PESA Branch Activities

WA Branch held a joint YP networking event with ASEG and SPE

07/05/2025 Posted by Helen

PESA-ASEG-SPE YP Networking Night, held on Friday, 28th March 2025 at The Shoe Bar

The PESA-ASEG-SPE YP Networking Night, held on Friday, 28th March 2025, provided a unique opportunity for young professionals to connect with experienced industry leaders. The event featured three distinguished speakers: Steve Molyneux, a consultant geologist at Hancock Energy, Sam Howman, Director at Howman Seismic Services, and Lina Hartanto, Subsurface Technical Advisory Group Lead at Chevron. Each speaker delivered a candid 5–10-minute career overview, sharing their personal journeys, the highlights and lowlights of their careers, and the valuable…

WA Lunch talk – all about borehole images

07/05/2025 Posted by Helen

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. Some…

WA evening talk on Basin centred gas accumulations

07/05/2025 Posted by Helen

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). Basin centred gas is not especially…

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

07/05/2025 Posted by Helen

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. The talk was focussed on the detailed analysis and modelling that went into the assessment of the Precipice Sandstone in QLD in support of CO2 storage,…

PESA WA Lunchtime talk by Leon Nomore

09/03/2025 Posted by Helen

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…

Mark Bentley visits WA and gives a course and evening talk

09/03/2025 Posted by Helen

On 13^th 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…

2025 SA HICCUP Tournament Summary

09/03/2025 Posted by Helen

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…

South Australia branch Lunch

09/03/2025 Posted by Helen

On 27Th Feb James Komenza gave a talk to the South Australian Branch titled “Seismic interpretation of the Petrel sub-basin for CO2 storage opportunity (G-11-AP)” The image above shows Dr Paul Strong awarding an appreciation gift to him.

The Branch was also pleased to award Cecilia Vanina Loyola (Uni Adelaide student) with the 2024 SA/NT Scholarship prize. This image below shows Dr. Mark Bunch (Uni Adelaide and chair of SA/NT Branch Scholarships committee) presenting it to her.

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Meet the new WA Branch President – Dr Fiona Burns

01/03/2025 Posted by Matthew.Quinn

Fiona Burns took over the role as PESA President of the WA Branch during December 2024. She is a Sedimentologist/Ichnologist and Borehole Image Specialist, with over 30 years’ experience in the energy sector working on petroleum reservoirs. She works with the team at TaskFronterra in Perth and has been involved in projects throughout Australia and worldwide including Indonesia, West Africa, offshore China, North Sea and NZ. Prior to her time at TaskFronterra she worked through her company Firmground. Fiona is looking forward to working with the PESA committee in WA to ensure the continuation of high-level monthly…

PESA Qld Members 2024 Christmas Party in Pictures

17/01/2025 Posted by Helen

By Sue Slater and Sarah Harris

On the first Friday of December, the Queensland Branch has held its annual Christmas Lunch at Brisbane’s Stamford Plaza, MC’d by Sue. A great day was had by all attendees.

Thanks to all our loyal sponsors, we couldn’t run this event without them. Velseis Seismic, Oceania Geo, Realtime Seismic and Comet Ridge, with lucky door prizes provided by Terrex Seismic. The annual oil price was sponsored by Clean Planet and won by Mike Bucknill and the Christmas table trivia…