Major oil and gas conference gets under way in Aberdeen

One of Europe's biggest oil and gas conferences has got under way in Aberdeen with hundreds of industry leaders looking to strike supply deals.

The four-day event is held in the city every two years.

Since the last one, tens of thousands of jobs have been lost and the oil price has continued to slump.

Around the time of the last event, Aberdeen's Beach Ballroom was hosting the city's first ever jobs fayre which was mobbed with redundant oil workers.

That's when we first met Angus Wright, who had recently lost his job with Wood Group.

At the time he told us: "There's nothing about. When I was working I'd be getting calls two or three times a week with offers for other positions. Now it's just quiet."

His story was a familiar one to the many thousands of people who had recently found themselves unemployed because the oil price had plummeted.

Two years on and he is back in work.

Angus Wright spent six months out of work before getting back into the oil supply sector

He said: "I was going for administration level jobs just to get something and there were ex-senior engineers going in for them.

"There were people at much higher levels than me trying to get jobs so you really feel you don't have much of a chance.

"It was six months in total that I was unemployed for, so once you are getting towards the end of that you are desperate for anything."

Angus was lucky. The job he eventually got was still in the oil supply sector. But it was a difficult time.

He now works for a much smaller valve manufacturer in Dyce and feels things are on the up.

It wasn't just employees who were feeling the squeeze.

Personal sacrifice

Ann Johnson's firm, Blaze Manufacturing in Laurencekirk, boomed and then almost bust.

She kept on her skilled workforce in the hope of turning things around.

Eventually that gamble paid off - but not without personal sacrifice

"We'd done a £12m project and a £6m project so that gave us roughly an £18.5m turnover and then we went off a cliff edge.

"It's not like you worry about it half eight until five, you worry about it 24 hours a day.

"I had to sell my car to pay my oil bill at home. That was in March so it was a really cruddy month. If your company has got no money, you can't take any money out of that company."

'New norm'

Blaze makes firefighting products and has since diversified to supply mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The balance sheets are starting to look better and most of the 30-strong workforce still have jobs.

James Bream, from the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, refuses to call it a downturn and says the north east now represents the "new norm".

He said: "When we look at the industry and the north east, what we see is really high levels of entrepreneurship, so about 1,300 companies starting up every year.

"We are seeing more application of technology and innovation. These are good things for our future.

"We also need to retain those larger headquartered companies here because those are the ones which deliver high levels of economic output.

The north east's economy has been grim but many believe the "shoots of recovery" are present.

Oil and Gas UK will publish its Economic Report this week which will assess the scale and breadth of the downturn.