President’s Message
David R. Cook
AAPG European Region President
Dear Readers,
It’s been all change in the European Council this year as Istvan Berczi mentioned in the previous issue. I would particularly like to thank John Brooks, the outgoing Past President, for his six dedicated years on the committee and Stuart Harker who has finished his term as Advisory Council Representative. Steve Veal, Director of the London Office, has returned to the US and we will miss his creativity and enthusiasm which have influenced European activities immensely over the past few years. We welcome his replacement, Jeremy Richardson, who joins us from Pennwell Corporation and wish him well in his new assignment.
One of my objectives, during my term as President, is to promote the services of the AAPG to the membership. I often have the impression that members do not know what is available to them and that the AAPG could do a better job in advertising the benefits, products and services of membership. Always keep an eye on both the AAPG and European Regions websites for information about future events.
In Europe, we are aiming to increase educational opportunities. AAPG Distinguished Lecturer, John Kaldi has recently conducted an extensive lecture tour in Europe. John visited nearly 20 locations in 8 countries over the 5 weeks of his tour. We plan further Distinguished Lecture and Visiting Geoscientist tours in 2010. We are planning an Education Week in Aberdeen in May 2010 providing courses on such diverse subjects as 3D seismic attributes, reservoir engineering for petroleum geologists, pore pressure prediction, integrated stratigraphic analysis and basic open-hole log interpretation.
In January our Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) competition kicks into action. University teams throughout Europe will be sent seismic and well datasets from various worldwide basins in order to conduct an evaluation of their exploration potential. The teams will meet in Prague at the end of March in order to present the results of their evaluations to a panel of industry experts. The winning team will take part in the global competition which will take place at the AAPG Annual Convention in New Orleans, in April. At the Prague event Student Chapter Presidents will be invited to a Leadership Meeting in order to review activities and discuss ways to enhance them and also to see the IBA in action.
The annual European Region Conference will be held at IFP in Rueil Malmaison, Paris on 23rd and 24th November. The topic this year is the revitalisation of exploration in Europe with papers covering both conventional and unconventional oil and gas exploration throughout Europe. During the conference the Annual General Meeting of the Region will take place, the purpose of which is to review the activities of the past year, plans for next year and to provide an opportunity for the membership to ask questions of the Council.
APPEX, the AAPG annual prospect fair will take place at the Design Centre, Islington, London, in early March. This year, it will be preceded by a one-day symposium covering lessons learned from unsuccessful wells.
A Geosciences Technical Workshop on resource assessment in unconventional plays is planned to take place in Istanbul in May 2010. This is a follow-up of the successful workshop on unconventional resources earlier this year. Further GTWs are planned and the European Council would be pleased to hear of any topics of particular interest from the membership.
Kiev is the location of the 2010 Region Conference and the subject is exploration in basins in and around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The conference is being held jointly with the Ukrainian Association of Geologists and we are sure that it will generate a lot of interest in the membership.
As well as these more formal events we are holding a regular series of technical lunches in Aberdeen and London, the latter in association with the Geological Society. These sessions comprise a technical presentation followed by a light lunch.
Last but not least some of the greatest benefits of the AAPG are the publications: the European Newsletter, Explorer, Bulletin and books and memoirs. Our European Editor, Hugo Matias, is always looking for short technical papers for the Newsletter. Gretchen Gillis, AAPG Editor, is always pleased to receive technical papers for the Bulletin.
Finally, I would like to thank the organisations that have sponsored our events over the past year, without this financial support it would be impossible to provide the broad range of activities that we are currently offering.