Letter from the General Chair
Join Us in Cape Town, South Africa
Sipho MkHizeGeneral Chair
It is indeed an honor to invite you to join AAPG and the Geological Society of South Africa at the 2008 International Conference and Exhibition in Cape Town, South Africa. The Organizing Committee has created a unique program that provides world-class training, education and innovative technical presentations combined with one of the best tourist cities on the planet.
“AFRICAN ENERGY, GLOBAL IMPACT” is the slogan for this conference and this comes out in many facets. While there is a large part of the technical program that uses examples from the African oil and gas experience to bring lessons of global importance, this conference also looks at the larger issues of worldwide energy resources, the technology employed to image and extract them, the people it takes to successfully commercialize those reserves and how to minimize the impact on the environment in the process.
There are five themes, mirroring the “Big Five” of an African Safari:
- Deepwater reservoirs will be examined in multiple field trips, short courses, oral and poster sessions and a special core workshop. Examples from throughout the world, both modern and ancient, will be highlighted in our Elephant Theme.
- The best of recent advances in geosciences and related disciplines is our second theme where there are multiple sessions on recent advances in carbonates, stratigraphic and diagenetic modelling, geochemistry and reservoir modelling, to name just a few. There are short courses and field trips to complete this theme as well, which you will find well-marked by the Leopard motif.
- New technology is emphasized in the Rhino theme with specialists from industry and academia covering a broad range of technical disciplines including many innovative seismic detection and visualization methods, 4-D seismic, CSEM and remote sensing.
- We chose the Lion to represent the New Business of Energy where we combine the non-petroleum aspects of the energy business such as coal, CBM, hydrates as well as the environmental endeavors of our business of CO2 sequestration and remediation. The AAPG’s Energy Minerals Division and the Division of Environmental Geoscience voted to support this meeting by helping organize sessions.
- The final theme is the regional sessions of both Africa and the rest of the world under the category of Gondwanan and Pangean Petroleum Systems. Over 100 basins are profiled with the latest discoveries and developments. Follow the Cape Buffalo graphics to exciting talks on what your competitors are doing and learn from their recent exploration successes and challenges.
Cape Town in October is the height of our spring, the perfect time to visit “the fairest Cape” and discover our first-class hotels, the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and World Heritage sites of Table Mountain and Robben Island. In fact, six of the top 10 South African tourist attractions are within an hour of the convention center.
I encourage you to consider extending your trip for a once-in-a-lifetime experience by combining your stay with a trip to the world-famous Kruger Game Park or a Golf and Winelands tour or any number of our fantastic tourist opportunities.
We look forward to greeting you, engaging you and sharing our wonderful city with you this October.
Sipho Mkhize
General Chair