How can AAPG create and deliver value to its members, volunteers, customers, the oil and gas industry, and to society? After all, that’s why we exist as an organization. But what is value, anyway?
How can AAPG create and deliver value to its members, volunteers, customers, the oil and gas industry, and to society? After all, that’s why we exist as an organization.
But what is value, anyway?
Ultimately, it is a subjective assessment of “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth or usefulness of something.”
The perception of value is going to vary from person to person, but our job as an association seeking to be indispensable to the petroleum geologist is to innovate and try new things, looking for those areas where the interest and response from our members, customers and other stakeholders demonstrate that we’re delivering value to a significant number of them.
Ultimately, the marketplace tells us whether we’re delivering value.
Evaluating AAPG’s activities in terms of value, then, yields a useful metric to determine where to place emphasis and efforts. The Association should allocate its resources – both financial and human – to deliver maximum value and impact to achieve its mission.
One emphasis that AAPG has had in recent years is multi-disciplinary integration.
As geologists we do this naturally, integrating disciplines such as tectonics and structure, sedimentology and stratigraphy, geophysics, geochemistry and engineering – the list goes on and on – in our search for oil and natural gas. But as discipline-specific silos have broken down within exploration and production companies, the need to cross-train “interpreters” provides AAPG with a significant opportunity to deliver value to oil and gas professionals.
AAPG has been intentional in pursuing these collaborations across several disciplines. The Geophysical Integration committee is one example. The new Petroleum Structure and Geomechanics Division is another.
And several years ago AAPG and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) established an ad hoc cooperation committee, chaired by past SEG president Bill Barkhouse and past AAPG president Lee Billingsley, to identify specific opportunities for two of the largest professional geoscience organizations to work together to create value.
That was the focus of the third AAPG-SEG leadership summit, held last month in Houston. This annual event gives a group of SEG Board members and AAPG Executive Committee members an opportunity to sit together and discuss ways to bridge the disciplines of geology and geophysics.
As our leaders engaged in these talks, they were building upon a successful foundation:
- In late 2011, SEG joined AAPG and SPE in the creation of the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference, successfully launched in August 2013, and designed specifically as a new multi-disciplinary research conference.
- Since 2012 the AAPG and SEG Middle East offices in Dubai are co-located, enabling better coordination of our activities in the region.
- Last year, SEG and AAPG jointly launched Interpretation, a new quarterly peer-reviewed journal focusing on subsurface interpretation. The third edition was delivered to subscribers last month, and is available both in electronic format and in print. Visit the AAPG website and search “Interpretation” for more information.
At the second leadership summit, held in February 2013, AAPG and SEG leaders signed a Memorandum of Understanding pledging cooperation.
This year’s discussion expanded on that theme, with the group discussing the opportunities to collaborate on joint meetings with the goals of:
- Integrating multidisciplinary geoscience content.
- Reinforcing the relevance of geosciences in exploration and production.
- Delivering value to our members, customers and other stakeholders.
Getting two independent organizations with unique and established cultures to successfully work together, both at the leadership and staff levels, requires trust and coordination. So, it was gratifying that the week following the third leadership summit, both AAPG President Lee Krystinik and SEG President Don Steeples met again in Tulsa with the respective staff leaders to continue the conversation and demonstrate their engagement with this collaboration.
The current issue of EXPLORER focuses on seismic advances. As you read the articles you may have been inspired to seek more information about a particular geophysical topic, or realized that there’s a big question out there that remains unanswered.
Those are the kind of ideas we’re looking for, so please share them. It may be a perfect opportunity for AAPG and SEG to work together to deliver more value to you in your quest to find oil and gas.
Value. It’s the measurement of how well we’re serving you.