Current Projects
OASYS South Asia - Off-grid Access Systems for South Asia
Dr. Subhes Bhattacharyya is leading an EPSRC/ DfID funded multi-year, collaborative research project on Decentralised off-grid electricity generation in Developing countries: Business Models for off-grid electricity supply (Grant EP/G063826/1). The short title of the project is OASYS-South Asia. Three UK-based teams and two Indian teams are working on the project to identify solutions that are techno-economically viable, institutionally feasible, socio-politically acceptable and environmentally sound. The project focuses on local solutions and their scaling-up issues for wider application. The project has a demonstration component as well.
As a centre for post-graduate studies with an international focus, CEPMLP attracts a large number of students/ researchers from the developing world where electricity access is a major issue. Consequently, this project will directly feed into the research and teaching and could generate wider social impacts. The project would also feed into the research plans for a low-carbon energy future.
POLINARES - EU Policy on Natural Resources
"Competition and collaboration in access to oil, gas and mineral resources"
A project funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme
The aims of the project are to identify the main global challenges relating to competition for access to oil, gas and minerals resources, and to propose new approaches to collaborative solutions for the various policy actors, including the EU.
The Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP) is the coordinating organisation for the project team which comprises eleven other partners drawn from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and Poland. Professor Philip Andrews-Speed is the project coordinator. The project is truly multidisciplinary and draws on expertise in geology, engineering, new technologies and materials, economics, international relations, political science and law.
This project is very timely. Though the fear of depletion of critical energy and mineral resources is not a new phenomenon, the last decade of sustained economic growth across the world has reinforced this concern. High commodity prices and fears of future shortages tend to raise tensions and stimulate conflict. As resource-importing nations struggle to secure their supplies, so resource-exporting nations seek to enhance their bargaining power. Importing countries compete with each other rather than cooperate in efforts to secure supplies, whilst within resource-rich countries conflicts may arise as different parties seek to gain the benefits of the additional revenues.
CEPMLP brings to the project a unique combination of disciplinary skills including economics, law, policy and politics relating to both energy and minerals, together with an international outlook. Over the course of the three years the project will draw on the expertise of most of the full-time academic staff as well as a number of the global faculty.
Total funding amounts to 2,678,00 Euros, of which about 25% will come to the University of Dundee. The project started on 1st January 2010 and will run for three years. This is believed to be the first time the University of Dundee has won a major EU Framework project in the social sciences.
The other partner institutions in the project are as follows:
- University of Westminster (United Kingdom)
- Clingendael International Energy Programme (Netherlands)
- Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (Germany)
- Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (Italy)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)
- ENERDATA (France)
- Raw Materials Group (Sweden)
- Gulf Research Center Foundation (Switzerland)
- The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (Netherlands)
- Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Germany)
- Osrodek Studiow Wschodnich (Poland)
For further information, please visit the project website at www.polinares.eu
World Bank sponsors study on Oil, Gas and Mining at Dundee
The University of Dundee is to receive an initial US$1 million grant for a unique study into governance issues in developing countries. It takes the form of an internet-based database - the Source Book - that will pull together and examine best practice in key activities in the international oil, gas and mining industries, such as awarding contracts, monitoring operations, collecting taxes and royalties, managing and allocating revenues and implementing sustainable development projects.
The aims of the project are to gather together diverse experiences from disparate sources, drawing on a wide variety of stakeholders, and to make the results readily available to users in government departments in developing countries and also civil society groups.
The project is being supported financially by the World Bank Group's Extractive Industries Technical Advisory Facility (EI-TAF). The lead role is being taken by Dundee's Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP). It will cooperate with two other universities, the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Queensland in Australia, and also with the Mining Committee of the International Bar Association. This basic network will be expanded to enhance representation of petroleum sector expertise and will include universities and think-tanks in a variety of countries such as India and Latin America.
"Poor choices are often made by governments through a lack of knowledge of experiences in countries with similar circumstances. The poor development outcomes result from secrecy, asymmetry of information, poor prioritisation and planning weak institutional capacity and a lack of checks and balances", said Professor Peter Cameron, Director of CEPMLP, who is the project coordinator. "The Source Book will be a tool for governments to address these problems, and will be internet-based and interactive to permit ease of access by government users. A paper copy version of the Book will also be produced. In the coming months we will be consulting with associations, stakeholders and partners to ensure that we take an appropriate diversity of views into consideration."
Charles McPherson is the lead consultant for the project, with extensive experience at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and in the private sector, and now a member of the CEPMLP's Global Faculty. He noted that "beyond providing a valuable inventory of issues and options related to extractive industry management, the Source Book will make available a wide range of actual examples of country experience. Parallel support and advice from international experts funded by the Bank's EI-TAF can be expected to increase the Book’s effectiveness."
Completed Projects
SECURITY OF INTERNATIONAL OIL AND GAS
An advisory project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
In February 2006 CEPMLP was selected to advise the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on future potential research priorities in the field of security of international oil and gas supply and on the capacity of UK research institutes to undertake such research.
