April 2012
Honors & Awards
Distinguished Member of the House
Citation: To George Eynon, for his distinguished and unselfish service to AAPG, his unmitigated contributions to the geological community, and for his impeccable and professional integrity.
George grew up in northwest London and developed a love of the outdoors from his years in Scouting. He spent his weekends cycling, hiking, camping and hostelling in the Chiltern Hills, the Essex and Sussex coasts, Wales, the Lake District, Devon, and the Yorkshire and Derbyshire dales. He saw most of the geological column without knowing too much about it. George read geology and geography at the University of London to fill in the many details he had missed the first time around.
George taught high school in London after earning his B.Sc. and then undertook graduate studies at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario. Armed with his M.Sc. he had to choose between doing a Ph.D. at Oxford with Harold Reading and being paid by Amoco in Calgary.
He certainly made the right choice! Within a few months of arriving in Calgary George married Joyce Patricia Lord, an innovative school teacher, who has kept him grounded for the past 39 years. They have two lovely daughters, Tirian and Tamsyn.
George is currently a Board Member with the Energy Resources Conservation Board, of which he was appointed in early 2008. The ERCB is the oil and gas regulator, overseeing the development of Alberta’s hydrocarbon resources: ensuring public safety, and balancing the need for protecting the environment, resource conservation, orderly development, and technical innovation. George is the Chair of the ERCB Regulatory Committee, sits on the Governance Committee, and is Board liaison for several staff regulatory development teams. In the Board’s role he sits as a public hearing panel member, thus adjudicating oil and gas applications disputes. Another significant part of his role is advocating for appropriate regulation of the upstream oil & gas across North America and Europe, consulting with foreign delegations.
George notes that he could not perform as a regulator effectively without the whole gamut of experience from his career and volunteering with his professional associations.
Prior to the ERCB, George was with the Canadian Energy Research Institute — an energy economics think tank — and before that he provided consulting services worldwide to the oil & gas sector, governments, and financial community through GEOS Consulting, Ziff Energy, and Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
For the first 20-plus years of his career George worked in upstream oil & gas in increasingly senior technical, managerial and executive positions with a number of companies.
In the early ‘90s he completed an “MBA-in-a-semester” — the MIT Sloan School Senior Executive Program — a 24/7 thirteen-week development program that helped recharge and reshape his career.
George believes that geology has given him so much that it has been easy to give back to his professional associations and community. (He readily admits that he is only trying to keep up with Joyce in all her activities). Besides AAPG, George is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA), and Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, and has held senior positions in all three.
George remembers his first significant involvement with AAPG extremely well: he was the General Chair of the 1992 annual convention in Calgary.
Since that time he has volunteered countless hours serving on various AAPG and House committees: Conventions, International Liaison, Executive, Advisory Council, International Representation, Constitution & Bylaws Amendment Procedure, Honors & Awards, Nominations, Constitution & Bylaws, and he was Chair of the AAPG House of Delegates in 2004. George was awarded AAPG Honorary Lifetime Membership in 2008.
George’s hobbies include reading, music, bike riding, golf and painting. He is an accomplished watercolorist and is an Associate of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colours.
Anything he has accomplished in his career and life he attributes to a handful of truly amazing people he has been privileged to work with and learn from: Roger Walker, Richard Hardman, Clay Riddell, Doc Seaman and Dan Yergin… but mostly Joyce.