Petroleum geoscience brings together perspectives from a range of sciences to understand how hydrocarbons have formed and become concentrated in the earth; using a combination of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, this course give students a holistic appreciation of the complex systems that have contributed to petroleum formation; students learn about the processes that have governed the formation and evolution of the earth and the life on it, and develop skills to interpret these from the records left in the rocks and fossils of planet; students advance their study of petroleum geoscience beyond that of a three-year BSc degree, allowing them to develop originality in the application of knowledge and research skills to deal with complex issues systematically and creatively.