PESA Branch Activities

PESA SA/NT Geology of Wine Field Trip – September 2019

08/11/2019 Posted by Dale

By Dr. Simon BrealeyAs is becoming traditional, stalwart devotees of the terroir of the McLaren Vale Wine Region (yes, it’s a bona fide appellation) gathered under a darkening sky in late September to receive the wisdom and tasting notes of Professor Alan Collins of Adelaide University.

Picking up stragglers as we headed south on the 40-minute drive we examined the beautifully-produced geological maps kindly provided by the Dept. Mines (or whatever they were called last week) and met old friends and new.

First stop was on Chapel Hill Road to examine the staggeringly profound unconformity between the Umberatana Group (circa 650 million years old) and the Pleistocene Pirramimma Sandstone of the Seaford Formation (born yesterday).

PESA WA, August Technical Lunch

21/08/2019 Posted by Alison McLeod

Chris Fielding, a current editor of Earth Science Reviews, was the guest speaker at the PESA WA Technical Lunch for August. The presentation showcased the critical importance of high quality field work in understanding depositional processes and environments of coastal to shallow marine sandstone bodies in the Cenomanian/Turonian succession of Utah and Wyoming. The talk included details on the mapping and interpretation of Frontier deltas across a 70km by 5km section in the Vernal area of northern Utah and left the audience keen to get out and about and look at some outcrops.

PESA WA May Evening Talk – Laurence Letki

29/05/2019 Posted by Alison McLeod

Laurence Letki’s presentation highlighted wave-equation based techniques, such as full waveform inversion (FWI), as an integral addition to the modeling toolbox. The talk demonstrated how modern computing power allows the use of high frequencies in FWI and the resultant resolution of finer details. The presentation was held at “The George” on Tuesday 21st May. Many thanks to Discover Geoscience, our evening talk sponsor.

PESA WA May Branch Luncheon

21/05/2019 Posted by Alison McLeod

“If you’ve got an unconventionals focused geologist in your company, go talk to them, you might be surprised at the learnings applicable to conventional hydrocarbon accumulations”. That was the takeaway from Avon McIntyre’s WA Branch May luncheon talk - “Bursting Source Rock and Strange Hydrocarbon Occurrences Around the World”. The presentation challenged attendees' thoughts on maturation, migration and charge-timing (all may be later than we think) through analysis of unconventional geology. Photos of explosively delaminated source rocks and abandoned gilsonite mines complimented an excellent talk. Many thanks to Spectrum, Searcher and DownUnder Geophysical for sponsoring the event.

PESA WA April Evening Talk – Rosine Riera

06/05/2019 Posted by Alison McLeod

Rosine Riera’s talk outlining her current PhD thesis analyzing the Oligo-Miocene subtropical carbonate overburden of the Northern Carnarvon Basin was very well attended. This was PESA WA’s third evening talk for 2019 and was held at “The George” on Tuesday 30th April. Many thanks to Discover Geoscience for sponsoring the evening and to the University of Western Australia for allowing Rosine to present to PESA WA. Perth’s first cold evening for the season saw pre-talk drinks and networking at the bar welcomed by attendees.

PESA QLD Luncheon “Making Good Decisions under Uncertainty” – Prof. Steve Begg

22/03/2019 Posted by Alison McLeod

On a sweaty Tuesday morning in Brisbane’s February, a diverse group of industry individuals piled eagerly into a training room at Santos’ office, ready to improve their abilities to “Make Good Decisions under Uncertainty”. Under the wise tutelage of Prof. Steve Begg, a man whose experience in the industry and in academia totals more years than most of our student members, participants from companies including Arrow, Central, Geosolve, Santos, Senex, Shell, and others, quickly found out that decision-making is more complex than a first glance would suggest. Opening the course with a questionnaire revealed just how dire the situation was.

PESA WA Evening Talk – AAPG President, Denise Cox

19/03/2019 Posted by Alison McLeod

The PESA WA evening talks programme kicked off for 2019 on 12 March, hosted with thanks to our evening talk sponsor Discover Geoscience. The Grand Bar and Bistro was filled to capacity for the talk on the role of geoscience in sustainable energy development – “recycling” the Permian Basin, West Texas presented by visiting AAPG President Denise Cox. Various companies and academic institutions were represented in the crowd of well over 60 initially meeting in the Grand’s outdoor space for food, drinks and networking before heading upstairs for the talk.

Obituary – Peter Marriott Barber PhD

27/12/2018 Posted by Alison McLeod

Dr Peter Barber, a well-known petroleum geologist and sequence stratigrapher, died peacefully in Murdoch Hospice on 13th December 2018. He was 68 years old. Peter Barber was born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England on 21st June 1950. He grew up with his younger brothers Martin and Jerry in Dartford, Kent. Peter was four years old before his parents realised that he was profoundly deaf. Despite this handicap and with the help of a hearing aid, Peter did very well at school and gained admission the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He graduated in 1972 with a BSc (Honours) degree in Geology.

Kevin Hill’s course on Structural Geology for Petroleum systems

23/11/2018 Posted by Alison McLeod

PESA WA was lucky enough to be able to persuade Kevin Hill to travel across to Perth in order to give us a 4 day training course on structural geology. For the group who attended this was a solid learning experience covering techniques and examples that helped us rethink the way we go about interpreting. Throughout the 4 days, we covered structural examples from extensional regimes, compressional, strike slip, and also salt. This was accompanied by numerous hands on exercises where we determined growth sections and fault timing, reactivations, and may other methods of understanding the data.