The Oilmen

The North Sea Tigers

Bill Mackie

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The man in hard hat, tartan shirt and jeans stepped down from the helicopter at Dyce Airport. He flourished what one of the waiting journalists later claimed looked like a salad cream bottle filled with flat Guinness. The man said, 'Gentlemen, this, is North Sea oil.' The dramatic announcement on 11 October 1970 signaled the symbolic launch of an exciting new economic era for Scotland. In what was to become British Petroleum's fabulous Forties Field, 130 miles off Aberdeen, the seeds of a mega billion pound oil and gas industry had been sown. From that first trace of commercially viable hydrocarbons grew an industry which at its peak employed 125,000 people on and offshore in Scotland, created giant global corporations contributing more than GBP100 billion in fiscal revenues to the public coffers. The complex and powerful enterprise - which would ultimately eclipse the scale of the same era's first moonshot in cost, daring and brilliant technical innovation - irrevocably changed the lives of thousands of families, challenged a nation's political will and alleviated the UK's financial problems. This is the first of two graphic accounts of the industry's three and a half decades of r