The UK’s oil and gas industry is recognised worldwide for its cutting edge technology, best practices and extremely high management standards in operations, health, safety and the environment. This is thanks to experience in exploration and production accumulated during more than three decades in one of the planet’s most inhospitable environments.

A network of educational and training institutions has gradually grown up around the companies working in the North Sea in response to concerns about this industry’s most important asset, its people, which includes not only those employed in the industry but also society at large. The aim was to improve the skills and qualifications of this workforce to assure greater safety during operations, meeting needs voiced by the industry itself and learning from some tough lessons over the years, including the Piper Alpha disaster.

A natural development of this process has been the transfer of the quality and excellence of these institutions’ courses, training centres, distance learning methods and, more recently, a combination of methods called blended learning to oil and gas production centres around the globe, including Brazil.