A long-running project that has documented the personal stories of the North Sea oil and gas industry has launched a website in the run up to the project’s completion in May 2005.
Lives in the Oil Industry is an oral history project initiated by the University of Aberdeen and the British Library Sound Archive. Led by Aberdeen senior history lecturer Terry Brotherstone, the project was established to create an archive of the personal and professional lives of the people working in the UK North Sea energy sector. Hugo Manson, Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, was appointed Project Manager/Interviewer in 2000.
The project now comprises over 700 hours of archival recordings and is one of the biggest collections of its kind in the world.
The website showcases many aspects of the project, its content and development. It also contains links to other relevant information on the UK North Sea industry.
Mr Manson said: “Now that the project is approaching completion, it is time to start making it more widely known and to begin to provide potential users of the material we have gathered with an indication of the range covered. It is a remarkable collection of primary evidence of a key sector of the UK’s development in the last half-century.”
As part of his research, Mr Manson spent time on Shell’s Brent Charlie - one of the largest oil and gas producing platforms in the North Sea.
As a result of his stay of several days aboard the platform, an exhibition of photographic impressions of the people and machinery there is now open to the public in Aberdeen’s Marischal Museum Gallery, entitled On Charlie.
The photographs were taken by Mr Manson, while Pat Ballantyne has curated the exhibition. Photographs from the exhibition will be posted on the Lives in the Oil Industry website soon.
Some 40 extended interviews per year have been recorded since the start of the project. The people interviewed include men and women representing all sectors of the industry – management, offshore workers, technical professionals and specialists, personnel from government and regulatory bodies.
Interviews have been recorded in many parts of the UK, with an emphasis on centres such as Aberdeen, the oil capital of Europe, the Great Yarmouth area, Shetland and Orkney. People have also been interviewed in the United States.
The archive includes recordings with people from organisations and communities, which have been connected with the UK North Sea industry. The archive, due for completion in May, will comprise some 200 interviews.
A number of publications and presentations to international conferences have resulted from the project. In addition, an hour-long BBC Radio 4 Archive Hour based on the project was broadcast in 2003 and repeated in 2004. In addition
The Lives in the Oil Industry website is now ‘live’ at www.abdn.ac.uk/oillives
The On Charlie exhibition will be at Aberdeen’s Marischal Museum Gallery until early March 2005. The museum is open Monday to Friday, 10am-5pm, and Sunday 2pm-5pm. Entry is free.