Sept. 30-Oct. 2

Meet to Explore Polar Potential

Online registration continues for AAPG’s inaugural 3P Polar Petroleum Potential conference, which will provide an intense and comprehensive look at the geology and exploration potential of the entire Pan-Arctic area.

Those who register on or before Sept. 1 will receive big savings – up to 50 Euros – on their registration fee.

The conference, sponsored jointly with RosGeo, will be held Sept. 30-Oct. 2 at Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in Moscow, Russia.

“3P Arctic” is a geological/geophysical conference and exhibition focused on the circum-Arctic basins that are within the Russian, Norwegian, Greenlandic (Danish), Canadian and Alaskan onshore and offshore basins.

The meeting will bring together for the first time the professionals and experts working on these regions, with a technical program comprising 15 sessions, 130 oral presentations and 25 poster sessions.

The conference’s main themes include:

Also being offered is a one-day, pre-conference field trip to the well-known Domodedovo Quarry, about 15 kilometers south of Moscow.

The Domodedovo Quarry is a Middle Pennsylvanian (Moscovian) shallow marine cyclic carbonate succession in central part of the East European Platform.

Participants will be able to observe a 30-plus-meter cyclic succession of Late Carboniferous shallow-water carbonate rocks deposited in a marginal part of a vast epicontinental marine basin that existed over most of the East European Craton 295–312 Ma.

It is a nice example organizers say, of the shallow marine environment of the Late Paleozoic icehouse world, influenced by glacioeustatic fluctuations of sea-level as well as one of the classical sections of international Moscovian Stage abundant in macro- and microfossils.

The Moscovian beds are overlain by lowermost Kasimovian, demonstrating important changes in sedimentation and marine biota during transition from Middle to Upper Pennsylvanian.

The rocks are abundant with brachiopods Choristites, calcareous sponge Chaetetes, colonial tetracoral Petalaxis. The sponges and tetracorals do not cross Moscovian/Kasimovian boundary. Tiny Foraminifera (fusulinids) and phosphatic conodonts as biostratigraphic markers are abundant in some beds. Secondary dolomitization is common feature in the quarry.

Close to the quarry are underground mines with more than 200 kilometers of tunnels excavated in white Moscovian limestones on the right bank of the Pakhra River as early as XV century. These and similar limestones from the Moscow region were used for construction of all Russian orthodoxies churches in Pre-Mongolian period and for walls and houses of the “White Stone” Moscow.

The trip will be led by Alexander Alekseev, geological department professor at Moscow State University. Lunch will be at the Gorki Estate, where the participants can visit the memorial museum and park.

Gorki Estate dates to the end of the 18th century, although the museum was opened in 1949. It holds a unique complex of archaeology, historical and architect monuments and the remains of relict forest.

Meeting information, lodging and visa instructions plus technical program details can be found at the 3P Web site.