PESA Branch Activities

PESA Queensland Christmas Party

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About 60 people gathered to celebrate the festive season and the year that was 2025 at the Stamford Plaza in Brisbane on Friday 28 November.

Thanks to our sponsors for the day, Velseis, InGauge, RealTime Seismic, Terrex (the lucky door prizes), ERC (the trivia quiz), and Comet Ridge (the oil price guess). Without this support the event would not be the same.

There were plenty of prizes and winners on the day.

The trivia quiz was ultimately won by Sam McDermott, after a tie between Sam and Peter Crosdale, who each scored 15 points from a possible 20.

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Henry Posamentier touches down in WA

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Henry Posamentier presented a 2-day course in Perth on 6-7th November at PanPacific. His workshop delivered a masterclass on seismic stratigraphy and seismicgeomorphology and was based on Henry’s over 50 years of global experience andpioneering work in developing the contemporary approach to sequence stratigraphicanalyses. This attracted 18 attendees.  

He also spoke at Faradays in Perth on evening of 6 th November.

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PESA Queensland welcome Henry Posamentier

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PESA Queensland were delighted to host 40 PESA and ASEG members for an evening lecture from famed geologist Henry W. Posamentier.  

2025 PESA Distinguished lecturer Henry Posamentier is a well known name in the disciplines of seismic and sequence stratigraphy. Through his career, he has worked for Chevron, Anadarko, Arco and Exxon as well as serving as an AAPG Distinguished lecturer around the world. Thanks to sponsors Santos for bringing him to Australia so PESA members could enjoy his presentation focused on deep water deposits of the Bay of Bengal and the Norwegian Sea.  

PESA...

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PESA Barry Goldstein Medal Lecture Tour 2026 – Bruce Ainsworth

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Our 2025 winner of the Barry Goldstein Medal for Innovation, Collaboration and Communication Dr Bruce Ainsworth will be touring our state branches early in 2026. Read on to find out more about Bruce and the presentation he will be sharing "Honouring the Humble Clinoform: Towards a Reservoir Modelling Best Practice".

Bruce is currently Head of Geology at Santos Ltd and an Adjunct Professor at Adelaide University. He is a sedimentologist and stratigrapher with a strong background in 3D reservoir modelling.

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SA Branch host Henry Posamentier

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The Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (SA/NT) branch hosted Henry Posamentier on the 3 and 4 November 2025 when he presented both a 2-day workshop and a luncheon meeting. His workshop and luncheon presentation delivered a masterclass on seismic stratigraphy and seismic geomorphology and was based on Henry’s over 50 years of global experience and pioneering work in developing the contemporary approach to sequence stratigraphic analyses, integrating sedimentology, stratigraphy, and depositional systems analysis.

The workshop attracted 26 registered attendees and the lunch presentation even more with an additional 24 registered.

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PESA QLD Student & Early Career Meets Industry Night

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In October, the PESA-QLD joined with peer societies to host their annual Student & Early Career Meets Industry Night.

The longstanding event is a combined outreach effort to connect student and early career geoscientists to the broader technical community. The formula for these successful events is long tried and true: a networking bingo to break down barriers, stellar mineral prizes to encourage competition through engagement, and a dedicated space for students to ask industry professionals their burning questions.

PESA presence was strong and varied, demonstrating the breadth of careers available in Oil & Gas.

This is key in Brisbane, where the job market is dominated by the mining sector and there is no local Petroleum School to raise our industry's profile.

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PESA WA Technical talk and Core Workshop with Brian Willis

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PESA WA October Technical Evening Talk —  

By Matt Fittall

A core group of PESA geoscientists gathered at The Globe on the evening of October 2nd to learn about the impact of new numerical modelling of deposition in wave influenced deltas in the interpretation of deltaic sequences and their facies distributions. Dr Willis and his co-workers showed how this work challenges the paradigm of a prograding equilibrium shoreface profile and a gradual upward- coarsening facies progression with a sharp-based shoreface succession generated by a relative sea-level fall.

In his presentation Brian Willis demonstrated that differences in...

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PESA WA October Technical Lunch — Fault Timing & Depocentre Development in the Northern Perth Basin

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The Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (PESA WA) held its October Technical Lunch on 16 October 2025 Parmelia Hilton Perth, featuring a presentation by Chris Watts. The event attracted around 50 attendees from across the upstream sector, including representatives from Shell, Woodside, Santos, Chevron, and other leading energy companies in the Perth Basin.Chris delivered an informative and well-structured presentation highlighting the geological evolution of the Northern Perth Basin and the implications for exploration and resource development. His talk generated strong interest and engagement among participants.

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WA YP event

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PESA hosted a very successful YP event after the Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference (AEGC) conference in Perth in September jointly with AIG, SPE and ASEG.

With over 70 attendees from both Perth and interstate, it was a wonderful evening of networking with both familiar and new faces.

A big thank you to our panellists who all volunteered their time after a packed week presenting at the conference: Ishtar Barranco (CCS Geologist, Chevron), Donna Sewell (Consulting Geologist, AIG WA Brach Chair) and Richard Lilly (Exploration Geologist, The University of Adelaide)

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VIC/TAS Meeting Updates

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PESA VIC/TAS branch is actively working on its schedule of meetings and will bring some in-house events to the membership ASAP. Meanwhile, some of the branch membership are able to access meetings of our sister geoscience societies in Melbourne. On Friday 10th October, a few PESA Victorians attended the SPE lunchtime talk given by the SPE Distinguished Lecturer Mike Byrne, of Elemental Energies. Mike spoke on the topic of CO2 injection well design with the subtitle "The same, but different".

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