2012 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

84 COLLEGE NEWS I Jesus College Annual Report 2012
of UKPIA; Professor Peter Williamson of the Judge Business School; Professor Chris
Lowe, director of the Institute of Biotechnology at Cambridge; and Tim Lawrence, head
of Manufacturing Practice at the PA Consulting Group.
In his executive summary, Professor Ian White said that though the conference
delegates recognised the substantial work that has been done by both governmental and
non-governmental bodies in recent years to support UK manufacturing, a consensus
was reached that further action be required lest the sector be regarded as weak
internationally. A full report of the Rustat Conference on the state of manufacturing in
UK can be found online at www.rustat.org; or by emailing the conference rapporteur,
Nathan Brooker, at ncbrooker@yahoo.co.uk
Oil and Energy
The College hosted the Rustat Conference on Oil and Energy on 4 April 2012.
In the chair’s introduction, the Master likened the debate over the provision and
supply of oil to the dilemma outlined by the famous Jesuan Thomas Malthus
(1766-1834). In what is commonly termed the ‘Malthusian catastrophe’, Malthus
foresaw a world forced to return to subsistence-level conditions on the proposition that
population growth would outpace agricultural production. Though such a catastrophe
has not yet occurred, the supply of fossil fuels from politically unstable areas has
remained a contentious issue within western governments, at least since the end of the
Second World War.
The five topics covered by the conference on oil and energy were as follows: 1. What is
the macroeconomic outlook for hydrocarbons? 2. How important will politics be in the
use of such resources? 3. What can technology be expected to offer and how will this
affect climate change? 4. What might the impact be on governments? 5. What might the
impact be on markets?
Among the speakers and participants were: Stuart Laing, master of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, former UK ambassador to Kuwait and former deputy ambassador
to Saudi Arabia; Rosalind Kainyah, Vice-President of External Affairs at Tullow Oil; Fred
Pollack, senior analyst of Energy Security at NATO; Richard Bridge, head of Government
& Political Affairs at BP; Lord Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell; Professor Andy
Woods, Head of the BP Institute at Cambridge; Fergus Macleod, group head of Strategic
Planning at BP; Dr Nazrin Mehdiyeva, principal consultant of Energy and Foreign Policy
at PA Consulting Group; and Terry Macalister, energy editor at the Guardian.
A full report of the Rustat Conference on Oil and Energy is available at
www.rustat.org, or by emailing the conference rapporteur, Nathan Brooker, at
ncbrooker@yahoo.co.uk ■