Scotland sets aside funds to help those affected by oil slump

The Scottish Government has set aside £12 million ($17.2M) in order to help people who face losing their jobs in the oil and gas sector.

According to a statement by the government, the fund, announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, will be used to help those affected transition into other energy industry and manufacturing employment.

The First Minister said: “There is no doubt that the conditions facing the North Sea oil and gas sector are extremely challenging and the downturn in the oil prices is having a very real impact on the workforce, with significant and hugely concerning job losses.”

She added: “This is not just distressing for those individuals affected; it has a wider impact on the industry, with the risk that the highly skilled workforce is lost to the sector as they look for opportunities elsewhere.”

The Scottish Government’s Transition Training Fund will help maintain the highly skilled energy workforce in the North Sea region by offering grants to individuals to support their redeployment through retraining or further education, the government said in a statement. It also said the fund will help people with the costs of maintaining any licences they need to work in the sector.

The First Minister made the announcement on a visit to Aberdeen, where she met senior executives of BP and other sector figures before attending the latest meeting of the task force.

Sturgeon said it is “absolutely crucial that we take every possible action to retain the expertise that the industry has built up over decades so that it remains flexible enough to capitalise on exploration investment and future oil price rises.”

“That is why I have announced a new £12 million Transition Training Fund to provide financial support to individuals as they retrain or undertake new education to allow them to take on specialist roles elsewhere in the energy industry and related roles in the manufacturing sector. This fund will augment the work of the Energy Jobs Taskforce, which is already providing much-needed help to people affected by redundancy by working with bodies such as Skills Development Scotland to support redeployment and training,” the First Minister said.

The Transition fund will allow bodies like Skills Development Scotland, in conjunction with the Energy Skills Partnership and Energy Technology Partnership, to provide practical training and education that will help people meet the demand for other specialist jobs in the wider sector, the government added.