PESA Branch Activities

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 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.

Mark Bentley visits WA and gives a course and evening talk

09/03/2025 Posted by Helen

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.

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 have a bowl and a hit in the 20 over format.

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.

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.

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 was sponsored by ERC and won by Lindsay Horn.

QLD Student and Early Career Mixer

14/01/2025 Posted by Helen

Despite the heavy rain, October’s joint-industry Student & Early Career Mixer was a huge hit with budding and established geologists alike, who made their way to Milton for industry networking opportunities.

The event attracted almost 100 attendees with a roughly even split between students, early careers geoscientists and established professionals.

The night’s youngest attendee, Ben Walker (who also happens to be the son of PESA Qld’s President), was the lucky recipient of one of the networking bingo rock prizes – a quartz geode from Morocco.

A big thanks to PESA Qld’s Kat Gioseffi and Martin Mackinlay for their help in organising the successful industry-collaborative event.

“Energy Unearthed” – PESA QLD Symposium

14/01/2025 Posted by Helen

Authors: Kat Gioseffi, Fernando Valencia Fermin

In early September, several Santos technical staff attended the 2024 PESA QLD Symposium. Ten students submitted posters and over 90 delegates attended the full day event at the Brisbane Conference and Exhibition Centre. Themed “Energy Unearthed”, speakers and posters covered a diverse array of topics including:

Several Keynote speakers discussed the importance of natural gas in supporting global decarbonisation and natural gases position in maintaining Australia’s energy security. These speakers referenced the Future Gas Strategy released earlier this year recognising essential role natural gas plays in Net Zero 2050.

WA Christmas Lunch

07/01/2025 Posted by Helen

PESA WA branch held its annual Christmas event and AGM on Thursday 12th December at the Parmelia Hilton Hotel. There were 150 members registered for the event.

The WA Branch President, Adam Craig welcomed everyone to the event and opened the AGM with a thankyou to all the sponsors who support PESA and without whom PESA would not be able to run its events for its members.

Adam presented a summary of the years events run by the branch; including the luncheon and evening technical series presentations, the webinars, YP and SSIG events, the golf day and the 'Spring Fling' social event.

Adam presented the financials for the WA branch and there was much laughter from the floor as the financials show a near miss 'balanced budget' for 2024.

2024 Membership Survey

10/12/2024 Posted by Dale

By Janny Spilsbury-Schakel

Firstly, a big thank you to those of you who completed the survey and helped us to shape how PESA is going to serve its members best. Our response rate was 24%. We got a good spread of responses across all the branches, however, demographically, the 25 to 39 age bracket is underrepresented in the survey when compared to our membership profile, so do bear that in mind when looking at the results!

Our main focus areas for the 2024 survey were:

So, the average PESA member, if there is such a thing, is unsurprisingly still a male geoscientist, with 30+ years of experience.