A Bustling Tartan Texas Rolls Out the Barrel

With riches from six North Sea fields either landing or scheduled to appear on its shores, Scotland's most important liquid asset these days is not whisky but oil. From the Shetland Islands (noted for knitwear and shaggy ponies) in the north, to Peterhead, Edinburgh and Glasgow, oil is becoming Scotland's biggest industry. Already it is creating jobs, money and humor. One joke about the high pay of Scottish oil workers: "Did you hear that one of the welders married a commoner?"

The capital of the activity is Aberdeen, an outward-looking city of 180,000 long accustomed to foreigners through export of herring and skills, both engineering and nautical: Aberdonians officered much of the Russian navy in 18th century czarist times. But nothing in Aberdeen's gregarious history has quite prepared it for the influx of hundreds of oil-related companies (300 have operations there) and thousands of oil workers from around the world, mainly the U.S. Last week 20,000 oil people were in town, including 7,000 visitors from as far away as Houston and Tokyo, for "Offshore Europe 75," a $6 million exhibition of oil technology.

Since 1972, the American impact on Aberdeen has been increasing relentlessly. On Union Street, the shopping center, Dunn & Company, hatters, now carry Stetsons, and Grocer Hamilton Ross stocks Jack Daniel's and Old Grand-Dad next to Glenlivet malt Scotch. For Southern U.S. tastes, there are jalapeno peppers, barbecue sauce and Smucker's blueberry syrup.

Local talk proclaims that the Scots like the Americans better than the English. That could possibly be all too true. Scottish nationalists are on the march, declaring in stickers everywhere: IT'S SCOTLAND'S OIL. The growing Scottish National party favors an independent Scotland, with its own Parliament and its own lucrative oil industry for the benefit of Scotland's 5 million people. At the very least, it wants more home rule, or "devolution." The "Scotnats" have shown erratic strength at the polls; most recently their candidate soundly defeated Labor and Conservative contenders in a regional election. They now are working vigorously to send London a message voiced at other times since the Act of Union in 1707, but never with the muscle of oil behind it.

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