobbying was put towards ensuring government had a plan, and invested in the area for green energy.
In the meantime, my town becomes the former “sub-sea capital of Europe”. The lobbyists who have kept the oil pumping and the green transition stalling have sacrificed a whole sector of employees. And government has allowed it to carry on, allowed for time to stay still in a place that still remembers the golden age of oil.
