Helen

WA Lunch talk – all about borehole images

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What you should know about borehole images but were afraid to ask…..Forty years of hard-won lessons’ By Lawrence Bourke

Lawrence Bourke of Task Fronterra Geoscience, one of the founders of image log interpretation, took us on a trip down memory lane, back to the embryonic beginnings of image logs with the with the original 8 button high resolution dipmeter of 40 years ago through the revolution (for geologists) of the high-resolution FMS and FMI micro-resistivity devices in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the PESA WA April technical luncheon.

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WA evening talk on Basin centred gas accumulations

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PESA WA Evening Talk:  Thursday March 20th 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm @ The Shoe Bar

“Tight Gas Sand Reservoir Evaluation: Basin-Centred Gas Accumulation (BCGA) & Implications on Production & EUR”  by Greg Salter, Core Laboratories

The dark art of sub-capillary equilibrium gas, better known to us as basin centred gas, was introduced to a small but enthusiastic group of geoscientists at Faraday’s in Perth on the evening of 20th March, by Greg Salter (VP Eastern Hemisphere, Core Laboratories, based in KL).

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QLD kick off lunch series with a talk from Dr Julie Pearce

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Queensland branch kicked off their 2025 technical lunch season on 20th March at the Hilton, with Dr Julie Pearce from University of Queensland talking about CO2 storage.

Internationally experienced Julie is currently an ARC Mid-career Industry Fellow in the UQ Gas and Energy Transition Research Centre and School of the Environment, putting her expertise on gas-water-rock interactions to good use with a focus on CO2 geological storage.

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Vale Richard (Dick) Paten 21/07/1935 – 23/03/2025

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Dick Paten was a well-known and highly respected Queensland geologist who contributed greatly to the petroleum exploration industry and its organisations – including PESA, QUPEX and APEA (the precursor of APPEA, and now AEP).

In 1977, along with Lee Pfitzner and Maurie Drew, he was instrumental in holding the first PESA Queensland Symposium, an event that lives on today.  This event was instigated by the parlous state of petroleum exploration in Queensland at the time: In the words of VG Swindon, the Chair of that first Symposium:

In 1979 Dick was the President of QUPEX, and between 1985 to 1987 he was the PESA Federal President.

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Who is really running PESA?!?

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If you were to be a fly on the wall at PESA executive meetings you might be excused for thinking that all the real decisions were being made by a cat.

A one eyed black rescue cat named Boyd never misses a meeting, and does his best to be centre of attention and eclipse that pesky human (Helen Debenham) who thinks she should perhaps be visible.

Digging deeper we see that he commands a full feline committee across the country, With Chairman Pippi in South Australia, doing her best to prevent Elinor Alexander from working, Vice president Meisha, a 20 year old veteran who has stolen Janny Spilsbury-Schakel's back issues of PESA news, or should we say "PESA Mews".

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PESA Deal Day

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The 2025 PESA Deal Day is set to be a pivotal event for the international oil and gas industry, bringing forward high-quality exploration, appraisal, and development opportunities from both Australia and beyond. With a growing focus on sustainability, we hope this year’s event will include exciting prospects beyond traditional oil and gas, such as the search for hydrogen, helium, geothermal and other energy forms in addition to exploration and development projects for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Held in conjunction with the 2025 Australian Energy Producers Conference and Exhibition, PESA Deal Day ensures attendees have access to a wide range of industry leaders and experts.

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Natural Hydrogen in Western Australia

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Leon Normore, Geological Survey of Western Australia

Abstract

The nascent field of natural hydrogen investigations is expanding rapidly worldwide. Recent studies in Australia have documented hydrogen in natural gas samples in both sedimentary basins and cratonic settings, and discussed multiple abiogenic sources for natural Hydrogen (Boreham et al., 2021a,b).

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PESA WA Lunchtime talk by Leon Nomore

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On 20th February the WA branch lunch was held at the Hilton. The topic was “Natural Hydrogen in Western Australia” by Leon Normore, Geological Survey and Resource Strategy Division, Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, Government of Western Australia.

Leon provided an up-to-date summary of recent studies in Australia on hydrogen in natural gas samples in both sedimentary basins and cratonic settings and also discussed multiple abiogenic sources for natural hydrogen.

He summarised GSWA studies of open file data which focused on historical occurrences of hydrogen within the onshore sedimentary basins with petroleum wells the primary data source in Canning Basin, Perth Basin and Southern Carnarvon Basin well.

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Mark Bentley visits WA and gives a course and evening talk

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On 13th February 2025,  Mark Bentley (Langdale Geoscience, UK) delivered a short course to the WA Pesa Branch members on “Good Models: Bad Models – How can we Tell?”. This course was well attended and a summary of this course is provided below.

Mark also delivered a presentation to the WA Pesa Brach on “Modelling for CCS - new tricks for old dogs”.  Thirty or so young and ‘old dogs’ enjoyed an engaging, educational and stimulating evening with Mark who presented on the new paradigms required in reservoir modelling for CO2 storage.

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2025 SA HICCUP Tournament Summary

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The HICCUP cricket tournament, sponsored by PESA (Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia), has a rich 45-year history as a social tradition in the South Australian Oil & Gas industry, bringing together government, private, and academic personnel.

HICCUP is appealing due to the relaxed environment of playing a social, yet competitive, format of cricket after work in the Adelaide parklands while providing a fantastic avenue for strengthening working relationships between colleagues and peers from opposition teams.

Teams play with 12 players, and everyone gets to have a bowl and a hit in the 20 over format.

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