merrion street

This morning, the Minister for Natural Resources, Fergus O’Dowd, opened Conjugate Margins 2012 at Trinity College Dublin. This is a major international bi-annual petroleum conference, which was first held in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2008 and was last held in Lisbon, Portugal in 2010. It brings together academic and industry geoscientists from all over the world to present and share the latest geological research on the Central and North Atlantic and this year Ireland has the honour of hosting the conference.

Launching the conference Minister O’Dowd said, "The overarching theme of Conjugate Margins 2012 is to ‘promote hydrocarbon exploration in the Central and North Atlantic region by sharing data and knowledge’. The conference aims to increase our understanding of the geological evolution of the region with particular emphasis on the development of sedimentary basins and petroleum systems on both margins of the Atlantic. The latest geological research into the formation of the Atlantic will be presented over the coming days and I know that this will be of great importance to countries with substantial, yet under explored, petroleum potential in the region, not least Ireland."

The conference was preceded by the signing of an important collaboration agreement yesterday evening between Ireland’s joint government-industry Petroleum Infrastructure Programme (PIP) and Nalcor Energy, who represent petroleum research interests in ‘Newfoundland Labrador’. The new agreement continues the work of NAPSA, the ‘North Atlantic Petroleum Systems Assessment’ group, in facilitating essential petroleum research to underpin exploration efforts in frontier basins on the respective ‘conjugate margins’ of Ireland and eastern Canada.