From the archives: Life in oil boom to be put on tape, 6 October, 2000

ONE of the most ambitious oral history projects undertaken in Britain is to document the lives of the people involved in the development of the vital North Sea oil and gas industry over the past 30 years.

Over the next five years, researchers plan to tape hundreds of interviews with people from all walks of life who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by an industry which has transformed the fortunes of the United Kingdom, creating thousands of jobs and ploughing billions of pounds into the Exchequer. Pioneers of the discovery of “black gold” and the survivors of the major tragedies will be among those whose memories will be recorded in an archive at the British Library. Hugo Manson, an international oral history expert, said: “This will be the living history of the oil and gas industry in the words of the people whose own efforts and ideas, disasters and successes made it happen.”

• archive.scotsman.com