Cromarty Oil Rigs
Cromarty Firth, located in the Scottish Highlands, has a rich history linked to the offshore oil and gas industry. Beginning in the 1970s, during the North Sea oil boom, the firth became a key site for the construction, maintenance, and stacking of oil rigs. Its deep, sheltered waters and proximity to key North Sea fields made it an ideal location. Over the decades, it has hosted numerous rigs for refurbishment and decommissioning, especially as the UK oil industry matured. Today, Cromarty Firth remains a significant hub, transitioning toward supporting renewable energy alongside its traditional oil and gas role.
These rigs have been well covered heavily in the past, more so on YouTube than 28 to be fair to the troops, however there are a fair few reports years back that show how much the rigs change over the last decade. For us, this has been one of those places that we always wanted to go to, probably since watching the Unbeaten Path video in 2017, and then watching it vanish for a few months, before thankfully returning. Location, tick - beautiful area of Scotland, aura, tick, pretty cool enough to be stood on one of these things with permission TLR style, and content, tick, classic decaying industry, panels, untouched admin areas, things to climb etc etc etc. It was a must. In 2024, quite a lot of our year was spent tracking these places we had always wanted to do, but never found the time to properly attempt. We did two UK based roadtrips, keeping it patriotic, and managed to tick off some cool stuff that we haven't seen done for a long time. The rigs was one of the highlights. Visited with @jtza @DustySensorPhotography and Alex.
The whole story of our adventure here is quite long winded. It makes a bunch more sense to just watch the video I'll link below, but it was such a memorable day of Urbex. Highs and extreme lows, near capture, depression, a tragic fish and chips lunch, before retrying for ultimate success, and then camping up on a cliff overlooking where we had spent the day. True heritage, and UK Urbex is supposedly dead...
We ended up exploring two decommissioned rigs, Stena Spey and Transocean Leader, both due to be recycled as of Summer 2024, however the Leader was in a much more 'abandoned' state, eerily silent with rust coating everything, despite the unlimited bags on silica gel on every inch of her. Here's just a bunch of shots starting with the more dramatic excursion and finishing with pretty prime derelict industry.
Stena Spey
Transocean Leader
Here is the video we shot here. One of my favourites we've done. We also spent three hours on the weekend last week in front of a green screen snapping away as you'll see purely manifesting the Wevsky comment we're bound to get on FB. Back soon.
Thanks for reading
Cromarty Firth, located in the Scottish Highlands, has a rich history linked to the offshore oil and gas industry. Beginning in the 1970s, during the North Sea oil boom, the firth became a key site for the construction, maintenance, and stacking of oil rigs. Its deep, sheltered waters and proximity to key North Sea fields made it an ideal location. Over the decades, it has hosted numerous rigs for refurbishment and decommissioning, especially as the UK oil industry matured. Today, Cromarty Firth remains a significant hub, transitioning toward supporting renewable energy alongside its traditional oil and gas role.
These rigs have been well covered heavily in the past, more so on YouTube than 28 to be fair to the troops, however there are a fair few reports years back that show how much the rigs change over the last decade. For us, this has been one of those places that we always wanted to go to, probably since watching the Unbeaten Path video in 2017, and then watching it vanish for a few months, before thankfully returning. Location, tick - beautiful area of Scotland, aura, tick, pretty cool enough to be stood on one of these things with permission TLR style, and content, tick, classic decaying industry, panels, untouched admin areas, things to climb etc etc etc. It was a must. In 2024, quite a lot of our year was spent tracking these places we had always wanted to do, but never found the time to properly attempt. We did two UK based roadtrips, keeping it patriotic, and managed to tick off some cool stuff that we haven't seen done for a long time. The rigs was one of the highlights. Visited with @jtza @DustySensorPhotography and Alex.
The whole story of our adventure here is quite long winded. It makes a bunch more sense to just watch the video I'll link below, but it was such a memorable day of Urbex. Highs and extreme lows, near capture, depression, a tragic fish and chips lunch, before retrying for ultimate success, and then camping up on a cliff overlooking where we had spent the day. True heritage, and UK Urbex is supposedly dead...
We ended up exploring two decommissioned rigs, Stena Spey and Transocean Leader, both due to be recycled as of Summer 2024, however the Leader was in a much more 'abandoned' state, eerily silent with rust coating everything, despite the unlimited bags on silica gel on every inch of her. Here's just a bunch of shots starting with the more dramatic excursion and finishing with pretty prime derelict industry.
Stena Spey
Transocean Leader
Here is the video we shot here. One of my favourites we've done. We also spent three hours on the weekend last week in front of a green screen snapping away as you'll see purely manifesting the Wevsky comment we're bound to get on FB. Back soon.
Thanks for reading
