By DEBBI BOONSTRA
AAPG Education Coordinator

Winter Conference Returns to Houston

AAPG's second annual Winter Education Conference, which includes 11 different courses over five days, will be held Feb. 14-18 in Houston.

The conference's concept is a retooling of a program AAPG first held in the early 1980s -- one-stop, a la carte shopping for a variety of education opportunities, all in one place at one time.

At this conference there will be four concurrent sessions going on each day -- and the start/stop times for the courses are staggered throughout the week so attendees can attend from two to four courses, depending on their interest and training needs. The courses range from one to three days in length.

"It is like an all-you-can-eat buffet," said Jim Blankenship, AAPG's new geosciences director. "Pay one price, and you have 11 different choices on the menu!"

The debut offering last January drew more than 60 participants, and attendees reported they appreciated being able to take several courses and yet be away from the office for only a week. Others liked that the badges are transferable -- for one full-week paid registration, one person can attend a course early in the week, then pass the badge to a co-worker to attend a course later in the week. Several companies took advantage of this benefit by buying a block of five to 10 registrations, then letting their employees decide who would use them on which days.

While the full-week registration fee of $1,095 for AAPG members ($1,195 for non-members) is a bargain, courses also are priced individually for those that prefer the "a la carte" option.

Among this year's new topics are:

• Practical Salt Tectonics (Mark Rowan).
• Assessment, Classification and Reporting of Reserves (Rawdon Seager, Menno Dinkelman).
• Giant Oil and Gas Fields: Global Inventories, Tectonic Settings, Stratigraphic Framework and Predictive Parameters (Paul Mann, Mike Horn).
• Characterization of Tight Gas Reservoirs (Alan Byrnes).
• Well Log Analysis (Dan Krygowski).
• Log Analysis of Shaly Sands (George Asquith).
• Geochemical Exploration For Oil And Gas -- Strategies For Success (Deet Schumacher).
• Reservoir Engineering/ Characterization for Geologists (Rich Green, Bill Kazmann).

Encore topics from last year are:

• Risk Analysis for Development Applications (Jim Gouveia, Mark McLane and Ray Young).
• Essentials of Subsurface Mapping (Dick Banks).
• Understanding and Predicting Permeability Distribution In Carbonates: The Rock Fabric Approach (Jerry Lucia).

In addition to the courses, a small AAPG Bookstore will be set up to give attendees the opportunity to purchase AAPG books and maps. A welcoming icebreaker is included on the first evening to encourage networking among the attendees from all the courses.

For more information contact the AAPG education department at 1-888-338-3387 (USA only); or at educate@aapg.org.

Complete course descriptions are available online at www.aapg.org/education.