Falling production levels in North Sea has reduced demand for contractors.

Alex Walker, business unit manager of the oil and gas division for Dynamic Positions, told Recruitercompanies had cut back the number of contractors they were using as oil prices and production levels in the region decreased.

“On the contractor side, companies are looking at budgets and seeing where they can skim off some of the fat and I think rates are going to drop between 5 and 20%, over the next year.”

Colin McNeil, manager of the civil and structural division of Scantec Personnel, told Recruiterthe company is re-aligning its focus was to absorb the changes.

“Industry experts have foreseen the current economic slowdown in the North Sea region.  Over the past 18 months Scantec has been working to diversify its client base to enable us to limit the impact of the slowdown.” 

McNeil added buoyant regions include Angola, Libya and the UAE.

Walker added: “Ongoing projects are continuing are the same in terms of rates, but new projects which were budgeted for in March last year are being looked at and some people have pulled these projects others have decided to downsize them.”