Divisions
Energy Minerals Division
As Energy Minerals Division (EMD) President, Chair of the EMD Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) Committee, Member of the DEG Advisory Board, and Member of the AAPG Advisory Council and Astrogeology Committee, I remain busy implementing the changes in EMD organizational structure and communications with AAPG that were begun last year. These changes included the elimination of EMD dues and increasing AAPG membership benefits made available by the EMD Commodity Committees working with the various AAPG Standing Committees. EMD membership has increased almost 100% (over 3,000 members) just over the past few months by eliminating the EMD dues, by increasing the quality and volume of technical information made available, by engaging AAPG members to participate in AAPG and EMD activities through the new member profile system, and by integrating the goals of EMD, DPA and DEG through a new Web Portal.
What AAPG Means to Me
I joined AAPG in 1972 and was a Founding Member of EMD, created in 1977. The reason I joined was because of the vast amount of geological information made available by AAPG through the AAPG Bulletin and its many memoirs and special papers on topical subjects of interest to me and the companies I worked for over the years. I am not a petroleum geologist, but the information they provide is also useful to me as a mineral exploration and mining geologist and environmental hydrogeologist then and now in I2M Associates, LLC. I continue to build companies, develop projects, provide consulting services, and manage a team of geologists, hydrogeologists, and geophysicists to evaluate, explore, and develop properties for uranium, precious metals, and other commodities combined with managing associated environmental projects in the U.S. and in more than 17 countries over the past 40 years. I continue to provide services in mergers and acquisitions and have served as an expert witness for industry and the legal community, mostly involving oil and gas companies, mining companies, and environmental companies.
I began my professional career with Conoco in Sydney, Australia in the mid-1960s when many oil and gas companies had mineral exploration and mining groups as a logical extension from exploring and developing oil and natural gas. Similar methods, similar tools, similar geological conditions, and similar management philosophies combined geologists into a single force for exploring for the energy and minerals resources throughout the world. My first supervisor in Conoco, Sydney, in the 1960s, my supervisor from United Nuclear, in Casper, in the 1970s, and my supervisor in Keplinger & Associates, Houston, in the 1970s and ‘80s remain an integral part of the I2M Associates consulting practice, testifying to the long relationships generated through the years of being associated with the oil and gas industry and AAPG.