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QLD

PESA Queensland June Meeting

Posted by Rachel

PESA Queensland were delighted to welcome Dr Matthias Raiber as the speaker to their June technical lunch meeting. Dr Raiber leads CSIRO’s Sustainable Groundwater Futures team in Brisbane and was presenting their work investigating structural controls on aquifer connectivity in the Narrabri region of the Great Artesian Basin.

The presentation highlighted the integrated workflow they undertook to improve understanding of connectivity between coal seam gas reservoirs and the overlying aquifers. Using a combination of airborne electromagnetics, seismic, igneous intrusion dating and hydro-chemical tracer datasets, they were able to identify potential connectivity pathways and test for evidence of hydraulic connection.

The audience of approximately 40 professionals enjoyed the presentation whilst enjoying a delicious lunch courtesy of the Stamford Plaza and it triggered some excellent discussion.

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PESA Queensland May Meeting

Posted by Rachel

By Sue Slater, PESA Queensland Branch President

On Thursday 28 th May PESA Qld held their second technical lunch for 2026. Comet Ridge’s Tor McCaul and Mel Fitzell gave a capacity crowd an update on the Mahalo Gas Hub project.

Comet Ridge has secured a significant acreage position at the Mahalo Gas Hub in the southern Bowen Basin. This region is shaping up to be a major gas production hub for the east coast, with proven ommercial production rates, development-ready 2P gas reserves, and excellent access to key infrastructure to domestic and LNG export markets.

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PESA Queensland President Sue Slater and lucky door winner Ariga Agrawal

PESA Queensland Hosts Autumn Afterhours Networking Event

Posted by Sarah.Harris

PESA Queensland recently welcomed members and industry colleagues to Brisbane for its April networking event, Autumn Afterhours, with a great turnout from across the Queensland energy and geoscience sector.

The evening provided a relaxed opportunity for attendees to reconnect, meet new industry contacts and catch up on activity across the sector.

Congratulations to the night's lucky door prize winner, Ariga Agrawal from Santos, who took home a $250 gift card generously provided by Axiom Geoscience.

Thank you to everyone who attended — PESA Queensland looks forward to seeing members again at upcoming branch events throughout 2026.

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Queensland PESA committee kicks off 2026

Posted by Sarah.Harris

Many of the Queensland PESA committee members made it to an informal pre-work coffee at Marhaba Café in Brisbane on February 24.  With all our committee meetings taking place via Google Meet, it was an opportunity for a face-to-face catch up before the 2026 calendar of events got underway. We were also delighted to meet our newest committee addition, baby Zara.

We have a busy year scheduled with technical lunches, the annual Symposium, the Christmas lunch and various collaborations with peer societies happening throughout the year.

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PESA Queensland Christmas Party

Posted by Rachel

About 60 people gathered to celebrate the festive season and the year that was 2025 at the Stamford Plaza in Brisbane on Friday 28 November.

Thanks to our sponsors for the day, Velseis, InGauge, RealTime Seismic, Terrex (the lucky door prizes), ERC (the trivia quiz), and Comet Ridge (the oil price guess). Without this support the event would not be the same.

There were plenty of prizes and winners on the day.

The trivia quiz was ultimately won by Sam McDermott, after a tie between Sam and Peter Crosdale, who each scored 15 points from a possible 20.

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PESA Queensland welcome Henry Posamentier

Posted by Rachel

PESA Queensland were delighted to host 40 PESA and ASEG members for an evening lecture from famed geologist Henry W. Posamentier.  

2025 PESA Distinguished lecturer Henry Posamentier is a well known name in the disciplines of seismic and sequence stratigraphy. Through his career, he has worked for Chevron, Anadarko, Arco and Exxon as well as serving as an AAPG Distinguished lecturer around the world. Thanks to sponsors Santos for bringing him to Australia so PESA members could enjoy his presentation focused on deep water deposits of the Bay of Bengal and the Norwegian Sea.  

PESA...

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PESA QLD Student & Early Career Meets Industry Night

Posted by Rachel

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 QLD Welcome Dr Brian Willis

Posted by Rachel

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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PESA Symposium 2025 – Juggling the Energy Mix

Posted by Rachel

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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PESA Qld Technical Talk: Exploring for Hydrogen

Posted by Rachel

The Queensland branch July meeting returned to the Port Office Hotel for an interesting talk on Hydrogen exploration from Dr Josh Whitcombe, VP of Development and Operations at HyTerra.

Josh took time to introduce the audience to the different types of hydrogen and where they might be found. He then dived into more detail about the exploration and appraisal work Hyterra are doing at their Nemaha Project in Kansas, USA.

Nemaha is located between Kansas City and Wichita in the centre of a major industrial and manufacturing hub.

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