Around 40 SA/NT members enjoyed a convivial luncheon to celebrate Christmas and the end of 2025.
The meeting kicked off with the SA/NT Branch AGM, at which Paul Strong was voted in as the next Branch President and Sharon Tiainen as Vice-President. This was followed by a brief review of industry activity through the year by Rhodri Johns.
The guest speaker was Dave Grybowski, whose 35 years in petroleum geology have given him ample opportunity to ponder where things might have gone wrong.
Author | Chris Cubitt: Geological Survey of South Australia
Chris Cubitt of the Geological Survey South Australia (GSSA), hosted the 2026 PESA SA/NT core workshop at the SA Drill Core Library on Friday November 21st, 2025, (Fig. 1). This year’s event was well attended by industry, government and academia focussing on the eastern Warburton Basin (Daralingie Shelf area) with the aim to produce a quick look GDE map and form an opinion on the basin’s prospectivity.
The Queensland oil and gas industry came together in early December to celebrate the year’s achievements at the Combined Oil and Gas Christmas Party 2025 – an annual event hosted by the societies ASEG, PESA, SPE, QEC and QUPEX.
Held at Blackbird Bar, Dining & Events, attendees gathered in a riverside setting to reflect on the year, reconnect with colleagues and strengthen ties across the Queensland oil and gas community. The strong turnout and positive atmosphere marked a confident close to the year as the sector looks forward to a successful 2026.
Guests enjoyed an evening of celebration against the stunning Brisbane River backdrop.
The annual ASEG-PESA golf classic event was held on 4th December in glorious weather at Wanneroo Golf club where nearly 92 golfers turned out to compete for glory and prizes.
We are happy to announce that the results were:
Team Winners
1st – Kurt Chambers, Rodger Edgecombe, Murray Burling, Blair Berglin
2nd – John Coffin, Peter Chia, Darren Lee and Edward Coffin
3rd – Alex Karvelas, Kevin Moran. Aaron Pederson, Adam Vonk
Individual Winners
Nearest to Pin sponsored by Xcalibur – Greg Turner
Nearest to Pin sponsored by Delft Inversion – David Christianson
Nearest to Pin sponsored by NRG – Aaron Pederson
John Kaldi, President of SA/NT branch was delighted to be able to honour some of their long standing members with certificates to mark the achievement.
Anthony Western of Santos gave the SA/NT Branch a very interesting and informative talk on“Moomba CCS – delivering a world leading CO 2 storage project”.
The Moomba Carbon Capture and Storage project is a large-scale CCS project at the MoombaGas Plant in the Cooper Basin, South Australia. New facilities were constructed to capture,dehydrate, transport and permanently store CO 2 emissions that were previously vented toatmosphere, and depleted gas fields were selected as the initial storage reservoirs. Five newinjection wells were drilled, and existing wells were re-purposed as monitoring wells to enable theMonitoring and Verification (M&V) plan including environmental assurance monitoring.
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.
Henry Posamentier presented a 2-day course in Perth on 6-7th November at PanPacific. His workshop delivered a masterclass on seismic stratigraphy and seismicgeomorphology and was based on Henry’s over 50 years of global experience andpioneering work in developing the contemporary approach to sequence stratigraphicanalyses. This attracted 18 attendees.
He also spoke at Faradays in Perth on evening of 6 th November.
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...
The Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (SA/NT) branch hosted Henry Posamentier on the 3 and 4 November 2025 when he presented both a 2-day workshop and a luncheon meeting. His workshop and luncheon presentation delivered a masterclass on seismic stratigraphy and seismic geomorphology and was based on Henry’s over 50 years of global experience and pioneering work in developing the contemporary approach to sequence stratigraphic analyses, integrating sedimentology, stratigraphy, and depositional systems analysis.
The workshop attracted 26 registered attendees and the lunch presentation even more with an additional 24 registered.