Statoil is financing a professorship in economics and management at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) in Bergen. This forms part of the cooperation between Statoil and Norwegian universities and colleges for building expertise in specialist areas on which the group is dependent.
Mikael Rönnqvist has been appointed in the professorship which focuses on financial management and optimisation. The entailed analytical methods for business economics are relevant, for instance, to the optimisation, operation and further development of Statoil's refinery at Mongstad near Bergen.
"We collaborate with a number of universities and colleges because we acknowledge that building expertise and quickly adopting new knowledge is our most important advantage for strengthening Statoil's competitive ability," says Signy Midtbø Riisnes, project manager for the Mongstad pilot.
The Mongstad pilot is the name of the collaboration projects Statoil has with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and the University of Bergen, as well as the NHH. The projects focus particularly on challenges in the refining and downstream oil business.
Collaboration with universities and colleges is a long tradition in Statoil. The group has collaborated with all the universities in Norway as well as some other countries. Both the universities and the Norwegian authorities are keen to encourage cooperation with the industry as an important part of increasing the rate of innovation and sharing knowledge across lines of business.
By gaining access to "living data" and real issues, teaching at universities and colleges becomes more exciting and relevant. This has also helped to give Statoil a good basis for recruitment, Ms Midtbø Riisnes notes.
Through the Vista programme for cooperation on basic scientific research between Statoil and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Statoil has for the past 20 years supported 160 scholarships within the fields of exploration, improved oil recovery, oil and gas processing, pollution, health and the environment.