Welcome to the MASTS Oil & Gas Environmental Research Forum
The Forum engages with the oil and gas sector, regulators and academic community, together with other MASTS forums, to raise awareness of relevant marine environmental research and industry requirements. The Forum brings together the scientific community to address strategic research requirements and inform policy.
This Forum focuses on the identification of key environmental research issues facing the industry and regulators in Scotland, the UK and internationally. It is necessary to improve the understanding of oil and gas operations and relevant environmental concerns within the academic community. For this reason the Forum aims at fostering a cohesive, multidisciplinary and collaborative network of scientists, regulators and industry to deliver scientifically excellent, innovative, solutions to the offshore oil and gas industry. Another aim is to facilitate the use and sharing of marine environmental data and knowledge derived through statutory and non-statutory monitoring and research.
In order to deliver the key objectives, the Forum is representing and promoting MASTS at government, industry and academic meetings, and providing feedback to Forum members on relevant issues as they emerge.
Through proactive engagement with other MASTS Forums – principally the Marine Renewable Energy, Marine Planning and Governance and Deep Sea Forums cohesion and collaboration can be ensured on issues where industry and research interests overlap.
Identifying strategically important knowledge gaps are leading Forum workshops or “case studies” to improve understanding, raise awareness and identify research requirements. An important objective is to produce position papers, using the expertise within the Forum and across related MASTS Forums. The target audience for these papers will include regulators, academics, and senior decision makers, including those involved in funding research such as the research councils and the EU.
Further objectives include the allocation of funds to: 1) support dissemination; 2) fund workshops/case studies; 3) support the development of strategic position papers; 4) secure leverage on other funds – including studentships and research projects; 5) support writing retreats to encourage the production of relevant papers and research proposals.
Specific areas of interest to the forum include: 1) Decommissioning, 2) Improving data access, archiving, analysis and further acquisition, 3) Understanding and mitigating the impacts of oil and gas developments in challenging and extreme environments e.g. Arctic and deepwater provinces, and 4) the use of biological alternative to synthetic dispersants.
Webinar “Oil and Gas Industry Briefing”
VACANCY!
Please contact MASTS if you are interested in becoming a Forum Convenor: [email protected]
Alison Brand (University of Aberdeen), Caroline Brown (O&GUK), Debbie Russell (University of St Andrews), Georgios Kazanidis (University of Edinburgh), Johanne Vad (University of Edinburgh), Julia de Rezende (Heriot-Watt University), Kate Gormley (University of Aberdeen), Lea-Anne Henry (University of Edinburgh), Mark Shields (BEIS), Tom Wilding (SAMS) and Tony Gutierrez (Heriot-Watt University).
MASTS was founded in 2009 to be a unique collaboration between marine research organisations, government and industry.
Charity Number: SC045259
Company Number: SC485726
We’re working behind the scenes to bring you a suite of useful, and updateable, resources including:
If you would like to be updated when the resources section is live please let us know.
