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Oil and Aberdeen
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When
oil
was discovered in BP's Forties Field in 1970, Aberdonians rightly viewed it as a massive financial opportunity, and - despite fierce competition from other east coast British ports, Scandinavia and Germany - the city succeeded in persuading the oil companies to base their headquarters here. The city's
population
swelled by sixty thousand, and earnings escalated from fifteen percent below the national average to a figure well above it. At the peak of production in the
mid-1980s
, 2.6 million barrels a day were being turned out, and the price had reached $80 a barrel. The effect of the slump of 1986 - when oil prices dropped to $10 a barrel - was devastating: jobs vanished at the rate of a thousand a month, house prices dropped and Aberdeen soon discovered just how dependent on oil it was. The moment oil prices began to rise, crisis struck again with the loss of 167 lives when the
Piper Alpha oilrig
exploded, precipitating an array of much-needed but very expensive safety measures.
Oil remains the cornerstone of Aberdeen's economy, keeping unemployment down to one of the lowest levels in Britain and driving up house prices not just in the city itself but in an increasingly wide area of its rural hinterland. Predictions of the imminent decline in oil reserves and the end of Aberdeen's economic boom are heard frequently, as they have been since 1970, but reliable indicators suggest that the black gold will be flowing well into the new millennium Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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United Kingdom,
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