Fuel giants to fund research with £1m

OIL AND gas majors BP, Shell, BG, ConocoPhillips, E.ON and Total have pledged more than £1 million to support research by dozens of PhD students over the next six years.

The big names are backi ng “game- changing” efforts to nurture what UK universities minister David Willetts called “a future generation of experts” for the oil and gas industry.

Their commitment brings total support for the new Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil and Gas, which hopes to help train around 90 PhD students by 2020 and will be based at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, to around £9m.

The centre will focus on creating a skilled workforce with expertise that can be used across the energy and environmental sectors, as well as filling skills gaps in the oil and gas sector.

Shell’s Keith Gerdes, the European president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, will chair the CDT’s industrial advisory board on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council, which has contributed £2.7m.

He said the initiative, which features seven core and 12 associate higher education partners, including Dundee University, was “truly game-changing” and “the most exciting development in the provision of training for the energy industry in the UK” during his career.

The investment is to nurture a future generation of experts in the industry.