Scottish Enterprise Lunch and Learn - Subsea Opportunities
05 June 2018
Venue: Subsea UK, 30 Abercrombie Court, Westhill, AB32 6FE
This lunch and learn will be hosted by Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s main economic development agency. In 2017, Scottish Enterprise launched an action plan to help the subsea sector, one of Scotland’s true global success stories, grow even further. You will hear about progress to date as well as some of the key projects they are looking to focus on going forward, including international diversification opportunities and work in the innovation space in particular.
Speakers
Christopher Bryceland, Subsea Opportunity Manager, Scottish Enterprise
A graduate of Glasgow University, Chris spent his early career in FMCG manufacturing before returning to study for a PhD. A move to the public sector followed where Chris worked as part of the Innovation policy unit for Scottish Government before transferring to Scottish Enterprise.
Latterly Chris was responsible for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) where he specialised in areas such as CO2 enhanced oil recovery and CO2 transport and storage options for Scotland. Chris then spent 2 years working for Shell on the Peterhead CCS project until its cancellation late in 2015. Since then, Chris has focussed his attention to subsea and has developed Scottish Enterprise’s strategic approach to this sector. This has included the prioritisation of subsea within Scottish Enterprise and the launch of the subsea action plan in 2017.
Now in the delivery phase, Chris is involved at a number of levels ranging from sector deal discussions, company specific investments in R&D and supporting the Scottish supply chain access the International opportunities across the subsea sector.
Gary Soper, Subsea Strategic Manager, Scottish Enterprise
Gary Soper is currently Subsea Strategic Relationship Manager at Scottish Enterprise’s office in Aberdeen. He has been there since June 2017, arriving in Scotland after 15 years living and working overseas for both Scottish Development International (in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and most recently as the Regional Manager, Africa in Accra, Ghana) and, prior to that, for UK Trade and Investment (in Colombia, Seoul and Baghdad). The last 8 years of his work has had a strong oil and gas focus and for the past 11 months he has been a part of the team developing and delivering Scottish Enterprise’s Subsea Engineering Action Plan.
Tony Laing, Director of Research and Market Acceleration, NSRI
Tony has a career in the Oil and Gas energy sector, spanning over 35 years, with roles in E & P Operators, multinationals, technology suppliers and niche consultancies; in addition to supporting academia. Over the last 20 years, this has been at senior business and technical leadership level, with many technology and commercial industry firsts, across the E & P production life cycle from field developments to late life and decommissioning. These roles have been both in the UK and overseas, with assignments in Norway, Africa, China and India.
Tony is a strong believer in technology enabling, driving business and economic growth; NSRI can play a key role within the wider subsea sector assisting from inception to realisation in the market proposition.
Presently he is the Director [Research and Market Acceleration] of the National Subsea Research Initiative (NSRI).
