PESA WA Evening Talk: Thursday March 20th 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm @ The Shoe Bar
“Tight Gas Sand Reservoir Evaluation: Basin-Centred Gas Accumulation (BCGA) & Implications on Production & EUR” by Greg Salter, Core Laboratories
The dark art of sub-capillary equilibrium gas, better known to us as basin centred gas, was introduced to a small but enthusiastic group of geoscientists at Faraday’s in Perth on the evening of 20th March, by Greg Salter (VP Eastern Hemisphere, Core Laboratories, based in KL).
Queensland branch kicked off their 2025 technical lunch season on 20th March at the Hilton, with Dr Julie Pearce from University of Queensland talking about CO2 storage.
Internationally experienced Julie is currently an ARC Mid-career Industry Fellow in the UQ Gas and Energy Transition Research Centre and School of the Environment, putting her expertise on gas-water-rock interactions to good use with a focus on CO2 geological storage.
Dick Paten was a well-known and highly respected Queensland geologist who contributed greatly to the petroleum exploration industry and its organisations – including PESA, QUPEX and APEA (the precursor of APPEA, and now AEP).
In 1977, along with Lee Pfitzner and Maurie Drew, he was instrumental in holding the first PESA Queensland Symposium, an event that lives on today. This event was instigated by the parlous state of petroleum exploration in Queensland at the time: In the words of VG Swindon, the Chair of that first Symposium:
In 1979 Dick was the President of QUPEX, and between 1985 to 1987 he was the PESA Federal President.
Woodside, operator of the recently onstream Sangomar oil field provided a production update in February.
Sangomar is located approximately 100km offshore Senegal in a water depth of 800m. Development phase 1 saw 11 producers, 10 water injectors and two gas injectors producing oil back to the “Leopold Sedar Senghor” FPSO with over 80% of production coming from the S500 reservoirs.
The FPSO arrived at the site in February 2024 with commissioning and hooking up of the wells occurring in the first half of the year.
Sangomar came onstream in June 2024 and produced 13.
If you were to be a fly on the wall at PESA executive meetings you might be excused for thinking that all the real decisions were being made by a cat.
A one eyed black rescue cat named Boyd never misses a meeting, and does his best to be centre of attention and eclipse that pesky human (Helen Debenham) who thinks she should perhaps be visible.
Digging deeper we see that he commands a full feline committee across the country, With Chairman Pippi in South Australia, doing her best to prevent Elinor Alexander from working, Vice president Meisha, a 20 year old veteran who has stolen Janny Spilsbury-Schakel's back issues of PESA news, or should we say "PESA Mews".
The 2025 PESA Deal Day is set to be a pivotal event for the international oil and gas industry, bringing forward high-quality exploration, appraisal, and development opportunities from both Australia and beyond. With a growing focus on sustainability, we hope this year’s event will include exciting prospects beyond traditional oil and gas, such as the search for hydrogen, helium, geothermal and other energy forms in addition to exploration and development projects for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
Held in conjunction with the 2025 Australian Energy Producers Conference and Exhibition, PESA Deal Day ensures attendees have access to a wide range of industry leaders and experts.
Leon Normore, Geological Survey of Western Australia
Abstract
The nascent field of natural hydrogen investigations is expanding rapidly worldwide. Recent studies in Australia have documented hydrogen in natural gas samples in both sedimentary basins and cratonic settings, and discussed multiple abiogenic sources for natural Hydrogen (Boreham et al., 2021a,b).
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.
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.
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.