7th Cambridge Diagenesis Conference 2011: an introduction

(19811998) were set up to act as a conduit for the interchange of clay mineral expertise between universities and research institutes on one hand, and the hydrocarbon industry on the other. At the time, oil companies were dealing with the development of the North Sea Oil Province which was turning out to be a natural laboratory for the fundamental study of authigenic clay minerals and their relation-ship to lithofacies, burial, overpressure, reservoir quality and hydrocarbon emplacement. This symbiosis between industry and academia flour-ished for nearly two decades. Each conference was followed by a special issue of Clay Minerals dealing with topics relevant to, or discussed at the particular meeting. By the late 1990s the North Sea had become a mature province and the major oil companies were looking to other parts of the world to replenish their reserves. The 6th Cambridge Conference (1998), Mineral diagenesis and reser-voir quality – the way forward, and the special issue of Clay Minerals (2000) was the culmination of the first phase of this conference series. Subsequent years were a period of consolidation with three bench mark publications: Clay minerals in onshore and offshore strata of the British Isles; origins and clay mineral stratigraphy (Jeans & Merriman, 2006), Earth’s energy ‘‘Golden Zone’’: a synthesis from mineralogical research (Nadeau, 2011), and the Clay Minerals volume of Deer, Howie and Zussman Rock-forming Minerals (Wilson, 2013), publications that should be on the shelves of all scientists who have a serious interest in clay minerals and their role in sediments and diagenesis