Together, the Humber and Teesside represent almost half of the UK's industrial CO2 emissions. The Northern Endurance Partnership will create an offshore CO2 Transport and Storage system connecting two innovative First-of-a-Kind onshore capture projects, Zero Carbon Humber and Net Zero Teesside into one initial geological store facilitating decarbonisation of both industrial clusters in the 2030s. This bp led project leverages world class expertise from across industry including ENI, Equinor, NGV, Shell and Total with confirmed support from many more stakeholders and subcontractors. The combined onshore anchor projects initially aim to capture ~3 million tonnes of CO2 annually from 2026, decarbonising 750MW of flexible power at Teesside and reducing emissions by 1 million tonnes annually in Humber through fuel switching the Saltend chemicals park to Blue Hydrogen. CO2 will be permanently and safely stored in Endurance, a well understood large geological aquifer located in the Southern North Sea. The projects address widely accepted strategic national priorities -- most notably to secure green recovery and drive new jobs and economic growth in the regions which have been most hit by the pandemic. Developing gas power generation with Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) will deliver on the Chancellor's pledge to "support the construction of the UK's first CCUS power plant" (Budget 2020). In addition, the Committee on Climate Change identified both gas power with CCUS and hydrogen production from gas with CCUS (Blue Hydrogen) as critical to the UK's decarbonisation strategy -- this project will enable both. The £41mn industry contribution coupled with £24mn grant funding should enable Humber and Teesside to subsequently build these multi-billion-pound decarbonisation projects. Gas power with CCUS, large scale Blue Hydrogen and a combined offshore CCUS scheme will be world firsts playing a pivotal role in the UK's trajectory to net-zero. This project has the potential to underpin over 25,500 jobs in the Humber/Teesside area, showcasing a broad range of decarbonisation technologies, globally unparalleled in scale, optionality and ambition. This partnership will underpin the UK's Clean Growth strategy, securing green recovery and kickstarting a new market for CCUS and Hydrogen, with potential for trade across mainland Europe developing into the future.

Basins on the Brazilian and Angolan margins formed during the rifting of Brazil and Africa and eventual opening of the South Atlantic from the late Jurassic to Cretaceous (Fig. 1). Key components include the Campos Basin, by far the most important hydrocarbon province in the Brazilian margin, accounting for more than 80% of Brazil's total hydrocarbon production. The Santos Basin, to the south, is less well explored, but early studies suggest it may have similar reserves and, in light of recent discoveries in pre-salt/ syn-rift packages. Angola is one of the world's largest centres for oil and gas exploration and production. The Kwanza Basin is conjugate to the Campos Basin and shows many features that suggest the influence of pre-existing basement structures at depth. In both margins, brittle faults / some of them basin-bounding structures, are exposed onshore, providing a unique opportunity to analyse directly the influence of pre-existing basement structures on the geometry of intra-basin and basin-bounding faults. Structural complexity in rifted passive margins is linked to along-strike variations in the obliquity of pre-existing structures relative to the regional extension vector. Much of the complexity can be related to the influence and reactivation of pre-existing basement structures. The mechanisms of this inheritance and how they determine fault system location, geometry & evolution are little understood. The student will use a combination of regional- to outcrop-scale studies onshore and sub-surface seismic interpretations offshore to improve our understanding of the role of basement geology in the development of the Brazilian and Angolan conjugate margins. Diagnostic structures include: non-Andersonian, polymodal fault patterns; partitioned domains of wrench- and extension-dominated transtensional deformation; local strike-slip inversion events and segmentation of rift basins. Ultimately, the results of this project will lead to the first fully integrated onshore/surface to offshore/sub-surface study of the South Atlantic conjugate margins in South America and Africa. A clear understanding of the role played by basement structures will provide critical geological constraints on uncertainty associated with identification and evaluation of syn-rift/ post-rift plays that lie beneath salt and/or deeper water. The student will join the Petroleum Geoscience PhD Scholarship Programme, where he or she will get additional monthly courses from petroleum industry professionals, career advice and encouragement. This scheme has a full time coordinator in Durham, is supported by 7 companies (as well as the DTI) and is unique in Europe. The student will receive a thorough training in modern methods of marine geophysics, including experience in the use of state-of-the-art software on modern workstations. He/she would be exposed to several industry oftware packages (e.g. GeoFrame, Landmark, TrapTester, 2DMove & Inside Reality). The student will present at Departmental seminars, and national and international conferences, and prepare journal papers. The University and Department provide an extensive skills training course for postgraduate students, including computing, bibliographic work, scientific writing, entrepreneurial skills and scientific ethics. The student will join a vibrant research community with enormous scope for cross-disciplinary interaction with colleagues working on related generic and regional geological issues.

This is an application for a Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) from the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester in Advanced Metallic Systems which will be directed by Prof Panos Tsakiropoulos and Prof Phil Prangnell. The proposed DTC is in response to recent reviews by the EPSRC and government/industrial bodies which have indentified the serious impact of an increasing shortage of personnel, with Doctorate level training in metallic materials, on the global competitiveness of the UK's manufacturing and defence capability. Furthermore, future applications of materials are increasingly being seen as systems that incorporate several material classes and engineered surfaces into single components, to increase performance.The primary goal of the DTC is to address these issues head on by supplying the next generation of metallics research specialists desperately needed by UK plc. We plan to attract talented students from a diverse range of physical science and engineering backgrounds and involve them with highly motivated academic staff in a variety of innovative teaching and industrial-based research activities. The programme aims to prepare graduates for global challenges in competitiveness, through an enhanced PhD programme that will:1. Challenge students and promote independent problem solving and interdiscpilnarity,2. Expose them to industrial innovation, exciting new science and the international research community, 3. Increase their fundamental skills, and broaden them as individuals in preparation for future management and leadership roles.The DTC will be aligned with major multidisciplinary research centres and with the strong involvement of NAMTEC (the National Metals Technology Centre) and over twenty companies across many sectors. Learning will be up to date and industrially relevant, as well as benefitting from access to 30M of state-of-the art research facilities.Research projects will be targeted at high value UK strategic technology sectors, such as aerospace, automotive, power generation, renewables, and defence and aim to:1. Provide a multidisciplinary approach to the whole product life cycle; from raw material, to semi finished products to forming, joining, surface engineering/coating, in service performance and recycling via the wide skill base of the combined academic team and industrial collaborators.2. Improve the basic understanding of how nano-, micro- and meso-scale physical processes control material microstructures and thereby properties, in order to radically improve industrial processes, and advance techniques of modelling and process simulation.3. Develop new innovative processes and processing routes, i.e. disruptive or transformative technologies.4. Address challenges in energy by the development of advanced metallic solutions and manufacturing technologies for nuclear power, reduced CO2 emissions, and renewable energy. 5. Study issues and develop techniques for interfacing metallic materials into advanced hybrid structures with polymers, laminates, foams and composites etc. 6. Develop novel coatings and surface treatments to protect new light alloys and hybrid structures, in hostile environments, reduce environmental impact of chemical treatments and add value and increase functionality. 7. Reduce environmental impact through reductions in process energy costs and concurrently develop new materials that address the environmental challenges in weight saving and recyclability technologies. This we believe will produce PhD graduates with a superior skills base enabling problem solving and leadership expertise well beyond a conventional PhD project, i.e. a DTC with a structured programme and stimulating methods of engagement, will produce internationally competitive doctoral graduates that can engage with today's diverse metallurgical issues and contribute to the development of a high level knowledge-based UK manufacturing sector.

The Net Zero Teesside project, together with its associated Transportation and Storage project, the Northern Endurance Partnership, create a pathway to facilitate decarbonisation of the Teesside industrial cluster in the mid 2020s. Net Zero Teesside and the Northern Endurance Partnership are led by bp and leverage world class expertise from across industry including CF Fertilisers, BOC Gases, ENI, Equinor, National Grid, Sembcorp, Shell and Total, with confirmed support from many more stakeholders and subcontractors. The project anchor is a world first flexible gas power plant with Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) which will "compliment rather than compete with" renewables. It will capture ~2 million tonnes of CO2 annually from 2026, decarbonising 750MW of flexible power and enabling a reduction of Teesside's emissions by one third through partnership with industrial stakeholders including CF, BOC and Sembcorp. CO2 will be permanently and safely stored in a well understood large geological aquifer located in the Southern North Sea. NZT addresses widely accepted strategic national priorities - most notably to secure green recovery and drive new jobs and economic growth in regions most hit by the pandemic. NZT will also deliver on the Chancellor's pledge in the 2020 Budget to "support the construction of the UK's first CCUS power plant." The Committee on Climate Change identified both gas power with CCUS and hydrogen production using natural gas with CCUS as critical to the UK's decarbonisation strategy, and gas power with CCUS has been independently estimated to reduce the overall UK power system cost to consumers by £19bn by 2050 (compared to alternative options such as energy storage). The £61mn industry contribution coupled with £28mn grant funding should enable Teesside to subsequently build this billion-pound decarbonisation project. Private financing for CCUS projects and flexible gas power with CCUS will all be world firsts, transformative to the industry and playing a pivotal role in the UK's trajectory toward Net Zero. In conjunction with the Northern Endurance Partnership, the development is estimated to support and safeguard between 35% and 70% of existing manufacturing jobs in Tees Valley, with an annual gross benefit of up to £450mn for the Teesside region and the support of up to 5,500 direct jobs during construction. NZT would showcase a broad range of decarbonisation technologies and underpin the UK's Clean Growth strategy, securing green recovery, driving economic growth in regions hit by the pandemic and kickstarting a new market for CCUS.

This research project aims to evaluate how salt deformation has influenced (a) the formation the Late Pleistocene Mississippi canyon and (b) the distribution of Plio-Pleistocene submarine channel-levee systems in time and space which cross, or are deflected, by active salt diapirs. We will develop improved models for channel and salt structure interaction to serve as analogues for the more economically significant deeper subsurface areas, where similar processes occur, but may be more poorly imaged due to lower resolution seismic data or location beneath extensive salt canopies. The aims will be achieved by mapping salt bodies, structures and sedimentary depositional environments on an extensive merged 3-dimensional seismic dataset from the NE Gulf of Mexico. The evolution of the salt structures and sedimentary deposits will be reconstructed through space and time with 3D structural reconstructions and construction of palinspastically restored sedimentary facies maps. The project directly addresses the important scientific problem of understanding how sedimentary systems interact with tectonic processes, which to date has been little studied in deforming slope/deepwater passive margin environments affected by salt tectonics. We think that there are a number of advantages to investigating this general problem within a slope and deepwater sedimentary environment, using subsurface data. Firstly the 3-dimensional nature of the high quality seismic datasets offers a 3D spatial resolution of structural and stratigraphic geometries that is complementary to outcrop studies. Secondly low amplitude eustatic sea-level fluctuations have less direct control on the sedimentary response to structural growth at a local scale in slope/deepwater settings. This contrasts with the added complexity of sea-level induced base-level changes when examining terrestrial and shallow marine systems. The project has economic importance as deepwater exploration off the continental margins continues to be the main focus for the major oil companies and the results will have direct applicability within the hydrocarbon industry and thus contribute to wealth creation of UK industry. More specifically the results will be useful to hydrocarbon activity in the UK sector of the North Sea where the oil companies seek to exploit remaining reserves in the North Sea salt basins.