Leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, MP, will visit the University of Aberdeen next month to address oil and gas industry delegates in a lecture on Scotland and North Sea Oil.
Mr Salmond is a former oil economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland who will deliver his talk at the University of Aberdeen on Friday, November 10. His visit forms part of a series of lectures to celebrate the culmination of the Lives in the Oil Industry oral history project and to mark the 30th anniversary of the Queen’s visit to the North-east to switch on the flow of oil from the Fortes Field.
The first talk in the lecture series will kick off on Thursday (October 5) with eminent industry figure John Brooks. Mr Brooks was for many years a key figure in the Department of Trade and Industry who played a major part in the granting of licences to production companies seeking to exploit the North Sea.
Mr Brooks’ talk, Licence to Drill: The Role of the Regulator, will begin at 5.15pm in New Kings, NK10.
The lecture series, which is entitled, ‘Tis Thirty Years Since, Personal Reflections on the History of the North Sea Oil and Gas Industry, has attracted a number of key speakers from various aspects of the industry.
On Thursday, October 12, Ronnie McDonald, a former oil industry construction worker and, later, the key figure in the formation of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC), will deliver a talk on trade unions in the North Sea. The following week (Thursday, October 19), Myles Oglethorpe will discuss the initiative Capturing the Energy: An Archive for the Oil Industry. Myles Oglethorpe is a key figure in the Capturing the Energy project to establish the central UK offshore oil and gas archive at the University of Aberdeen.
A former academic, Shetland councillor and journalist, Jonathan Wills, who played an active role in local Shetland politics during the early years of the oil and gas industry on the island, will deliver his lecture, The Shetland Business: The Battle of the North, on Thursday, October 26.
Alex Salmond’s talk on Scotland and North Sea Oil is the next talk on the agenda on Friday, November 10. This will be followed by the penultimate lecture on Thursday, November 23, which will be hosted by Hugo Manson – the leading researcher on the Lives in the Oil Industry project. Hugo will give the audience a unique insight into his work over the past five years as he reflects on the work of the oral history project.
The lecture series will culminate with a talk by Sue Jane Taylor, the artist and sculptor of the Piper Alpha memorial. Ms Taylor spent a week on Piper Alpha exactly a year before it exploded and whose involvement with the platform and its people deeply affected her interpretation on the events of July 6, 1988. Her talk will take place on Thursday, November 30.
All the lectures above will begin at 5.15pm in New Kings, NK10. The talks are open to the public.
Hugo Manson, the leading researcher on the Lives in the Oil Industry project, said he was pleased to see years of hard work finally coming to fruition. He said: “I am delighted to have secured such an eminent group of speakers for the autumn lecture series to mark the conclusion of the Lives in the Oil Industry project.”
“The talks we have organised celebrate a major achievement in oral history and I am delighted that such a distinguished group of speakers, including the well-respected politician Alex Salmond, MP, will be joining us in the 30th anniversary year of the production of oil in the North-east.”
Lives in the Oil Industry is one of the world’s largest ‘life-story’ projects documenting a particular industry. It began in the summer of 2000, initiated by the University of Aberdeen and the British Library Sound Archive. The project was established to create an archive of the personal and professional lives of the people connected with the UK North Sea energy sector.
The collection, now comprising over 700 hours of archival recordings, is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. The project website, launched last year, showcases many aspects of the project, its content and development. 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 were 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 were also interviewed in the United States.
Mr Manson said the project formed a remarkable collection of personal stories from a key North-east sector: “It has been a huge privilege to work with people who were involved in the North Sea offshore industry or were affected by it. Together, we have provided a unique record of the personal memories and reflections of these remarkable people.
“The Lives in the Oil Industry oral history project has been a hugely fascinating venture and now that it is complete, it is time to start making it more widely known. We hope our definitive collection of interviews will provide potential users with a real insight into this unique workforce for many decades to come.”
Further information on Lives in the Oil Industry is available by logging on to: www.abdn.ac.uk/oillives