The Offshore Oil and Gas Environmental Research Collaboration Project was a project to implement Operation Phakisa’s Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration Initiative B3: Exploiting the broader research opportunities presented by offshore oil and gas exploration. This was achieved through the establishment of the South African Marine Research and Exploration Forum (SAMREF) on 29 January 2016. At the SAMREF launch ceremony, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Offshore Petroleum Association of South Africa (OPASA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to facilitate the goals of SAMREF. The goals are to identify and take advantage of opportunities provided by oil and gas exploration activities and platforms, to gather important marine ecosystem data which would otherwise be difficult and expensive to obtain; and to facilitate new collaborative offshore studies that would increase South Africa’s state of knowledge of the offshore marine environment, related to renewable energy potential, marine biodiversity and ecology, climate change and ecosystem functioning.
