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 Branch Activities
PESA WA Evening Talk – AAPG President, Denise Cox
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
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
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.
PESA-ASEG WA 2nd Young Professional Speakers Night
Continuing from our first event in April, in mid-October PESA WA Young Professionals in conjunction with ASEG WA held our second speaker’s night. With approximately 20 members attending, the first speaker, Tasman Gilfeather-Clark, presented his work on SOM and machine learning, which formed part of Team Macquarie’s submission for the Frank Arnott Award. The second speaker, Vincent Crombez, gave a brief overview of his PhD. following work on unconventional fields in western Canada. The talks gave insights to two vastly different sides of different industries.
PESA WA 2nd annual weekend field trip – Perth Basin
On Friday, 12 October, 27 PESA members made their way to the Priory Hotel, Dongara to network, enjoy dinner and drinks and kick start the field trip headed by Darren Ferdinando, our trip leader. First stop on the Saturday was to survey magnificent spectacle of the cliffs at Coalseam Park. Along the banks of the Irwin River are some magnificent outcrops, with strata gently dipping, such that a hike up the river brings you to successively younger beds. The first rocks we looked at in the high cliff near the car park were, the imaginatively titled High Cliff Sandstone.
Announcing New PESA-ASEG Queensland Mentoring Program
PESA and ASEG Queensland are joining forces to initiate a mentoring scheme for young professionals. This program aims to facilitate face-to-face mentoring sessions to establish a more interpersonal partnership through which industry insights, knowledge and experience are shared to foster the professional and personal development of mentees. In addition, we will also be launching a local Young Professionals’ network, with ties to federally coordinated YP networks in sister societies throughout Australia. Such networks exist as special interest groups within their respective societies and can be adapted to serve the needs and interests of their members.
QLD Branch October Technical Meeting – Mark Casey, Senex Energy
PESA Queensland were delighted to welcome Mark Casey from Senex Energy to speak at the October technical meeting. Mark Casey is the Development Manager at Senex Energy, responsible for Cooper Basin developments. He has over 15 years of experience in Australia, UK and Denmark primarily focused on field development and reservoir management in clastic, carbonate and CSG reservoirs. Mark started his career in the Cooper Basin and Queensland CSG assets working for Santos, before heading to Europe where he worked with Talisman Energy and Maersk Oil, primarily on their North Sea assets.
2018 SEG/AAPG Distinguished Lecturer in Perth
On 15th August, ASEG and PESA WA Branches jointly hosted the 2018 SEG/AAPG Distinguished Lecturer Satish Singh on the topic of “Seismic Full Waveform Inversion for Fundamental Scientific and Industrial Problems”. This programme is supported through the SEG Foundation by PGS and Equinor (formely Statoil). Satish had visited Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand and the eastern states of Australia before arriving in Perth. The evening lecture was held at CGG 's ground floor function room and it kicked off with over 60 members, from various professional and academic backgrounds attending, socialising over food and beverages.
PESA QLD 2018 Symposium Exploration: Back in the game
September 6th saw the return of the PESA Queensland annual Symposium. The theme this year was Exploration: Back in the Game, a fitting theme as increasing oil price sees an increase in activity within the state.
The festivities kicked off on Wednesday evening at the Southbank Beer Garden with an Icebreaker where the presenters, organisers, attendees and sponsors mingled. This casual affair was enjoyed by all and has been a regular feature of the Annual PESA QLD Symposium.
As delegates arrived Thursday morning, they were greeted by the aroma from the Comet Ridge Limited sponsored coffee cart and a selection of Exhibition Booths presented by ALS, ERC, GeoConsult, GSQ, Synterra and Velseis.