Sadly, we bid farewell to Chris Porter a geologist with over 60 years’ experience in the petroleum industry, who passed away in Adelaide recently. Chris received a BSc (Honours) in Geology from the University of Adelaide in 1961, and a MSc in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 1968. Chris’ first job was as a geophysical “jug hustler" on seismic crews in New South Wales, West Texas and the swamps of Louisiana. His career progressed with companies including Australian Aquitaine, Phillips Petroleum, Western Mining (WMC) and Santos Limited.
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SA Branch host Henry Posamentier
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.
PESA QLD Student & Early Career Meets Industry Night
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.
PESA WA Technical talk and Core Workshop with Brian Willis
PESA WA October Technical Evening Talk —
By Matt Fittall
A core group of PESA geoscientists gathered at The Globe on the evening of October 2nd to learn about the impact of new numerical modelling of deposition in wave influenced deltas in the interpretation of deltaic sequences and their facies distributions. Dr Willis and his co-workers showed how this work challenges the paradigm of a prograding equilibrium shoreface profile and a gradual upward- coarsening facies progression with a sharp-based shoreface succession generated by a relative sea-level fall.
In his presentation Brian Willis demonstrated that differences in...
PESA WA October Technical Lunch — Fault Timing & Depocentre Development in the Northern Perth Basin
The Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (PESA WA) held its October Technical Lunch on 16 October 2025 Parmelia Hilton Perth, featuring a presentation by Chris Watts. The event attracted around 50 attendees from across the upstream sector, including representatives from Shell, Woodside, Santos, Chevron, and other leading energy companies in the Perth Basin.Chris delivered an informative and well-structured presentation highlighting the geological evolution of the Northern Perth Basin and the implications for exploration and resource development. His talk generated strong interest and engagement among participants.
WA YP event
PESA hosted a very successful YP event after the Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference (AEGC) conference in Perth in September jointly with AIG, SPE and ASEG.
With over 70 attendees from both Perth and interstate, it was a wonderful evening of networking with both familiar and new faces.
A big thank you to our panellists who all volunteered their time after a packed week presenting at the conference: Ishtar Barranco (CCS Geologist, Chevron), Donna Sewell (Consulting Geologist, AIG WA Brach Chair) and Richard Lilly (Exploration Geologist, The University of Adelaide)
Vale Rowley Butters
Article prepared by Don Poynton who first met Rowley in 1972
(Accompanying photo from PESA News No 75, April/May 2005)
PESA Meritorious Service Awardee, Rowley Edward Butters passed away peacefully on Sunday 12 October, aged 87.
In the April/May 2005 issue of PESA News, newly elected PESA Federal President Dave Cliff wrote, “The biggest change for PESA will be the retirement of Rowley Butters as the society’s Secretariat. Rowley has been with the organization since its inception as the APEA Profession Division in 1968 when he was press-ganged into being WA Branch Treasurer”.
Rowley joined the industry as accountant with WAPET in the mid-1960s.
AEGC 2025 – Another Success for the Co-Convening Societies
PESA were thrilled to welcome nearly 1400 participants to the Australian Exploration Geoscience Conference (AEGC) 2025 in Perth at the beginning of September across the exhibition, technical program and training courses offered.
The conference is the largest geoscience conference in Australia and is hosted by AIG, PESA and ASEG. Originally developed in response to member feedback that they would like a collaborative event, the current format evolved from the 2016 ASEG-PESA Geophysics conference.
Geopitch Winner Courtney Berry Reflects on AEGC Experience
The PESA AEGC Student Travel Bursaries have been designed to provide financial assistance to students and early career geoscientists to attend the AEGC by helping to cover travel expenses and conference registration fees. Open to PESA members giving an oral, poster or Geopitch competition presentation, they offer a member per state the chance to attend this conference for a significantly reduced price.
This year, Courtney Berry, a student at Curtin University currently based in Brisbane was one of the lucky winners of the award. Read on to hear more about Courtney’s experience at AEGC.
“The highlight of my AEGC experience in Perth this year was taking part in the GeoPitch competition.
VIC/TAS Meeting Updates
PESA VIC/TAS branch is actively working on its schedule of meetings and will bring some in-house events to the membership ASAP. Meanwhile, some of the branch membership are able to access meetings of our sister geoscience societies in Melbourne. On Friday 10th October, a few PESA Victorians attended the SPE lunchtime talk given by the SPE Distinguished Lecturer Mike Byrne, of Elemental Energies. Mike spoke on the topic of CO2 injection well design with the subtitle "The same, but different".