Undiscovered Scotland

 

Anyone living in the UK over the past six decades will be well aware of the idea of North Sea Oil. But for many I suspect it's little more than that: an idea. By its very nature the North Sea oil industry has been largely invisible to most of us. Perhaps a visit to a port like Aberdeen might bring home the scale, if only from the stream of support vessels arriving or departing: but for most of the time, it's been an industry that we've only seen through the lens of the news camera, or perhaps the eyes of the fiction writer. "North Sea Oil: A History - Sixty Years of Triumph and Tragedy" by Victor Gibson is a superb book that brings the story of the industry to a wider audience and makes the invisible visible.

In his introduction, the author says: "I had a career as a seafarer which spanned 25 years, starting during the heyday of the British merchant service and ending during the great downturn in the oil industry in 1986..." He goes on to say: "This history of North Sea oil is therefore presented from the point of view of someone who was actively involved in the business. I hope to provide interesting snapshots of what was going on over the years rather than a chronological list of events." As well as a wealth of background experience, the author brings an accessible and approachable written style that helps bring the book to life in a vivid and engaging way. It should be considered as essential reading for anyone with an interest in recent Scottish (or energy) history.

You get a sense of the breadth of the coverage from the publisher's description: "Charting the development of the North Sea Oil business from the early days, when oil companies hired seismic ships to go out and use dynamite to try to determine whether there was any oil out there, to the modern day, this is a fascinating history of oil and gas exploration, development and production in the North Sea. This was a drama enacted out of sight of land, in the freezing waters of one of the world’s most hostile seas. All the major oil companies wanted to get in on the act, as well as the traditional Gulf of Mexico ship operators, and the British shipping industry."

"Legislation was always frantically trying to catch up with events – but without holding the oil companies back – leading to what read like back-of-an-envelope calculations such as: ‘The emergency plans for the installation must ensure that individuals working in such areas of the platforms have access to life jackets and immersion suits which will enable a thin man – more susceptible to hypothermia than a fat one – to survive for three hours in the water.’ It is a story of appalling conditions, monumental feats of engineering and a new frontier in the race for energy independence."