Research Centre for Petroleum

Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply in binding cooperation with relevant actors outside the research sector, as described further down in the call.

See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations here. 

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have authorised the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.

• The Project Owner must be a research organisation approved by the Research Council (see ‘Who is eligible to apply?’ above).
• When submitting the full application, the Project Owner must refer to the outline number of their project outline, submitted before the stipulated deadline.

Requirements relating to project managers

• You must have an approved doctorate or achieved professor/associate professor qualifications before the date of the application submission deadline. For the purposes of this call, you are also qualified if you hold or have held a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) in the institute sector.
• You must have documented qualifications and/or experience of managing large-scale projects.
• You can only be the project manager of one application submitted under this call for proposals.

Requirements relating to partners and user participation

The document ‘Requirements and guidelines – Societal and Industry-oriented Research Centre’ describes the partner constellations and roles in the centre. User participation is required in societal and industry-oriented research centres.

• The centre’s research will be carried out by one or more research organisation in binding cooperation with relevant Norwegian industry partners and potentially also partners from other sectors.
• The grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of all the partners. The Project Owner and other centre research partners can contribute funding to highlight their engagement and the centre’s strategic foundation.
• All partners must actively contribute to planning, following up and disseminating the results generated by the centre and ensure that the new knowledge is taken into use.
• The centre must have three or more partners that are not research organisations and that provide funding to the project (user partners). Funding from the Research Council may be a maximum of two times that of funding from user partners. Both cash contributions and the user partners’ work effort (in-kind contributions) can be included.
• The board of the centre must have a majority of user partners.
• The centre may have foreign partners. The application must document how these will contribute to reaching the centre’s goals.

Scope of funding

• You can apply for a maximum of NOK 80 million over an eight-year period, divided between maximum NOK 50 million the first five years and maximum NOK 30 million the last three years. The funding for the last three years will be decided on the basis of the outcome of a mid-term evaluation of the centre.
• You can apply for funding to cover a share of the actual costs necessary to carry out the activities in the centre. You will find detailed and important information on our website about what to enter in the budget, and more details about the application type in the document ‘Requirements and guidelines – societal and industry-oriented research centres.
• Funding from the Research Council may not exceed twice the amount of the funding from user partners.
• Stays abroad for doctoral and post-doctoral fellows must be covered within the framework of the centre. PETROSENTER will therefore not be covered by our call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows.

Conditions for funding

• State aid will not be granted through this application type. The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration as defined in the state aid rules:
  ‘Collaboration between at least two independent parties to exchange knowledge or technology, or to achieve a common objective based on the division of labour where the parties jointly define the scope of the collaborative project, contribute to its implementation and share its risks, as well as its results. One or several parties may bear the full costs of the project and thus relieve other parties of its financial risks. Contract research and provision of research services are not considered forms of collaboration.’
• Funding awarded to a research organisation is only to go to the organisation’s non-economic activity. It does not therefore constitute state aid. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities.
• Undertakings may not receive funding to cover project costs.
• Ownership of project results must be regulated to ensure that undertakings participating in the centre do not receive indirect state aid from participating research partners. The regulation of ownership must therefore be in compliance with paragraph 28 of the EFTA Surveillance Authority’s guidelines for state aid for research and development and innovation. This means that ownership of IPR from the project must be allocated to the different project partners in a way that satisfactorily reflects their work packages, contributions and respective interests.

The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific articles; see Plan S – open access to publications.

Research data must be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The Project Owner organisation of projects that process data must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application.

The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project.

Equality must be a consideration in the work on planning and developing new applications, and it must also be integrated in the centre’s recruitment plans. We encourage all applicants to be on the lookout for women who are qualified for the roles of centre director, work package manager and leading researcher. Where applicants are otherwise equally qualified, we will prioritise applications with female centre directors and centres with good female representation in leading positions.

The application must be based on a project outline submitted by the deadline for project outlines 6 April 2021. Applications from approved applicants that do not refer to a submitted project outline may be rejected.

• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English. All mandatory attachments must be included.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• Requirements relating to the Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• Requirements relating to the partners must be satisfied. 

Mandatory attachments

• Project description of up to 20 pages in length. The project description must use the designated template, which is available for download at the end of the call.
• CV of the project manager (centre director) and other key personnel/work package managers in the project of up to four pages each using the designated template at the end of the call. A maximum of eight CVs can be attached. Additional CVs will not be taken into consideration. The CVs must use the designated template which is available for download at the end of the call.
• Letter of intent from the Project Owner. A letter of intent from the management of the Project Owner’s organisation must be attached (1–2 pages in English), stating that it will accept the obligations that follow from a contract with the Research Council. The letter must also describe what part the centre will play in the host institution’s scientific strategy.
• A letter of intent from all registered partners (1–2 pages in English). The letters from each of the partners must include the following:
• The partner must confirm their intention to participate actively as a partner in the centre and describe how this will be done in practice.
• The partner must give reasons for their interest in participating in the centre. How will the centre’s activities benefit the partner and create opportunities that would not otherwise arise without the centre?
• What potential for innovation and sustainable value creation does the partner envisage from the centre’s expected results, and how can the research results be applied?
• The partner must summarise their contribution to the centre in the form of knowledge, expertise and, if relevant, funding, facilities and own efforts during the centre's lifetime.
• The partner must describe their own long-term R&D plans and how this reflects the centre’s strategic plans (strategic foundation).

Optional attachments

• Proposals for up to five referees who are considered qualified to assess the application. The expert’s name, title, email and address must be stated. We are not obliged to use the experts proposed by the applicant.

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of uploaded attachments, so please ensure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.

You may revise and resubmit your grant application form multiple times up to the application submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

Grant applications will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

Once the grant applications have been received, the Research Council will conduct a preliminary administrative review to ensure that they satisfy all the stipulated formal requirements. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected.

Applications will then be assessed by a panel comprising impartial external referees with expertise in the relevant thematic area. For each grant application, we check to ensure that the panel meets requirements relating to impartiality and has sufficient expertise to review the application’s research topic. The referee panel will assess the criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation. A consensus mark is awarded for each of these criteria.

After the panel has completed its assessment, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the application’s relevance to the call. The overall mark is calculated on the basis of the average of the four criteria without weighting. To be relevant for funding, the application is likely to need an overall mark of 6 or better.

The Research Council will draw up a recommendation on which applications to fund based on an overall assessment of the project portfolio, which will then form the basis for the portfolio boards’ funding decisions.

The project portfolio assessment will take the following factors into account:

• The applications’ assigned marks based on the assessments and the written assessment of the criteria.
• The distribution of proposed and ongoing projects, for example other research centres, in relation to priorities set out for the specific priority areas of the call.
• Any changes in the financial or scientific framework for PETROSENTER set by the Ministry of petroleum and energy.
• Priority will be given to projects led by women project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par.

The Portfolio Board for Petroleum will make the final decision in the case. It may be relevant to allocate funding to less than two centres, thereby reducing the funding framework, if the number of applications or quality is too low or the portfolio assessment (the points above) so indicates. We do not wish to establish several centres with a significant overlap in scientific approach and activity.