Steve Beedie is speaking down the line from Edinburgh where he has just finished giving a speech. The bluff, plain-speaking Aberdonian author and business speaker is still fizzing with energy from the event, where he spoke about his new book, Open The Bleed Off, which discusses mental health in oil and gas. The sun is shining and he’s sitting in a New Town pub sipping a pint of Guinness.
Life is good. Just under ten years ago, however, Steve was one of the thousands of north-east oil and gas workers suddenly out of a job as the 2014-16 downturn ripped through the economy. Part of a drill crew on a north sea rig, Steve and his colleagues were told in blunt fashion by managers who didn’t mince their words.
Those in charge held out hope the jobs would return when the industry recovered, but for the men on the rig it was game over. Steve lived on his savings for as long as he could, eventually selling his car. Others were less fortunate — one of Steve’s colleagues took his own life in the immediate aftermath.
It was a seismic shock that continues to have repercussions in across the north and north-east. “We just got decimated,” Steve says. “It was absolutely horrendous.
” The downturn starts North Sea oil was already in a precarious position when the downturn fully hit in 2015. On the rigs, workers spoke in hushed tones about the state of the industry and what that meant for livelihoods. But when the cuts came, no one expected their severity.
A spiraling of oil pri.