In a last-ditch attempt to draw the media spotlight back onto the troubled industry, management at the Nigg yard are throwing their doors open to journalists.

No work on the horizon for yards

The last major contract won by the yard - the Elgin jack-up unit for French-owned Elf - is close to completion and is expected to leave for the North Sea within the next few days.

It is the largest single steel structure built for a field on the UK continental shelf.

The end of the work is expected to leave a large hole in the Highland employment market.

Managers say the workforce came close to 4,000 six months ago but now only a few hundred are left.

Barmac fears that while it is bidding for more work there is little prospect of anything substantial in the short term.

The yards at Nigg and Ardersier have both been on "care and maintenance" status before, but never at the same time.

New developments

Union representatives say oil fabrication workers are used to being paid off and travelling for work but this time they fear it could be a year or two before things pick up once more.

In February, Danny Carrigan of the AEEU, union warned that up to 8,000 jobs could be lost in the UK's oil fabrication sector by the end of the year.

He called on ministers to persuade oil companies to invest in new developments.

Mr Carrigan also predicted between 15,000 and 20,000 redundancies in the sub-contracting and supply side and said the industry faced a "Doomsday scenario".

The Ardersier and Nigg yards are about 20 years old and have been owned for five years by Barmac, a joint venture between two American multinationals - Halliburton and McDermott.