Lecture season begins in October

DL Speakers Announced for N.A. Tours

By VERN STEFANIC, EXPLORER Managing Editor

Seven speakers, representing the latest in geoscience research, geologic understanding and practical applications, have been named for the North American tours of this year’s AAPG Distinguished Lecture program.

The lecture season will begin with two tours in October and continue through next spring. International Distinguished Lecturers are yet to be announced.

AAPG’s Distinguished Lecture program, funded largely by the AAPG Foundation, is the Association’s flagship initiative for spreading the latest in science, technology and professional information.

North American speakers take two tours during the season, one going to eastern locales and one to western locales. Each tour lasts about two weeks.

Last year’s tours (North American and international) attracted 11,077 attendees to a total of 169 lectures.

This year’s roster once again will include talks that vary widely in subject content, from the Marcellus Shale to tight-gas sandstone reservoirs to coastal facies models to mud volcanoes in offshore Eastern Trinidad.

The speaker list to date includes experts from both industry and academia – and features the delayed tour of speaker Steve Cumella, this year’s Haas-Pratt Distinguished Lecturer.

Cumella, geologist with Bill Barrett Corp., in Denver, was unable to complete his tour last year due to various conflicts.

The Haas-Pratt lecture is a domestic tour provided by contributions from the late Merrill W. Haas, in honor of famed geologist (and Haas’ mentor) Wallace Pratt. The funding is granted for a lecture of an applied nature dealing with the exploration and discovery history of a field, or a subject having economic implications.

Cumella will offer two lectures:

• “Geology of the Giant Continuous Gas Accumulation in the Mesaverde Group, Piceance Basin, Colorado.”
• “Important Characteristics of Rocky Mountain Tight Gas Accumulations.”

He will tour eastern North American sites Dec. 6-17, and western North American sites Feb. 28-11.

There are two other specially funded speakers:

♦ Matthew D. Jackson, senior lecturer in geological fluid mechanics and reservoir engineering, Imperial College, London, England, is this year’s Allan P. Bennison lecturer.

The Bennison DL is an international lecturer who makes a U.S. tour, funded by contributions from the late Allan Bennison, a long-time Tulsa geologist.

He is offering two lectures:

• “From Outcrop Analog to Flow Simulation: Understanding the Impact of Geologic Heterogeneity on Hydrocarbon Production.”
• “Integrating Production Geoscience and Engineering: Can Smart Wells Mitigate Uncertain Reservoir Behavior?”

His tour dates are Nov. 8-19 and March 14-25.

♦ Joann E. Welton, senior research associate at ExxonMobil’s Upstream Research Lab in Houston, is this year’s J. Ben Carsey lecturer.

The Carsey lecture is an annual domestic tour provided by contributions from J. Ben Carsey Jr. of Houston, to establish a named lecturer in memory of his father, who served as AAPG president in 1967-68.

Welton will offer two talks:

• “Evaluating Siliciclastic Reservoir Quality in a Changing World.”
• “Grain Coats on the Brazos: Using Modern Studies to Understand the Origin of Porosity-Preserving Early Clay Grain Coats.”

She will tour western North American sites Nov. 8-19, and eastern North American sites Jan. 31-Feb. 11.

Other North America lecturers this season include:

♦ Scott A. Barboza, research scientist and team leader, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Co., Houston. He will offer two lectures:

• “Mud Volcanoes: A Dynamic Model Motivated by Observations Offshore Eastern Trinidad.”
• “Consequences of Multiple Phases of Tertiary Uplift and Erosion on the Thermal Evolution of Mesozoic Source Rocks, North Slope – Chukchi Sea, Alaska.”

His tours are Oct. 25-Nov. 5 (eastern North America) and Jan. 31-Feb. 11 (western North America).

♦ Ron Boyd, principal geologist for the stratigraphy and quantitative modeling group, ConocoPhillips Subsurface Technology, Houston. He will offer two lectures:

• “A One-Way Ticket From Antarctica to the Tasman Abyssal Plain via the Great Barrier Reef – Sediment Dispersal on the Eastern Australian Margin.”
• “Coastal Facies Models.”

His tours are Nov. 1-12 (western North America) and Feb. 7-18 (eastern North America).

♦ James L. Coleman Jr., director of the Eastern Energy Resources Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va. He will offer three lectures:

• “Tight-Gas Sandstone Reservoirs: The 200-Year Path From Unconventional to Conventional Gas Resource and Beyond.”
• “Examination of Potential Factors Affecting Successful Exploration and Production of Devonian Marcellus Shale Gas, Eastern United States.”
• “Tight-Gas Sandstone Reservoirs: 25 Years of Searching for ‘The Answer.’”

His tours are Jan. 10-21 (eastern North American) and Feb. 14-25 (western North America).

♦ Donald Arthur Medwedeff, consulting research scientist, Chevron Energy Technology Co., San Ramon, Calif.

Medwedeff’s lecture is titled “Insight in Lieu of Truth: An Approach to Probabilistic Fault Seal Analysis.”

His tours are Oct. 11-22 (western North America) and March 7-18 (eastern North America).

For more information on the speakers, their tours or the DL program go online to www.aapg.org.

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