Pressures of Affluence : Shetlanders Pay Price for Oil Boom

Local writer James Nicolson recalls the time, before the oil came in the 1970s, when most Shetlanders struggled for a living by farming the islands’ grudging landscape or fishing the surrounding gray, unforgiving seas.

“The only ones better off were the teacher, the minister and the doctor,” Nicolson recalled. “They had steady jobs, new clothes and a better house. The rest of us were poor, but happy.”

Then came the discovery of North Sea oil in the early 1970s, a development that transformed these wind-swept northernmost islands of the British Isles, gracing their remote shores with Europe’s largest oil terminal, a bonanza of about $650 million in revenues and a level of affluence previously unknown to these parts.

The bonanza would have been even greater had the bottom not dropped out of the world oil market starting in 1985. But to a people whose energies for centuries were consumed mainly by the struggle to survive, it seemed the dawn of a new age.

Altered Living Standards

The windfall radically altered living standards, first bringing electricity, running water and indoor plumbing to the many homes that lacked them, then the modern amenities of television sets, washing machines and new cars.

Roads were improved, new schools were built and more teachers hired as a generation of Shetlanders realized that their children no longer had to leave the islands to seek a better life.

Today, the local governing body, the Shetland Islands Council, subsidizes holidays for the islands’ handicapped, buys new Volvos for its disabled, provides $350 cash Christmas presents to its old-age pensioners and, for the physically fit, operates some of the most modern indoor leisure and sports centers anywhere in the world.

American-Style Football

It even helped field an American-style football team, replete with shiny royal blue helmets, then subsidized half the air fare needed to find an opponent in Aberdeen.

“Shetland now has the best social welfare system in Britain,” noted Jonathan Wills, who edits the islands’ main newspaper, the weekly Shetland Times.

Still, the Shetlanders have found that affluence has its price. While few of them can deny the enormous benefits that oil has brought them, some of them ponder whether, somewhere amid the new cars and the cash grants, a valuable part of life may have gone forever.

“When I came here in 1939, it was a very closed, very poor, but a very friendly and happy place,” said William A. Anderson, a retired schoolmaster and a member of the islands council. “People are still as friendly and hospitable, but I’m not so sure about their happiness. They’ve got a lot more money, but the more money you have, the more you want.”

Nicolson, who has written extensively about the islands and their history, talked of jealousies and divisions emerging for the first time within the traditionally close-knit community.

Pressures on People

“You can see the pressures when people can’t afford the cars or give their kids the toys that the neighbors have,” he said.

Tensions too have grown within families as wives and daughters have been hired into secretarial or domestic jobs in a culture where women’s incomes have traditionally been limited to a few dollars a week for knitting Shetland wool sweaters at home.

Standing on a knoll overlooking the fishing harbor here, one Shetlander who had recently returned after many years in England, mused how the combined impact of oil money and television, which made its first appearance here only a few years before the oil, had afflicted the islands with what he called a previously unknown disease: “It’s called ‘Keeping up with the Joneses.’ ”

Council officials say the number of divorced or separated families in the islands has risen; alcoholism is a growing problem, and drunk-driving deaths have increased sharply as Shetlanders can afford to drink more and drive faster cars.

A major headache for Shetland environmental officers in recent years is the number of cars simply abandoned by their owners--more than 1,000 last year by a population of just over 20,000.

Sense of Trust Eroded

Crime remains low, but the new affluence, a faster pace and the influx of “incomers”--non-Shetlanders--who during the boom years helped swell the population from under 17,000 to 23,000 at its peak, have combined to erode the sense of trust in a society where leaving a key in the front door was a sign that no one was home.

While some lament the weakening of such customs and the passing of a less complicated life, others see the changes an inevitable by-product of any traditional culture progressing into a far better modern world.

“I don’t agree it’s been bad,” said John Goodlad, who heads the Shetland Movement, an oil-era political party pressing for greater autonomy for the islands. “I’m 31 and I can remember not having running water or electricity. I remember the few old cars and the arrival of television. Now everyone has jobs, cars and the latest electronic gadgets. There may be differences, but we’re still small enough for everyone to be part of the community.”

To an outsider, the changes seem relative. Lerwick, the islands’ only real town, still hasn’t got a single traffic light. The Shetland police force numbers only 35 and the islands’ night life consists of a single movie house, a handful of restaurants and a few pubs.

But then Shetland has rarely been a center of excitement.

Hostile Environment

Located roughly halfway between the Scottish mainland and Norway where the North Atlantic becomes the North Sea, the 100-plus islands constitute one of the most isolated, hostile environments in Europe, averaging 245 days of rain, 69 days of snow and sleet and 42 days of gales a year.

Shetland, locals say, has nine months of winter followed by three months of bad weather. A bout of sunshine is referred to as a “day between weathers.”

For centuries a part of Nordic kingdoms, the islands were pawned to Scotland by a financially strapped Danish king in 1469 as part of his daughter’s dowry. They have remained Scottish ever since.

Shetlanders, who live on only 16 of the islands, speak English to visitors but converse among themselves in a dialect heavily laced with Norse and Scots.

The dialect, the individual island names such as Muckle Flugga, Papa Stour and Yell, plus local custom, all reflect this Nordic heritage.

Largely Left to Itself

Apart from a herring fishing boom in the early part of this century and a large contingent of British forces based here during World War II, Shetland was largely left to itself. Until oil arrived, it was better known for its livestock than its people--sheep that yield prized Shetland wool and small Shetland ponies so popular with children the world over.

But if oil industry barons sized up the Shetlanders as a group of remote island hicks grateful for a modest role in retrieving the North Sea’s riches, they quicked altered their assessment.

The local council, led by an astute chief executive named Ian Clark, quickly vetoed plans by the more than 30 oil companies involved for several separate terminals, insisting instead that they group together to share a single, less intrusive facility at Sullom Voe, at the northern tip of the main island.

Tough environmental pollution controls backed by stiff fines and tight monitoring have made the terminal one of the cleanest facilities of its kind.

In addition to lease agreements for the oil terminal land and adjacent harbor facilities, property taxes paid by the oil companies are roughly equivalent to 80% of Shetland’s local government revenue income.

Disturbance Allowance

The council also extracted a disturbance allowance from the oil companies, linked to the volume of crude oil that passes through the terminal each year. So far, about $120 million in disturbance money has been placed in a charitable trust, carefully reserved for projects aimed at preparing the islands for the time early in next century when the North Sea oil fields run dry.

The oil companies were forced to provide, then dismantle, temporary housing required for about 5,000 construction workers during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and they have agreed to remove the terminal itself when its work life has ended.

The Shetlanders’ success in dealing with the oil companies brought a U.S. senatorial delegation and representatives of Inuit and North American Indian groups to study the experience, and is even said to have sparked the idea behind the David Putnam film, “Local Hero”, in which a remote Scottish community gets the better of oil industry sophisticates wanting to invest there.

“We were small, but we used leading lawyers and analysts much as the oil companies did,” noted Michael Gerrard, the current chief executive of the Shetland Islands Council. “I tend to discount the David and Goliath image. There are areas where we’ve succeeded and areas where we didn’t do very well.”

Failure to agree on the exact terms of the Sullom Voe lease agreement, which has been in dispute almost from the start, has strained relations between the oil companies, who believe they should pay about $1.6 million in rent annually for the land, and the council, which has demanded over $150 million a year.

Traditional Industries

Much of the oil revenues have been funneled into strengthening Shetland’s three traditional industries of farming, fishing and knitwear, in preparation for the post-oil era.

As a result, Shetland fishermen have one of the most modern fleets in the region. Farm yields have improved and the knitwear cottage industry now has marketing advisers helping to sell into the lucrative Japanese market.

Still, each of these industries faces problems that extend far beyond local control and some local leaders fear that the Shetlanders are refusing to be realistic about the future.

“They aren’t facing up to the most pessimistic scenario,” said Anderson, the retired teacher. Anderson and others, for example, worry about the implications in over-fishing the North Sea and whether there is stock to support a commercial fleet over the long term.

Small Shetland farm plots, known as crofts, are yielding more, but have essentially become summer season supplementary work for farmers already earning tidy wages in white-collar job.

Uneconomic Crofts

“This affluence masks the fact that these crofts are basically uneconomic,” maintained Anderson.

Shetlanders talk of attracting new industries, such as pharmaceuticals or computer software, but so far no firm projects have materialized.

Still, the wealth has generated a confidence among those planning the islands’ future that so far is undented by the lack of a clear view of the future.

“We will succeed because the oil has brought new people in with new ideas and new life,” said Goodlad of the Shetland Movement. “Shetland is no longer a sleepy place.”