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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PESA Qld Members 2024 Christmas Party in Pictures
By Sue Slater and Sarah Harris
On the first Friday of December, the Queensland Branch has held its annual Christmas Lunch at Brisbane’s Stamford Plaza, MC’d by Sue. A great day was had by all attendees.
Thanks to all our loyal sponsors, we couldn’t run this event without them. Velseis Seismic, Oceania Geo, Realtime Seismic and Comet Ridge, with lucky door prizes provided by Terrex Seismic. The annual oil price was sponsored by Clean Planet and won by Mike Bucknill and the Christmas table trivia was sponsored by ERC and won by Lindsay Horn.
QLD Student and Early Career Mixer
Despite the heavy rain, October’s joint-industry Student & Early Career Mixer was a huge hit with budding and established geologists alike, who made their way to Milton for industry networking opportunities.
The event attracted almost 100 attendees with a roughly even split between students, early careers geoscientists and established professionals.
The night’s youngest attendee, Ben Walker (who also happens to be the son of PESA Qld’s President), was the lucky recipient of one of the networking bingo rock prizes – a quartz geode from Morocco.
A big thanks to PESA Qld’s Kat Gioseffi and Martin Mackinlay for their help in organising the successful industry-collaborative event.
“Energy Unearthed” – PESA QLD Symposium
Authors: Kat Gioseffi, Fernando Valencia Fermin
In early September, several Santos technical staff attended the 2024 PESA QLD Symposium. Ten students submitted posters and over 90 delegates attended the full day event at the Brisbane Conference and Exhibition Centre. Themed “Energy Unearthed”, speakers and posters covered a diverse array of topics including:
Several Keynote speakers discussed the importance of natural gas in supporting global decarbonisation and natural gases position in maintaining Australia’s energy security. These speakers referenced the Future Gas Strategy released earlier this year recognising essential role natural gas plays in Net Zero 2050.
WA Christmas Lunch
PESA WA branch held its annual Christmas event and AGM on Thursday 12th December at the Parmelia Hilton Hotel. There were 150 members registered for the event.
The WA Branch President, Adam Craig welcomed everyone to the event and opened the AGM with a thankyou to all the sponsors who support PESA and without whom PESA would not be able to run its events for its members.
Adam presented a summary of the years events run by the branch; including the luncheon and evening technical series presentations, the webinars, YP and SSIG events, the golf day and the 'Spring Fling' social event.
Adam presented the financials for the WA branch and there was much laughter from the floor as the financials show a near miss 'balanced budget' for 2024.
WA PESA-ASEG Golf day 15th November
The annual ASEG-PESA golf classic event was held on 15th November in glorious weather at Meadow springs where nearly 100 golfers turned out to compete for glory and prizes.
A new game was played with the Charity hole this year. As in previous years each player paid a donation to the charity to be able to compete to get nearer to the pin than the "pro". But as an added twist this year it was possible to pay an additional sum to the charity in order to "compromise" the pro.
Kingia Play Comes Fuerst as Alex Packs Perth into the Shoe Box for Technical Evening Talk
Fiona Burns
On Thursday 21st November PESA WA hosted a well-attended technical evening talk at the Shoe Bar in Perth. Over 40 people gathered to hear Alex Fuerst, Senior Geologist at Molyneaux Advisors, deliver a very interesting presentation entitled “Top seal and compartmentalisation in the Kingia Play, implications for porosity preserving plays”.
Top seal and compartmentalisation in the Kingia Play, implications for porosity preserving plays”.Alex’s talk focused on the complexity of the Kingia play with regard to compartmentalisation.
Field Trip: From a Carbonate Ramp to Siliciclastic Fluvio-Deltaics in a Tectonically Active Delamerian Cambrian rift. Seismic-Scale Depositional Systems in Outcrop Field Trip
On a glorious spring weekend members and friends of the SA/NT Branch were able to participate in a self-drive field trip led by Rhodri Johns and Elinor Alexander. This was a joint field trip with PESA SA/NT, GSA and the Field Geology Club of Adelaide. It was an opportunity to investigate the Cambrian evolution of South Australia through spectacular seismic scale coastal exposures along the west coast of the Fleurieu peninsula.
Although a two-day field trip participants had the option of participating in either or both days.
The first day was spent examining the carbonate ramp deposits of the Sellick Hill Formation and the clastic turbidites of the Carrickalinga Head Formation at Myponga and Carrickalinga.
QLD Branch Unveils New Look for QLD SYmposium
Attendees at this year’s PESA QLD Branch Symposium were first to see items featuring thenewly rebranded PESA Symposium artwork, designed by Leah Cummins of Bunya Designs.Leah, had an extensive career at Origin Energy, is now producing art through her ownbusiness www.bunyadesigns.com.au. Leah is a proud Mayi woman from North-WesternQueensland and described the meaning of new-look PESA QLD symposium artwork asfollows; “The large circles represent the states and territories, the contour lines represent thland and ocean, the kangaroo feet represent moving forward never backwards.”Judging by attendee feedback on the day, the new branding looks to be a success!
Queensand’s Kat Gioseffi Receives PESA Meritorious Service Award
PESA (Qld) Branch committee member and Santos Geologist, Katherine (Kat) Gioseffi, was the successful recipient of a PESA Meritorious Service Award (MSA) for 2024 in recognition of her unwavering passion for energy geoscience and her dedication to increasing society participation among early-career graduates.
Kat, who received her MSA at the Australian Energy Producers Conference and Exhibition in Perth in May, was nominated by the PESA (Qld) Branch in recognition of her steadfast pursuit of recruiting and retaining students and young career professionals to the upstream resources industry.
Kat commenced her support of PESA in 2014 as a student member, during which time she was the QUT recipient of the John Draper Award in recognition of her high academic achievement in the fields of sedimentology and stratigraphy.