Six of the oil industry’s biggest names have confirmed additional funding support for the new Heriot-Watt University-led Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil and Gas.
BP, Shell, BG, ConocoPhillips, E.ON and Total have together pledged more than £1million to underpin a Training Academy for 90 PhD students over the next six years.
This brings total funding for the centre to more than £9million.
The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has allocated £2.7million to the centre and the remaining £5.2million will come from the centre’s academic and affiliated partners over the next six years.
Of the centre’s 90 postgraduate students, 30 will be funded by NERC. All of its students will benefit from being embedded alongside world-class researchers and industry partners in the form of placements, mentoring, facilities and equipment
Heriot-Watt’s Professor John Underhill, who is Shell Chair of Exploration Geoscience, will lead the new centre. The level of company investment would appear to underline the support for the CDT in general, the especial importance that industry attaches to the Training Academy in particular and highlights the need for doctoral oil and gas research studies to be placed in their broader context.It seems to suggest therefore that Big Oil values UK universities at least a little better than in the recent past.
The CDT has seven core partners and a further 12 associate partners. Core partners are Heriot-Watt, Imperial College, Aberdeen, Durham, Manchester, Oxford and the British Geological Survey (BGS).
The 12 associate partners are the universities of Birmingham, Cardiff, Dundee, Exeter (Camborne), Glasgow, Keele, Newcastle, Nottingham, Royal Holloway, Southampton and Strathclyde, and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
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