ABERDEEN, United Kingdom, Jan 25 (AFP): On the docks in Aberdeen, oil workers put a brave face on hundreds of job cuts linked to sinking crude prices while union leaders warn that the worst is yet to come.
"It has happened before and it will happen again. There will probably be job losses but that's the way the industry works," said Tony Maguire, a rig worker.
But for Jake Molloy, a regional organiser for the RMT union in Aberdeen, Europe's oil capital in northeast Scotland, workers who lose their jobs face "a lifetime crisis".
Molloy was one of 20,000 people who lost jobs in a downturn in 1986 and said the decline is more dangerous now because North Sea offshore fields are depleting.
"I hope this is just a blip... but I am more concerned now than I was (then)," he told AFP in an interview in the city, which has been built on oil revenues.
Oil prices are currently hovering at around $50 per barrel for Brent crude, the European benchmark, representing a decrease of 60 per cent since June when prices were at $115 a barrel.
Oil majors have been quick to react: BP, Shell, Conoco Phillips all announced cuts in the last six months.
More than half of all jobs in Aberdeen are linked to oil, yet at a time when the industry might be facing the biggest crisis in its history, the atmosphere in the Scottish hub has remained strangely calm.
In the port of Aberdeen, where dockers are busy loading equipment for a rig onto massive vessels, workers were trying to stay optimistic.
Robert, who has worked on the dock for 29 years and whose son is doing an apprenticeship in the sector, dismissed the latest fall in prices as "a few blips".
Residents still complain about traffic jams -- seen as a positive sign reflecting the city's commercial buzz and the failure of road infrastructure to keep up.
