Educational ties between the UK and growing oil and gas province Brazil were strengthened in a recent trade visit to the country by senior UK ministers.
Included in a series of agreements made on the visit was a £4.5million research partnership between BG Group, Aberdeen University and the University of Rio Grande de Sul.
This will involve 25 PhD students from UK and Brazil spending time in each other’s countries on joint projects.
BP also announced a $10million research collaboration project involving eight British and Brazilian universities.
This involves the Universities of Aberdeen, Cambridge and Oxford in the UK and the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco and Bahia, University of Brasilia, and the Brazilian National Observatory.
It aims to improve the understanding of the geological evolution and resource potential of the onshore Parnaíba Basin in Northeast Brazil.
BP also signed a research agreement worth $1million with Brazil’s National Laboratory of Bioethanol Science and Technology aimed at creating a new process for ethanol production from sugar cane.
The trade mission included Prime Minister David Cameron and minister for universities and science David Willetts.