PESA Branch Activities

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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WA Basin’s workshop to be held 1st-2nd Dec at Curtin University

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The 2025 Basins Workshop will take place on Monday 1 and Tuesday 2 December 2025 at Curtin University, Perth in association with PESA WA Branch.  The aim of the workshop is to provide an informal forum for the exchange of insights and ideas regarding the evolution of sedimentary basins in Australia and around the world, and the diverse resources they contain, including hydrocarbons, minerals, geothermal energy, natural hydrogen, and the potential for CO2 and hydrogen storage.

Talks are limited to 10 minutes in duration, with ample time for discussion, so we are looking for thought provoking ideas, rather than polished conference presentations.

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PESA QLD Welcome Dr Brian Willis

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PESA Queensland were thrilled to host Dr Brian Willis for an evening lecture on his whistle-stop tour of the Australian states and territories.

Dr Willis is a recognised expert on fluvial systems, with more than four decades spent studying the sedimentology and stratigraphic organisation of these depositional systems.  This time, his focus was on the terminal end of the system with three-dimensional architecture of wave-dominated delta deposits the topic of the presentation.

Dr Willis, and his co-authors Tao Sun and Bruce Ainsworth, are using numerical models to challenge long-held rational for interpreting sea level variations in wave-dominated shallow-marine successions.

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WA evening talk – US Double act on fluvial systems

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A good crowd again assembled for Perth PESA evening talk on August 14, a double act on fluvial systems by John Holbrook (Texas Christian University) on the “Back-water Effect” on fluvial systems and Steve Hasiotis (University of Kansas) on the Neoichnology of the De Grey ephemeral river delta, Northwest WA

John Holbrook’s talk on the backwater effect provided an interesting discussion on fluvial architecture styles and an emerging tool and a work flow for predicting reservoir architecture, dimensions, volumes and heterogeneity in fluvial systems. 

Steve Hasiotis described the diagnostic patterns of plant and animal traces (and diversity),...

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PESA Symposium 2025 – Juggling the Energy Mix

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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).

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