Symposium Chair Melanie Fitzell and the Queensland branch committee delivered another successful one-day symposium on Monday 1st September at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The conference opening address was delivered by the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, the Honourable Dale Last, who closed his speech with the words: “you drill, I sign”. This was followed by a Keynote address from Darren Moor, Executive Director Georesources from the same department, and a final Keynote from industry stalwart Rick Wilkinson of Energy Quest “Energy plan or just muddling through?”.
A technical session featuring CCS and geothermal followed morning tea, three top quality presentations from Nikki Accornero (Accornero Advisory), Rachel Kieft (Santos) and Ray Johnson and Heinz-Gerd Holl (Novus).
After lunch we tackled oil and gas appraisal, hearing about machine learning applications to identify basal coal in coal seam gas wells from Kim Owens of Senex, large-scale fraccing operations in the Beetaloo Basin from Kelvin Wuttke of InGauge Energy, and revisited a mature oil field at Kenmore to learn about how static modelling has been utilised by Talline Zaravatijian of Rock Tech Consulting.
The final session focussed on the Frontier Gas Exploration Grants Program implemented by the Queensland Government in 2023, which was finalised in June 2025. Delegates heard from Tony Knight, Chief Government Geologist who laid the foundation for the program, and then from each of the successful applicants; State Gas, QPM Energy, Comet Ridge and Denison Gas. All the companies highlighted the importance of this grant money to accelerate exploration projects which might otherwise have taken 2 to 3 years to commence subject to fund raising. Whilst each program experienced various levels of success, this served to highlight the practical difficulties that can impact on exploration timeframes in the real world.
During the breaks, delegates networked, visited the Student Poster display and the Exhibitor stands. The day closed with the popular networking cocktail function which was well attended.
The Qld branch would like to thank all our sponsors and exhibitors who helped make this day a success. The response from students this year was outstanding, with the largest number of posters we have displayed for a number of years.
Best poster was awarded to Parisa Tavoosiiraj from the University of Queensland for “An overview of the pattern of in-situ stresses in the Cooper-Eromanga basins” and best presentation was awarded to Kelvin Wuttke for “Making Massive Frac Stimulations Normal” The scale required to unlock the potential of basins like the Beetaloo is difficult to grasp, but Kelvin gave everyone an insight into the planning process that went into the largest on-shore fracture stimulation in Australia to date.
The symposium is the Queensland branch’s premier event each year it has run. Since the first symposium in 1977 to today, volunteers in the branch have done an amazing job to bring the symposium to life. And it is worth it to see and hear the responses from all participants at the end of the day.
Sue Slater
Branch President
