Abstract
Three research centers related to energy-related technologies within The University of Tokyo have been collaborating with The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi over a period of two years. By sharing their experience in collaboration research with foreign universities and exchanging students, these two universities understand each other's ongoing research topics and education policy, which will clarify some areas of possible collaboration and create new paradigm on collaborative research and education. Oil and gas industry is facing a skilled labor shortage. Throughout cheap oil era in 1980s and 1990s, oil and gas industry has continued to shrink its human resources. Accordingly, recruitment of new employees decreased, and fewer and fewer university students were entering petroleum engineering courses. On the other hand, the increasing demand of oil in countries like India and China, and nationalism over natural resources are leading to the rise in oil prices. As a result of reduction of easy access oil, projects demanding highly skilled engineers are rapidly increasing. The human resource development conducted under high-quality research and development projects is the key issue to create proactive innovators in the next generation. The two-year collaboration between two universities includes symposiums, closed workshops, lab tours, and oil field tours. To share the importance and perspective of the academic collaboration between the University in oil producing country and the Japanese University, this article introduces the discussion how the collaboration should be conducted between two universities.
