By William James and Karolin Schaps
ABERDEEN, Scotland, Nov 13 (Reuters) - In the bars,boardrooms, hotels and high streets of the Scottish city ofAberdeen, there is one question on most people's lips: how doyou survive a global oil price slump?
Oil firms are scaling back their operations in Britain's oilcapital as the tumbling value of the estimated 16.5 billionbarrels of oil left in expensive-to-reach undersea fields offthe British coast, makes exploration and drilling unprofitable.
The price crash has cost thousands of workers in Aberdeentheir jobs, threatening the future prosperity of the city and,for some undermining the economic case for Scotland breakingaway from the rest of the UK.
The keenest edge of the crisis is being felt by the workerswho were drawn to the remote Scottish city in boom times by thelure of plentiful work and high wages, but now find themselvesaccepting pay cuts and chasing increasingly scarce employment.
From Monday to Friday, Marcin Kozlowski works for U.S.oilfield equipment provider National Oilwell Varco Inc.On Saturdays he now washes cars in a multi-storey car park.
"The oil price has affected everyone in Aberdeen," he said,explaining that his monthly income has dropped from 4,500 pounds($6,926.85) to 2,500 pounds.
Oil companies have shed around 6,000 jobs, according toScottish Enterprise, the region's economic development agency.
This amounts to roughly 2 percent of the working-agepopulation of Aberdeen and its surrounding area, a figure thatexperts say is likely to be much higher if the impact onflexible labour is included.
"There's just no jobs. Customers aren't placing contracts,"said Norman Ross, an unemployed contractor in the skilled fieldof measuring the value of oil as it is pumped out.
The knock-on effect is hurting the restaurants, hotels andshops which depend on oil workers spending their money.
"We used to have one quiet night a week, now we have three,"says Lisa Kelbie, owner of the Bistro Verde fish restaurant, whohas been offering online discounts to attract new business.
ADAPT TO SURVIVE
Oil market veteran Ian Wood, author of agovernment-commissioned report on North Sea oil, said productioncould last at least another 30 years if companies become moreefficient.
Over the last five decades oil has supplanted almost all ofAberdeen's other industries. The granite quarry which producedthe stone from which much of the city is built closed over 40years ago, and only one paper mill remains of the 300-year oldindustry the city was once known for before oil.
Aberdeen is hoping to ride out the crisis by learning fromprevious oil crashes in the 1980s and 90s.
"The city ... has to regenerate itself if it is to survive,"said local politician Willie Young, highlighting the need forimproved road and rail links to keep oil firms in the city.
"We used to be so reliant on Shell and BP and allthe rest that when they said 'we're stopping exploration' thephones just stopped ringing," said Young who helps run thecity's 450 million pound annual revenue budget. "We've got the(oil) service industries here now, so the phone is stillringing."
A spokesman for BP, whose North Sea headquarters are locatedin Aberdeen, said the firm had probably become smaller in theregion but expected to keep operating there "out to 2030 andbeyond".
Aberdeen's relationship with oil has changed from whenfisherman first laid down nets to provide the brawn for drillingrigs in the 1970s, to exporting technical expertise.
"This is important in giving a cushioning effect because insome parts of the world like the Middle East, they are notcutting back, they are expanding," said Alexander Kemp, an oileconomist at the University of Aberdeen.
For now, Aberdeen's municipal finances are insulated becausealmost all of the money it raises from local business taxes ispooled nationally and redistributed by central government. Butthe longer the oil price stays low, the more money drains awayfrom the city and the harder it is to recover.
INDEPENDENCE DEBATE
The oil price slump comes as Scotland's 300-year union withEngland is in question, fuelling one of the main disagreementsover whether the country, currently run by the separatistScottish National Party, could successfully go it alone.
During the campaign for a 2014 referendum, at which Scotsrejected independence, oil became a central point of contention,with Scottish government estimates of the potential oil revenuefar higher than British ones.
Despite rejecting a split last year, the SNP wants to buildpublic support for a new independence bid in the coming years.
"Scotland's economy is not dependent on oil and the case forindependence wasn't dependent on oil either," said SNP leaderNicola Sturgeon.
But, between 2008 and 2012 oil revenues made up an estimated16 percent of Scottish tax receipts.
"In the short to medium term the collapse in the oil pricewould have posed a significant threat to the finances of anindependent Scotland," said David Bell, an economist at theUniversity of Stirling, in a recent research paper.
He cited the gap between the Scottish government'spre-referendum average projection for 2016/17 North Sea oilrevenue of 7.5 billion pounds, versus the latest independentBritish forecast of 0.5 billion.
Opponents of independence say the oil price drop shows Scotswere right to reject a breakaway.
"The economic case was very weak last year, and this year,given the oil price, it's just disastrous," said Ian Murray, theLabour Party's only member of British parliament in Scotland.
Despite the referendum loss and the plummeting oil price,the SNP's popularity has surged, helping it win a record 56 of59 Scottish seats at a national election last May - includingthe two historically Labour-held seats in Aberdeen.
"Whilst oil prices have gone down, support for independencehas remained constant," said Anthony Wells, director ofpolitical polling at YouGov.
"Obviously if there was a referendum now, it would be one oflots of very awkward questions for the SNP... but there isn't areferendum now."($1 = 0.6496 pounds) (Additional reporting by John Geddie, editing by ElizabethPiper and Anna Willard)
