THE First Minister will address industry leaders at a major oil and gas conference taking place at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre on June 6.

Nicola Sturgeon is giving the keynote speech on the morning of the one-day event organised by Oil & Gas UK.

She said: “The coming together of experts, industry leaders and government at the Oil & Gas UK Annual Conference is the perfect forum to build on the success and resilience the industry has demonstrated and map out the brightest possible future for it.

“I am delighted to attend, and look forward to a lively and interesting day.”

Deirdre Michie, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK, said that with so much political change in the past year, delegates will be keen to hear Sturgeon’s reflections on industry performance and how it should position itself for “facing the future”.

Meanwhile, 12 winners were announced at the oil and gas oscars in London yesterday.

Two top gongs at the Gas Industry Awards, organised by the Energy and Utilities Alliance, EUA and IGEM, went to SGN’s Terry Carroll, named Manager of the Year and Andrew Musgrave won Engineer of the Year.

Other winners were Jayne Dawson, of Northern Gas Networks, for Young Person’s Achievement, the Safety award went Cliff Hoy of British Gas, and the Energy Efficiency Award went to Baxi.

Innovation Project Award went to Synthotech, National Grid Transmission and Pipeline Integrity Engineers for project GRAID.