chosen to reflect the aim of enabling those Earth scientists and subsurface practitioners currently working on hydrocarbon resources across NW Europe to make optimal use of the considerable past investments in the largely offshore facilities, as well as the scientific understanding and knowledge gained. The ultimate focus is to maximize the safe and effective use of the investments to create and deliver resources for a low-cost energyhungry society. A modest number of papers also specifically looked forward to the re-purposing of oil and gas facilities for a lowcarbon-energy future. The conference was attended by 530 delegates. These included postgraduate students from the new Doctoral Training Scheme in Petroleum Geology based at Herriot Watt, as well as seven prizewinning Masters students whose attendance was generously sponsored by the late Dave Roberts' widow, Robin. Two Best Paper awards were sponsored by BP and Shell, and named (with the kind permission of their respective families) in honour of the late Dave Roberts (BP) and Peter Ziegler (Shell). These were awarded to: † Nick Schofield of Aberdeen University for 'Intrusive and extrusive sequences and their interactions with hydrocarbon systems-a key geoscience challenge?'; † Fred Hughes, of Third Energy for 'North Yorkshire's sleeping giant'. Conference and proceedings structure The conference was originally organized around a series of themes covering the full range of the Upstream Oil and Gas Value Chain, and spanning all of the main and less well-known plays and pay fairways. Sessions included, for example, Key geoscience challenges, Key field and fairways, Key geophysics challenges, and Petroleum systems and fairways. Of the 62 oral presenters who gave presentations, 32 authors actually submitted papers. Seven of the poster presenters subsequently stepped up to submit full written papers. Reflecting this, the structure of this volume reflects the Table 1. Core workshop displays Stratigraphic age Reservoir/field Region Eocene Catcher 28/9a-6 28/9a-2