Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions are divided into the following parts:

(A) General Information;
(B) Terms and conditions governing the use of this website by the public;
(C) Terms and conditions governing Sand Management Network (“SMN”) members; and
(D) Terms and conditions governing SPE SMN European Sand Management Forum.

By using our website, you accept these terms and conditions in full. If you disagree with these terms and conditions or any part of these terms and conditions, you must not use our website.

Our website uses cookies. By using our website and agreeing to these terms and conditions, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of our privacy policy.

(A) General Information

(1) Disclaimer

Much of the information on this website consists of documents relating to ways of tackling sand management related issues in the Oil and Gas sector.

You should never apply the information to your own situation without conducting additional research or seeking professional advice. Nor should you assume that all of the relevant material is included on our website.

We reserve the right to monitor any information transmitted or received through any forum provided and at our sole discretion and without prior notice, may at any time review, remove or otherwise block any material posted.

Should any part of this site offer you the opportunity to join in or read from a forum, please be aware that any communications posted on the forum represent the views of the individual who posted such communication and are not to be taken as the views of SMN.

We accept no responsibility or liability for anything posted on the forum by any user of the forum and you must not use the forum to post, upload, or otherwise transmit information or pictures that are defamatory, a breach of privacy or otherwise unlawful.

(2) Limitations and exclusions of liability

We do not warrant, represent or guarantee:

the accuracy of the information published on this website;

the completeness of the information published on this website;

that the information published on this website is up-to-date; or

that the information on the website can be applied to achieve any particular result.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law we exclude all representations, warranties and guarantees relating to this website and the use of this website (including, without limitation, any warranties implied by law of satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose and/or the use of reasonable care and skill).

Nothing in these terms and conditions will: (a) limit or exclude our or your liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence; (b) limit or exclude our or your liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; (c) limit any of our or your liabilities in any way that is not permitted under applicable law; or (d) exclude any of our or your liabilities that may not be excluded under applicable law.

The limitations and exclusions of liability set out in this Section and elsewhere in these terms and conditions: (a) are subject to the preceding paragraph; and (b) govern all liabilities arising under the terms and conditions or in relation to the subject matter of the terms and conditions, including liabilities arising in contract, in delict (including negligence) and for breach of statutory duty.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage of any nature. We will not be liable to you in respect of any special, indirect or consequential loss or damage.

We will not be liable to you in respect of any losses arising out of any acts or omissions of any hosting services provider, payment services provider or other third-party services provider.

The limitations of liability in these terms and conditions shall protect all members of the Sand management Network in respect of any claim.

(3) Website availability and restriction.

From time to time the website or features of the website will be unavailable. Such unavailability may be the result of defects in the website software, scheduled or emergency maintenance procedures, or failures of third-party service providers.

We do not commit to ensuring that the website will be available at any particular time and we do not commit to ensure that the website will continue to be published in the future.

(4) Interactive features

Our website includes interactive features that allow users to communicate with us. Due to the limited nature of such communication, any assistance you receive using any such facility may be incomplete or misleading. No legal relationship of any kind shall be created through the use of our website.

(5) User content

In these terms and conditions of use, “your content” means material (including without limitation text, images, audio material, video material and audio-visual material) that you submit to our website, for whatever purpose.

You grant to us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your content in any existing or future media. You also grant to us the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights. You warrant and represent that your content will comply with these terms and conditions. Your content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any third party's legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action whether against you or us or a third party (in each case under any applicable law).

Your content (and its publication on our website) must not: (a) be defamatory or maliciously false; (b) be obscene or indecent; (c) infringe any copyright, moral right, database right, trade mark right, design right, right in passing off, or other intellectual property right; (d) infringe any right of confidence, right of privacy, or right under data protection legislation; (e) constitute negligent advice or contain any negligent statement; (f) constitute an incitement to commit a crime; (g) be in contempt of any court, or in breach of any court order; (h) be in breach of racial or religious hatred or discrimination legislation; (i) be blasphemous; (j) be in breach of official secrets legislation; (k) be in breach of any contractual obligation owed to any person; (l) depict violence in an explicit, graphic or gratuitous manner; (m) be pornographic or sexually explicit; (n) be untrue, false, inaccurate or misleading; (o) consist of or contain any instructions, advice or other information which may be acted upon and could, if acted upon, cause illness, injury or death, or any other loss or damage; (p) constitute spam; (q) be offensive, deceptive, threatening, abusive, harassing, or menacing, hateful, discriminatory or inflammatory; or (r) cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to any person.

Your content must be appropriate, civil and accord with generally accepted standards of etiquette and behaviour on the internet. You must not use our website to link to any website or web page consisting of or containing material that would, were it posted on our website, breach the provisions of these terms and conditions.

You must not submit any user content to the website that is or has ever been the subject of any threatened or actual legal proceedings or other similar complaint.

We reserve the right to edit or remove any material submitted to our website, or stored on our servers, or hosted or published upon our website.

Notwithstanding our rights under these terms and conditions in relation to user content, we do not undertake to monitor the submission of such content to, or the publication of such content on, our website.

If you become aware of any content on the website that breaches these terms and conditions, please notify us immediately by email or using our website contact form.

(6) Indemnity

You hereby indemnify us and undertake to keep us indemnified against any losses, damages, costs, liabilities and expenses (including without limitation legal expenses and any amounts paid by us to a third party in settlement of a claim or dispute) incurred or suffered by us arising out of any breach by you of any provision of these terms and conditions, or arising out of any claim that you have breached any provision of these terms and conditions.

(7) Breaches of these terms and conditions

Without prejudice to our other rights, if you breach these terms and conditions of use in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these terms and conditions of use in any way, we may: (a) send you one or more formal warnings; (b) temporarily suspend your access to the website; (c) permanently prohibit you from accessing the website; (d) block computers using your IP address from accessing the website; (e) contact your internet services provider and request that they block your access to the website; (f) bring court proceedings against you for breach of contract or otherwise; (g) suspend and/or delete your account with the website; and/or (h) delete and/or edit any or all of your content.

Where we suspend or prohibit or block your access to our website or a part of our website, you must not take any action to circumvent such suspension or prohibition or blocking (including without limitation creating and/or using a different account).

(8) Trade marks

Sand Management Network and our logo are trademarks belonging to us. We give no permission for the use of these trademarks, and such use may constitute an infringement of our rights. The other registered and unregistered trademarks or service marks on our website are the property of their respective owners. Unless stated otherwise, we do not endorse and are not affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights and as such we cannot grant any licence to exercise such rights.

(9) Variation

We may revise these terms and conditions from time-to-time. Revised terms and conditions will apply to the use of our website from the date of the publication of the revised terms and conditions on our website.

(10) Severability

If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, the other provisions will continue in effect. If any unlawful and/or unenforceable provision would be lawful or enforceable if part of it were deleted, that part will be deemed to be deleted, and the rest of the provision will continue in effect.

(11) Entire agreement

These terms and conditions, together with our privacy policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our website, and supersede all previous agreements in respect of your use of this website.

(12) Law and jurisdiction

These terms and conditions will be governed by and construed in accordance with Scots law, and any disputes relating to these terms and conditions will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Scotland.

(B) Terms and conditions of use by the public

(1) Licence to use website

This website contains material including text, photographs and other images and sound, which is protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright and other intellectual property rights in this material are either owned by Sand Management Network, the Robert Gordon University or have been licensed to it by the owner(s) of those rights so that it can use this material as part of this website.

This website also contains trademarks, including logos which have been licensed to it by the owner(s) of those trade marks for use on this website.

Unless otherwise stated, we or our licensors own the intellectual property rights in the website and material on the website. Subject to the licence below, all these intellectual property rights are reserved.

You may:

Access any part of the website except the restricted areas;

Download or print copies of event flyers, newsletters and programme only.

You may not without our express written consent:

Copy (whether by printing off onto paper, storing on disk, downloading or in any other way), distribute (including distributing copies), broadcast, alter or tamper with in any way or otherwise use any material contained in the website except as set out under "You may". These restrictions apply in relation to all or part of the material on the website;

Edit, modify or otherwise remove any copyright, trade mark, logo or other intellectual property notices contained in the original material from any material copied or printed off from the website;

Link to this website;

Redistribute or republish material from this website, except for content specifically and expressly made available for redistribution (such as our newsletter and event flyers).

Show any material from the website in public;

Reproduce, duplicate, copy or otherwise exploit material on our website for a commercial purpose;

If you wish to use the hypertext or other link to this website, please email the Webmaster with details of:

the URL(s) of the web page(s) from which you are proposing to link to this website

the URL(s) of the web page(s) on this website to which you are proposing to link

and we will consider your request. It is our decision as to whether we agree to your request and we do not have to do so.

(2) Acceptable use

You must not use our website in any way that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the availability or accessibility of the website; or in any way which is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity.

You must not use our website to copy, store, host, transmit, send, use, publish or distribute any material which consists of (or is linked to) any spyware, computer virus, Trojan horse, worm, keystroke logger, rootkit or other malicious computer software.

You must not conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to our website without our express written consent.

You must not use our website to transmit or send unsolicited commercial communication.

You must not use our website for any purposes related to marketing without our express written consent.

(3) Restricted access

Access to certain areas of our website is restricted to members only. We reserve the right to restrict access to other areas of our website, or indeed our whole website, at our discretion.

(4) Third party websites

Our website includes hyperlinks to other websites owned and operated by third parties. These links are not recommendations. We have no control over the contents of third-party websites, and we accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.

(C) Sand Management Network

(1) Memberships

The terms and conditions in this Part C apply to all members including academic members, business members and professional members.

The use of a membership account on our website shall be limited to: (a) members; and (b) in the case of corporate members, officers and employees of the member.  Members must ensure that no other persons use, or have access to, their accounts on the website.

Membership shall begin at the time and on the day that the Participation agreement is executed and shall continue until terminated in accordance with the terms of the Participation Agreement.

Before a membership commences, the member must pay to us: (a) the applicable participation fee and (b) sign the participation agreement.

The participation fee charges shall be as specified on the participation agreement and/or our website from time to time. We may vary the fees in our sole discretion at the beginning of any phase, by giving notice in writing of the varied fee to each member.

We may in our absolute discretion refuse any application for membership.

(2) Member services

  • We may vary the benefits available to members, and the terms of this Section C at any time in our sole discretion.

  • During the period of membership, a member shall be able to access all material and documents on the website, subject to the other provisions of these terms and conditions and the participation Agreement.

  • Members shall also benefit from such other services as are specified on the website from time to time as being available to members.

If we provide you with or you generate a password to enable you to access restricted areas of our website or other content or services, you must ensure that that password is kept confidential.

You must notify us in writing immediately if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your account or password.

You are responsible for any activity on our website arising out of any failure to keep your password confidential, and may be held liable for any losses arising out of such a failure.

You must not use any other person's user ID and password to access our website.

We may disable your account on the website in our sole discretion without notice or explanation.

(D) SPE SMN European Sand Management Forum

  • European Sand Management Forum attendees may apply for username/password for limited use of website for Euroforum content access only.

  • You must ensure that that password is kept confidential, used for the specified purpose only and adhere to other general terms of use of this website.

  • You may access relevant presentation materials relating to the seminar which you have attended and paid for.

T&Cs version 1 applicable from 1st October 2020