General overview > Geosciences in Pau

Geosciences in Pau

The University of Pau and Pays de l'Adour offers a general training in Geosciences at the undergraduate level and a specialty in Petroleum Engineering at the Master’s level .

The city of Pau hosts many companies in the energy sector including Total.

Geosciences in Pau are also active because of the Club Géosciences, the cluster Avenia and the Carnot Institute ISIFoR (Institute for the Sustainable Engineering of Fossil Resources).

The University of Pau and Pays de l'Adour was recently awarded an “Excellence” project facility (Marss, Center for Mass Spectrometry Speciation and Reactivity Sciences) which will give birth to a platform for advanced analytic techniques, which are essential in many fields of geosciences.

In addition, the Pau area has a pilot CO₂ storage site which has become an international standard, and an ambitious project to develop a chain of deep geothermal energy for cogeneration of electricity and heat in sedimentary basins.

Finally, geological societies (Geolval, AGSO, …) also contribute to the attractiveness of geosciences, including the geological route (through the Somport Pass) across the Pyrenees (“Route Géologique Transpyrénéenne”).

University and laboratories supporting RST 2014

The University of Pau and Pays de l'Adour interacts strongly with the industrial world, particularly in the energy field.

Since 2005, the Institute of Multidisciplinary Applied Research in the field of petroleum engineering (IPRA) gathers skills including mathematics, engineering, and of course, geosciences.

Among laboratories affiliated with the IPRA, the geosciences are especially represented in the Laboratory of Complex Fluids and their Reservoirs (LFC-R). Issues related to geosciences are addressed by research on the characterization of petroleum reservoirs, low permeability media, geomechanics, microstructures, geophysical imaging, understanding folded chains and salt tectonics

IPRA and LFC-R also work in close interaction with the Institute of Analytical Sciences and Physical Chemistry for the Environment and Materials (IPREM). The IPREM, and in particular the laboratory LCABIE, also holds the geochemistry oriented research by its studies of speciation and transfer of trace elements in the environment (soil, groundwater, interactions with the living).

IPRA, the LFC-R and IPREM are integrated within the Carnot Institute ISIFoR, which brings together partners from academic and industrial research located in the south-west of France (Pau, Bordeaux, Toulouse).