The pre-registration deadline may have passed, but there's still time to make plans to attend the VNIGRI/AAPG regional international conference, set July 15-18 in a city that is among the most beautiful and most "European" cities in all of Russia.

The VNIGRI/AAPG conference, built on the theme "Exploration and Production Operations in Difficult and Sensitive Areas," will be held in St. Petersburg, a treasure of world culture that lies close to areas of hot petroleum potential.

The conference's technical program will focus largely on the arctic and icy conditions that await explorers in this compelling and challenging region -- in both geologic and environmental terms. More than 85 papers and about 120 posters will deal with clastic and carbonate reservoirs and hydrocarbon systems in extensional, compressional and transform settings. The newest estimations of oil and gas reserves and resources in the Arctic will also be discussed.

Another highlight are the three field trips that are being offered -- one pre-meeting, two post-meeting -- that will visit regions of great geologic interest and scenic beauty.

The trips are:

• "Natural Bitumens and Heavy Oil Deposits and Permian Sequence Stratigraphy of Volgo-Ural Petroleum Province, Tatarstan," which runs July 10-14. Participants will take a three-day boat trip along the most picturesque places of the Volga River, viewing classic key sequences of the Permian petroleum-bearing formation used for developing the methods of sequence-stratigraphy.

• "Petroleum Potential of Paleozoic Deposits, Timan-Pechora Petroleum Basin," which runs July 20-24. On this trip, participants will visit the unique oil mines of the giant Yarega Field, observe oil-saturated Middle and Upper Devonian sandstone horizons and learn about the original mine technology of heavy oil production. Another highlight: Observing classic outcrops of Domanic source rocks and Devonian reefs, Paleozoic core samples and the region's wonderful beauty.

• "Lower Paleozoic of the St. Petersburg Region," which runs July 19. This one-day excursion visits outcrops of the Lower Ordovician and Cambrian carbonate rocks, glauconite sands and black shales of the St. Petersburg region -- and a trip to the famous Sablino stalactite caves.

Click here for more information or contact the AAPG convention department.

Editor's note: This column is devoted to international items of note to the AAPG.

News items, press releases and other information should be submitted to the EXPLORER/International Bulletin Board, P.O. Box 979, Tulsa, Okla. 74101; telephone – 918-560-2616; fax – 918-560-2685; or e-mail – dfree@aapg.org.

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