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WA hold joint talk with SPE on CCS topics

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Summary by Dr Fiona Burns

On Thursday evening, 15th May PESA and SPE held a joint evening event at the ParmeliaHotel. The key focus of the presentations were projects and insights from across Australiaon the topic of CCS, with three separate speakers invited.

Robert Root’s talk (Chevron Australia) was entitled “Gorgon Carbon Capture and Storage –Insights and Lessons Learned”. Rob provided a highly informative overview of Gorgon CCSincluding performance to date, system optimization, and key lessons for other CCS projects.

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PESA Queensland Welcomes New Branch Executive

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In June, PESA Queensland held their AGM and welcomed a new executive to lead the branch committee.  

Sue Slater – President

Sue takes on the role of President for the second time, having previously served in the role from 2009-2014. A familiar face to those in Queensland, she has been involved with the branch committee since 2007, organising the technical event program and the annual Symposium through this time. Sue was awarded the PESA Distinguished Member award in 2017 and the Exceptional Woman in Exploration in Qld Resources award in 2019.

Sue knew she wanted to be a geologist at a young age, and studied geology at University of Queensland achieving an MSc qualification.

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WA Lunch talk – all about borehole images

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What you should know about borehole images but were afraid to ask…..Forty years of hard-won lessons’ By Lawrence Bourke

Lawrence Bourke of Task Fronterra Geoscience, one of the founders of image log interpretation, took us on a trip down memory lane, back to the embryonic beginnings of image logs with the with the original 8 button high resolution dipmeter of 40 years ago through the revolution (for geologists) of the high-resolution FMS and FMI micro-resistivity devices in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the PESA WA April technical luncheon.

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WA evening talk on Basin centred gas accumulations

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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).

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Vale Richard (Dick) Paten 21/07/1935 – 23/03/2025

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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.

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PESA WA Lunchtime talk by Leon Nomore

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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.

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Mark Bentley visits WA and gives a course and evening talk

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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.

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2025 SA HICCUP Tournament Summary

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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.

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South Australia branch Lunch

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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.

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Meet the new WA Branch President – Dr Fiona Burns

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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.

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