Published by the DTI Oil & Gas Directorate for the reservoir engineering and IOR community in the UK.
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Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (http://www.nerc.ac.uk)

The United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) provides independent research and training in the environmental sciences. Our mission is to gather and apply knowledge, improve understanding and predict the behaviour of the natural environment and its resources. For further information see http://www.nerc.ac.uk/aboutus/mission.shtml.

We are one of the seven UK Research Councils that fund and manage scientific research and training in the UK. NERC is the research council that does earth system science: we are advancing knowledge of planet Earth as a complex, interacting system. Because the environment is global, we work with scientists and other partners around the world. NERC uses a budget of about £220 million a year to fund scientific research in universities and at its own sites. About 2,700 people are employed in NERC research centres and a further 1,800 are funded annually through a variety of research and training awards in university departments and other bodies.

IOR-related research is conducted by NERC Institutes (the British Geological Survey - http://www.bgs.ac.uk/ and Southampton Oceanography Centre - http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/) and through the Ocean Margins LINK Programme and the Ocean Drilling Programme.

Under the five-year Ocean Margins LINK (OML) thematic Programme initial funding of about £1.5m out of a total of £4.5 from NERC has been given to 15 projects covering topics such as "Geophysical methodologies for the characterisation of gas hydrate core". DTI and EPSRC are also sponsors of the programme.

NERC recently announced funding opportunities for a targeted 3rd round call of OML in the area of Fluid Flow at Ocean Margins. The Ocean Margin science plan defines the detailed research questions that proposals aim to address. The Programme Management Committee was seeking in this round research proposals which concentrate on the link between deep faulting and freshwater-saline water fluxes, and the spatial distribution of fluid related escape features along rifted margins. The release of Fluids at or near to the seabed can result in instabilities and destabilisation of margins with high sediment flux. This is an important consideration in exploration and installation of exploration infrastructures in deep water.

The deadline for submission of proposals was Friday 7th December 2001. It is anticipated that funding decisions will be made in early April 2002.

Government jointly funds LINK programmes with Industry with the Programme sponsors meeting up to 50% of the eligible costs of the project. Applications for project support must come from a partnership, which includes at least one industrial and at least one science partner (university or similar Government funded research organisation). An important requirement is that at least one of the partners must be able to exploit the results of the research and demonstrate its relevance to issues of wealth creation and quality of life. The research should have potential Industry application with scope to be widely utilised beyond the direct benefit of the involved parties.

As part of the OML programme the NERC has also agreed to participate in a joint European programme, an European Science Foundation (ESF) Eurocores, covering the same themes as OML. EuroMargins has just issued its first call for proposals. For further information see http://www.esf.org.

A workshop will be held in 2002 to present the research being undertaken within the Ocean Margins programme to all interested parties.

For further information on OML visit http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/thematics/oceanmargins.

The Ocean Drilling Program is a long-term, major international partnership of 21 countries which supports the acquisition of samples and data from deep boreholes drilled from the JOIDES Resolution across the Earth's oceans.

The United Kingdom has been a member of the international scientific ocean drilling community since the inception of the DSDP International Phase of Ocean Drilling in 1975. The UK has continued to develop interest through participation in the ODP and has been a full member since 1985. As a member of the ODP, UK scientists have access to all of the Program's material and information resources for research purposes. The UK has always played a leading part in ODP and has been at the forefront of the many and diverse scientific advances and discoveries spanning, for example, high resolution stratigraphy, climate change, Earth dynamics and history, natural hazards, resource potential, crustal fluids and the deep biosphere.

UK membership of the ODP is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and administered by the NERC and the British Geological Survey (BGS) (a constituent body of the NERC) on their behalf.

A new phase of ocean drilling research is due to start in 2003. The new Integrated Ocean drilling Program (IODP) will be able to drill in hydrocarbon bearing strata because of the provision of a riser-equipped vessel by the Japanese. The UK (NERC) is committed to joining IODP as part of a European consortium and has already allocated £9m towards membership.

More details can be found by visiting http://www.bgs.ac.uk/odp/home.html and http://www.iodp.org

Enquiries to Dr Chris J Franklin, Head of Earth Science and Technology, Science Programmes Directorate cfr@nerc.ac.uk

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