There’s less than one hour to go in June and it dawns on me I haven’t made a single post this month. So, to prevent a blank in my archives, here are a few quick-fire photos on the theme of energy…
The main reason for my silence this month is that I’ve been on a two-week break with this being the end of term. Nonetheless, I still had my research head on when I arrived at Aberdeen Airport to start my vacation, because I couldn’t take my eyes and phone camera off the adverts:
Aberdeen Airport is an airport like no other I’ve ever been to. You won’t find much advertising here directing you to buy expensive perfumes or cigarettes in bulk. You won’t get raffle tickets for an Aston Martin. And I don’t seem to recall seeing a tasting stand to tempt you into some fine liquor. But what you will find is ample guidance on how to get health and safety training for offshore operations, how to recruit the right engineers, and how to save rig-time (whatever that is).
The departures board is also interesting. Sure there are a few flights to sunny Spain and the big tourist cities, but orders of magnitude more departures to nodes of the North Sea oil industry like Shetland, Stavanger and Amsterdam. I saw planes belonging to airlines I’d never even heard of before – if you follow my personal blog, you’ll know I’m a bit of an aviation geek. And of course there are the swarms of helicopters heading offshore to take workers to and from the platforms, and crowds of said workers heading to and from the terminal with their ubiquitous duffel bags. I felt suitably underqualified and out of place turning up in my shorts and sandals to start my holiday.
If you really want to understand the extent to which the city of Aberdeen depends on the oil and gas industry, just take a trip out to the airport.
Dr Leslie Mabon 