This too shall pass.

“It all happened so fast” sputtered the cab driver as I headed back towards the hotel near to Aberdeen airport where I was staying. I had asked him about the changes he had seen in the last two years, mentioning that I had been here as recently as January 2015 when times were quite different.

In early 2014 and even as late as early 2015 Aberdeen was a booming city, with the airport and streets filled with skilled workers from across the world. Industrious students from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia joined workers from the Netherlands, Norway and Russia in heading to the city in search of expertise in oil and gas and the related technologies.

Over 160,000 jobs were lost in the North Sea oil industry since the 2014 price slump, with the driver estimating that his wages had fallen by 40% over the last three years as a result of the reduction in visitor numbers to Aberdeen, the world capital for the oil and gas industry.

In 2014 the major problem facing Aberdeen was the accommodation shortage, forcing students at the city’s university to share rooms in hotels to find somewhere to bunk for the night. With unemployment at close to 2%, the major complaints you would hear in the bars and pubs of the granite city were related to the rocketing costs in housing, entertainment and travel.

Sadly, times have changed for the oil industry, and for Aberdeen as whole. From 2010 to 2014 oil prices traded at between $80 a barrel to over $110 a barrel. Aberdeen itself has seen a plummet

During this period I covered the oil and gas sector as one of my focuses as a financial journalist and saw the development of technologies such as fracking as well as the expansion into new territories in Africa and Middle East for junior as well as senior exploration companies.

Key hubs for the oil and gas industry – such as Alberta in Canada, Houston in Texas, Stavanger in Norway and of course Aberdeen in the UK – drew skilled graduates, tradesmen and those hoping to make a small fortune from across the world. Skilled welders could clear six figure salaries, while even boring and relatively low skilled positions offered impressive pay and conditions.

I was even approached by an oil and gas major to work on their content programme, with the lure of a tax-free salary on offer as well as free housing for myself and my family.

Three years on and things couldn’t be more different. A glut of supply in the oil market together with the impact of the fracking revolution hit prices in 2014 by more than half, falling to under $50 a barrel. Things got worse for the oil industry, with prices in early 2016 falling below $30 a barrel. Prices have since recovered to almost $60 a barrel, however the problem facing the long term future of the black gold is now electric vehicles and the renewable energy revolution.

Job losses in the North Sea are joined by the decline of the industry in Houston, North Dakota, Stavanger, Alberta, amongst others.  Indeed some losses place the total number at 440,000 jobs since 2014.

I later developed an interest in climate change which led me to research renewable energy technologies, which I saw had the potential to change the world.

In Aberdeen itself I was told that despite the devastation of job losses  there was one area of growth for the oil industry. Decommissioning or “Decom” to use the industry slang, is the technology and processes related to the decommissioning of oil rigs, a cost intensive and technical area that has its own industry bible and conferences.

Aberdeen is a microcosm of the changing global map brought about by the end of high oil prices. Plunging oil prices undoubtedly helped drive the crisis in Venezuela, while Angola and Saudi Arabia also have taken a beating over the falling prices, with long term implications for nations that existed as petrostates with little to offer the global market other than oil facing a particularly ruinous future.

Russia is another obvious loser from the oil price collapse, with the change in global conditions meaning the enormous state owned enterprises are facing considerable declines in tax revenue.

Indeed, one of the key arguments around Scotland’s independence related to income from the offshore oil industry,with taxes from oil falling from £1.8bn in 2015 to £60m in 2016.

One country who are justified in feeling smug at this point is Norway. The country’s leaders realised sometime ago that the oil boom would not last forever, and hence pumped savings into a fund now worth $1 trillion, plenty to help tick along the country of 5.2 million, with the cash invested in a mixture of bonds, equities and property.

For those that were not so forward thinking, the future looks grim. Renewable energy technologies require expertise in engineering, innovation and supply chain management and some of the skills learned by the oil and gas industry are highly transferable.

But for those countries that did not heed the warning that nothing last forever I can think only of nights out in Aberdeen. No longer do you see packs of “rig pigs” the industry term for workers on jaunts out to sample the city’s attractions and nocturnal offerings. One of the latest ideas is offering tourists tours of rigs, with prices starting at £500 per person.

For my friendly cab driver he could only marvel at the speed of the collapse, the decline in the industries supporting the oil and gas industry and the exodus of so many workers from Aberdeen. Like life itself, the best times can be temporary and snatched from us at any moment.

A sobering reminder of the frail nature of many industries, and the potential for incumbents to upseat complacent and older adversaries. Staring out at half built hotels in Aberdeen as I caught a draught of the evening’s chill on my cropped hair, I hoped that I too would remember how quickly we can lose it all.