November 2014

As our profession and our industry has become even more global, our AAPG family has expanded to include members from 128 different countries, and our international membership now comprises more than 40 percent of our total membership. As that statistic would suggest, today’s demographics of AAPG members are quite diverse.

The process of innovation is full of uncertainty, false starts and failure. It demands a level of determination and faith that balances on a knife’s edge between genius and foolishness. It sounds an awful lot like exploration. And as we’ve shown throughout this issue of the EXPLORER, innovation is at the heart of the process of finding and producing oil and natural gas.

Over the past year or so we have observed strong evidence that nuclear power is into a new expansion period.

Depending on the seismic data quality and either the presence or lack of isolated strong reflectors, identifying horizons can be a trivial exercise or a challenging problem.

In the age of 3-D seismic and digitized well logs, the value of cores and other rock samples may not be obvious. But benefits like those noted by the AAPG in 1948 and described in a 2002 National Research Council report and a recent congressional hearing continue to demonstrate the value of properly archived subsurface samples and data.

The relatively recent, very large discoveries offshore Brazil have put pre-salt exploration in the South Atlantic back in the foreground. Pre-salt exploration history, however, is far more ancient and marked with some major successes – but also many failures. Here’s a brief overview of this exploration in West Africa until the M’Boundi discovery, which will be described in detail as it brings some lessons that readers can discover for themselves.

Since establishment of AAPG Africa in 2000, the Region’s leadership teams over the years have shown strong commitment and passion toward the Association achieving its goals for the region. Their dedicated efforts have resulted in not only an increased awareness of AAPG, but also steady growth of the Region’s membership, from 450 in 1999 to over 3,060 in June 2014.

Sometimes, it IS a good idea to mix business with pleasure. Members of the AAPG Foundation Trustee Associates met for the group’s annual meeting recently at the Barton Creek resort in the foothills of Texas Hill Country in Austin, Texas.