Regions and sections
ICE Cape Town
Nearly 2,000 people took part in the third largest AAPG International Conference and Exhibition in Cape Town, South Africa in October, 2008. Twenty percent of the registrants were from Europe who enjoyed the warm sunshine, 12 field trips or day excursions, over 600 technical presentations, 15 short courses, live music, complementary wine tastings and one of the largest core workshops ever organized. The event was held at the modern Cape Town International Conference Centre near the world famous V&AWaterfront of Cape Town. There were five themes, mirroring the Big 5 “animals” of the African Safari, but the key theme was the deep water turbidites symbolized by the “Elephant.” There were two field trips to the Karoo, one to Namibian deep water deposits, a short course, and a keynote oral and poster session every day that overflowed a 500 seat auditorium. Every day during the conference the Deep Water Core Workshop was open to all registrants with about 500m of cores from deep water deposits from four different African countries laid out with logs and seismic on display.
The conference was opened by keynote speeches from the General Chair, Mr. Sipho Mkhize of PetroSA; AAPG President Dr. Scott Tinker; and Dr. Duncan Clarke who gave different views of the global perspective of the oil industry and Africa. The session also included presentation of a lifetime achievement award to Dr. Frank Brown by the Geological Society of South Africa for his work on the Petroleum Systems of South Africa and a fantastic musical performance by the South Africa Youth Choir.
The three days of the technical conference flew by with many special events, The plenary session, the Lusi Mud Volcano debate (highlighted in the AAPG Explorer), the first ever AAPG PUBLIC forum on Global Climate Change with four Nobel Prize winning authors speaking to a large audience on the real facts of science, six concurrent sessions every day, and a special day onWednesday where all of the Energy Minerals Division talks and posters were featured together. In the end, we all enjoyed a long dinner/ dance party hosted by PetroSA with two live bands that really jived to the Cape Town beat.
Jeff Aldrich was the General Vice Chair of the meeting and Chief Geologist of PetroSA. He has now relocated from South Africa to the European Region where he is Executive Vice President of Exploration, Greenpark Energy, Chesterfield, U.K.