I’ am now 58 years of age and I can now sit back and reflect on my long career in the oil industry and think how lucky I was. 

I served my time in the North East shipyards then graduated to sit work, but the real high light of my career was when I eventually made it offshore on the oil rigs.

In those days it was not easy to gain oil rig employment you had to be in the know or be related to some one which at times was frustrating.

Working offshore on the oil rigs is not easy by any means, you will love it or hate it. I was known as a North Sea gypsy this is because I moved from oil rig to oil rig.

I worked on many of the oil rigs in the North Sea and also support barge rigs such as the Auk, Claymore, Piper B, East Brae, Alwyn, To name but a few. 

Your duties on an oilrig can vary from day to day but you never get two days the same, one day I could be welding the handle on the cook’s frying pan or be 600 foot up a flare stack doing weld repairs to pipe work as I did on the Piper Bravo.

And I’ve got the photos to prove it. 

I could tell you all about the up side of working on offshore oil rigs but I will start with some of the down sides first then you can decide if it is for you or not.

When you are offshore It can be one of the most hostile environments known to man you may be in a force ten storm being lashed with rain, hail, snow and what ever else mother nature can throw at you but you have got to be out on deck keeping the rig working and more important keeping that OIL flowing at all cost. 

It can also be lonely away from family and friends but if you are in the right frame of mind it is a career that you could not get any where else. Working on the oil rigs is of course financially rewarding, not only do you earn a great deal more money, you have that flexibility to have holidays all year round as you do get a lot of time off.

The down side is when it comes to Christmas, we used to try and fix it so that the family guys would have Christmas off and the single guys would work, then you would alternate and the single guys would have New Years Eve off for parties etc and the family guys would return back to the action as it were.

This would not always be possible so you have to realize that you may be away from your family during the festive holidays, on the oil rigs time does not stand still, you must keep production going and or keep the maintenance schedule on track so production is not effected, oil rig employment is a fast flowing environment and you have to be prepared.