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ABERDEEN, Scotland – It’s easy to see how vital oil is to this venerable port city on Scotland’s northeast coast. Walk out the door of the small international airport and across the road you’ll be greeted by the roar of helicopters transporting crews to oil platforms scattered across the North Sea.

Enter the city and you’ll pass expansive office parks with the oil company logo, home to 71,000 engineers, geologists, drillers and others working in the oil and gas industry in Scotland. Overall, the industry accounts for an estimated 7 percent of Scotland’s economic output.

Still, Scotland’s oil and gas industry is in trouble.

Oil production from the British North Sea has been in a long and steady decline for two decades, and last year’s production was about a third of its 1999 peak. Natural gas production in the region is also declining. Gas prices skyrocketed, which caused bills to rise. According to Oil and Gas UK, a trade group, jobs linked to the offshore oil industry have dropped nearly 40 percent in the past five years.

The oil and gas industry, which was once a mainstay of the Scottish economy and a major source of government funding, is “not the revenue generator it once was,” said Malcolm Forbes-Cable, vice president of energy consultant Wood Mackenzie.

In fact, the escalating costs of shutting down and dismantling thousands of wells and hundreds of platforms, recently estimated at £46bn ($68bn), are beginning to outweigh earnings expectations.

Then last month, under pressure from environmentalists, Scotland’s first minister – its most senior elected official – urged the British government to reconsider licenses for offshore oil fields, which are still in the planning stages. Official Nicola Sturgeon with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reevaluate projects It shows the seriousness of the climate emergency we are facing right now.”

The move created shock waves in the industry, as approval of such licenses is often a predetermined outcome. The final call is on Mr Johnson, but oil executives say blocking new oil fields could be a death knell for the industry, effectively halting up to 18 developments and £21bn of planned investment over the next five years.

Miss Sturgeon’s primary target is an oil field in British waters west of the Shetland Islands known as Cambo, which is considered to have the most promising resources. Siccar Point Energy, a majority-owned privately held company whose backers include wealth management giant Blackstone, has already spent $190 million in the field, and It will create 1,000 direct jobs. Climate protesters have made stopping the Cambo project a rallying cry, arguing that urgent action is needed to address the warming atmosphere. (Mr Johnson had previously said that the government “cannot cancel contracts”.)

Mr Forbes-Cable said Ms Sturgeon “walks a tightrope” between jobs and investment that Cambo will generate and has placed the Scottish Green Party, which is against oil drilling in the North Sea and needs support in another oil exploration campaign. Referendum for Scottish independence.

current congestion natural gas prices In the UK and globally, it can strengthen the industry’s argument for continued improvement. Despite the decline in North Sea production, Britain is still Europe’s second-largest oil producer after Norway, and this trait may seem more valuable now than it was a few months ago.

Ms Sturgeon and Mr Johnson want to be seen as tackling climate change as the UK prepares to host COP26, a major United Nations climate conference, in Glasgow in November.

Questions about the future of the oil and gas industry in Scotland highlight trends that have been visible for years. Last year, investment in British exploration and drilling fell to £3.7 billion, the lowest level in real terms since the early days of oil production in 1973, according to the industry group.

Mairi Spowage, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde, said finding new sources of well-paid new jobs will be difficult, but vital to Scotland’s economic and social health.

“We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s,” he said, when the loss of heavy industries such as coal and steel in England caused homelessness and unemployment to rise.

For many, the growth of renewable energy in Scotland, particularly fleets of wind turbines along the coastline, could provide a way forward for the gradual replacement of oil and gas. Globally, offshore turbines still account for less than 1 percent of electricity generation, but according to Heymi Bahar, an analyst with the International Energy Agency, business in 2020 will invest $29 billion in renewable energy, 8 percent of the global total. pulled.

And a pilot wind farm off Peterhead fishing port, just north of Aberdeen, represents a new frontier for the area.

Instead of sitting on the seabed, these turbines float on long vertical structures called masts, secured by cables. Because they float, they can be deployed farther in the sea, beyond about 200 feet deep, which is considered the practical limit for most turbines.

This not only provides a wider width of ocean where machines can be deployed, but also allows them to take advantage of stronger and more stable winds, which are usually farther from land.

The $230 million wind farm off Peterhead floats in water at a depth of nearly 300 feet, the rate at which all British offshore wind farms pump to their theoretical capacity – surpassing about 54 percent. The reason is the stronger and more constant wind.

“We can go to deeper waters, higher wind speeds,” said Ben Lawson, operations and maintenance manager of the wind farm, which is majority-owned and operated by Norwegian company Equinor. The importance of the success of this project should not be underestimated.

In fact, this paves the way for large-scale, multibillion-dollar offshore wind farms on the coasts of places like California, Japan, and France, where there are large markets for electric power but the waters are too deep for conventional offshore machinery.

“All of these are areas we’re working on,” said Sonja Chirico Indrebo, vice president of floating wind at Equinor.

Aberdeen sees an opportunity. It is building a new £350m port with special berths designed to carry the enormous weight of turbine components, as well as oil platforms brought in for decommissioning.

“Once in a lifetime, you get the opportunity to work in a new port,” plant manager Dave Meekham said as he surveyed the 35-foot-high breakwaters.

The thinking is that designing, constructing and operating floating structures will require skills similar to those required to construct and manage offshore rigs and drilling platforms.

“This, if done properly and collaboratively between industry and government, will create the next major industry for Scotland in the next 50 years,” said Jim McDonald, vice-chancellor of the University of Strathclyde and advisor to the Scottish government. energy.

The Scottish government is also in the middle of selecting companies for new offshore wind leases, which could lead to an estimated £30bn investment.

All the major European oil giants participate, including BP, Total, Equinor and Royal Dutch Shell. And some don’t hesitate to telegraph that a victory for them would help their Aberdeen offices save payrolls otherwise threatened by the decline of oil and gas. If BP gets the space it wants, the company will establish Aberdeen as the hub for its growing offshore wind business, creating 120 jobs, he said.

The dream is not only to build wind farms in England, but also to develop expertise to supply wind equipment to the world, as the Aberdeen region does in the oil industry. world leader in submarine technology.

But old hands warn that oil and gas skills can be useful in floating wind turbines, but businesses are also different.

For example, the offshore workforce for turbines is much smaller because the new technology means “automating everything,” said Allan MacAskill, a former BP executive who completed a floating wind farm off Aberdeen.

Paul de Leeuw, director of the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said the energy industry could find more jobs by the end of the decade. But Scotland and England as a whole must prioritize the use of locally produced equipment (many components of the turbines lining the British coast have been built elsewhere) and ensure that oil and gas decline is slow enough for companies to maintain adequate investment to keep things running.

“If you don’t do these things,” he said, “we might find fewer jobs than we do now.”