The hubs are part of the Australian Research Council's Industrial Transformation Research Program, with two of the nine centres announced by the Commonwealth last May coming to UWA.

UWA's Chevron Chair in Gas Process Engineering, Professor Eric May, will lead the ARC Training Centre for LNG Futures, focusing on cost-effective LNG production, at all scales, in remote or deep-water locations, thanks to $9.6 million in grants from ARC and nine industry partners.

May's centre will have 11 industry-driven research projects planned across a five year period and provide training for 12 PhD students and five research fellows.

"The centre's legacy will be a globally-unique LNG research and training facility, designed for future integration into a micro-scale LNG plant," he said.

"We will be working over the next few years with our industry partners, including those from Korea, China, and the USA, to make a micro-scale LNG plant in Western Australia dedicated for training and research."

The University's Shell EMI Chair in Offshore Engineering, Professor David White, who will lead the ARC Research Hub for Offshore Floating Facilities, said Woodside Petroleum had planted the early seeds for further research when UWA wanted to grow its capabilities to span between its best known expertise in geotechnics and oceanography when his own role started in 2013.

The proposal for the research hub emerged in late 2014 when both Woodside and Shell were mapping out their future challenges and research needs for offshore engineering with UWA.

White's hub will use $10 million in combined funding from the ARC along with Shell, Woodside, Lloyd's Register and Bureau Veritas, to help ensure Australia plays a leading role in future offshore energy developments not only locally but across the world.

The Lloyd's Register Foundation has supported the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems as a centre of excellence for the past five years, while Dr Xiao-bo Chen of Bureau Veritas has contributed to UWA's research for many years as an adjunct professor.

The COFS is also partnered with Western Sydney University, which brings particular expertise in computational fluid dynamics, while engineering dean John Dell, who is also on the UWA executive, also gave his strong internal support.

Opportunities

"Our aim is to address opportunities we've identified to improve the cost efficiency of the facilities needed to develop oil and gas resources offshore Australia and globally, which is clearly a timely challenge," White told the launch.

"Our aim is to achieve better design and also more efficient operations; in some cases by improved understanding of the underlying science and in some cases by inventing innovative new technologies."

His hub will work on ocean forecasting, vessel motion and offloading analysis, life extension of offshore assets, and novel anchoring and subsea foundations.

His team will work both in the laboratory at UWA and in the field, drawing on data from real assets owned by industry partners.

White said the research offered opportunities for improved operability and longevity of Australia's large fleet of FPSO vessels and Prelude FLNG vessel.

However, White said the hubs' research also has wider applicability.

"Some projects will directly benefit all types of development offshore Australia - for example our work on internal waves, or solitons," White said.

"Some projects will have applicability to the design of all offshore facilities, globally, such as our work on foundations that are tolerably mobile, or our use of data analytics to forecast the life of offshore assets."

UWA has other initiatives underway in the offshore engineering space, two of which White said were particularly relevant in catalysing the success of the research hub.

The first is Shell's support of White's own role, where he has used the "vital" floating systems expertise of Wenhua Zhao, Hugh Wolgamot and Mike Efthymiou, who he said had helped create the coherent research team needed for the hub.

He also acknowledged Woodside's additional commitment to UWA, through their establishment of the Woodside FutureLab OceanWorks - also announced last week.

The initiative aims to grow industry-academia collaboration and has both physical and virtual elements.

"A key physical element is a collaboration space, open to all, in our new Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre. The space will create co-location and deeper interaction between industry and the university, to the benefit of both," he said.

That new building will open in September.