Oil rig closure hits Scottish hauliers
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• Scottish hauliers are set to be hit hard by the axing of 1,300 oil rig construction jobs at US company McDermott's yard in Inverness.
Haulage companies from all over Scotland have carried materials for the yard. They fear a drastic loss of business when redundancies will halve the yard's workforce by September.
"This is definitely going to have a serious effect on hauliers across the whole of Scotland," says Alan Henderson, transport director of Inverness-based Tulloch Group "I would say that about 20% of our work is for McDermott." But Henderson is not surprised by the cuts: "We could see it coming — if they weren't picking up orders it had to come sooner or later."
Billy Walker, managing director of Turriff-based haulier Kildonan, says that the move will cost his company £500,000 a year. "A lot of our business comes from British Steel for McDermott — I would say about 5%," says Walker: "Now we will have to make about six to 10 people redundant."
The job losses follow McDermott's failure to win a major construction contract from the French oil company Elf. Now the Scottish Rig Builders' Association is worried that three other major yards — McDermott at Ardesier, RGC at Methil and Highland Fabricators at Nigg — will be slashed to 25% capacity within a year.