+ATLANTIC

This project considers new research and collaborative activities aimed to inform and assist the development of a sustainable future for the South Atlantic region. A new web-based Observatory, “OIPG” (www.oipg.org), will be developed to provide information on new opportunities for enterprises, resilient industries, and skilled employment and encourage the stakeholders involvement in risk governance practices. A research platform will be set up with academic, regulatory and business partners from Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Angola, Mozambique, Portugal, US and Norway, as a preliminary stage towards designing the Observatory. The focus will be on the Brazilian, Angola, Mozambique and Southern European regions to identify risk governance, monitoring and  industrialization and specialization pathways through comparative studies of knowledge networks, supply chains, and industrial geographies with the north of Europe and the US.
The current context of energy geopolitics is associated with: 1) the recent identification of new and vast hydrocarbons resources in the South Atlantic and Sub-Saharan Africa regions; 2) the technological innovation that led to the rapid increase of unconventional hydrocarbons resources such as shale gas in the USA; and 3) the new patterns of trade likely to result from the expansion of the Panama Canal in 2015.
The proposed Observatory aims to identify and analyse the opportunities for the market and regulatory conditions of the Oil & Gas sector in the South Atlantic and Sub-Saharan Africa, adopting new technologies and/or synergies with other industrial sectors, promoting, simultaneously, the sustainable development of the Atlantic and Southern regions. For this purpose, research will be oriented to analyse the emerging opportunities for the sector supply chains, including subsea technologies (e.g. submarine drilling, marine robotic systems, and processing units), construction of new and specialized platforms and support vessels, as well as strategies to minimize health, safety and environmental risks across all elements of these systems. The analysis will include the development of energy generation networks, integrating (offshore) renewable energy sources in offshore oil and gas infrastructures, including subsea energy supply.
In addition to the analysis focused on the Atlantic and southern regions, the work will seek insight from comparative studies of the sector development in other regions in the last decades, especially in the North Sea (i.e., Norway and Scotland), integrating technology innovation and development of related value-chains. The progress of the North Sea Oil and Gas sector in the coming years will be also considered including the potential for the creation and development of new technology-based industries and firms, together with skilled employment. New ways for international companies soft-landing will be studied for generating knowledge flows between these companies. These paths will be explored through the organization of a “Forum N3: New Businesses, New Technologies and New Job Opportunities for Sustainable Exploration of the Atlantic”, to be launched at the beginning of the project and to be continued in the coming years.
Since the development of a given industrial sector is not possible without the key stakeholders’ involvement in the adoption of modern industrialization patterns and knowledge strategies for development, the roles that emergent stakeholders have on structuring the economy will be examined. Thus contacts with relevant companies such as oil operators, oil field services, new technology-based industries, technology parks, academic and research units, city councils, industrial organizations, business councils, regulatory agencies, etc., will be stimulated to build a network of key strategic stakeholders in developing regions in the Atlantic coast and East Africa. Close collaboration will be launched with Petrobras in Brazil, Galp Energia and Partex Oil & Gas in Portugal, Sonangol in Angola and ENH in Mozambique and, during the course of the project, this collaboration is expected to evolve with other oil operators and oil field services in the region, including Statoil, Total, Shell, Anadarko, Schlumberger, FMC, Technip,
AKER, Teekay/Remora, among others.
The proposed analysis will be strongly associated with the global energy demand forecasts for the developing countries in the regions under study.
The current forecasts for energy demand in the developing world may be understated because they do not accurately capture the dramatic increase in demand associated with poverty reduction. Research will be developed to demonstrate better methods for energy demand calculation, which includes an adequate characterization and treatment of the inherent uncertainties. These methodologies will be applied to adjust current projections and to use such results to analyse the progress of the energy sector in the proposed regions.