This Month's Explorer Articles

Three potent forces are buffeting the offshore energy industry in 2024. Thanks to technology, it’s meeting those challenges head on. Offshore operators today face significant demands to reduce or at least contain higher costs and increase efficiency, especially in production operations. At the same time, the industry’s need to build up long-term reserves has pushed offshore exploration toward more remote, frontier prospects. In sports terms, offshore exploration and production companies are like teams struggling with spending caps while also trying to boost their scoring ability.

The most common way to estimate lithology, porosity and fluid content from seismic data is through inversion for acoustic and shear impedances. If properly computed, these impedances can be compared to impedance logs computed by combining sonic, dipole sonic and density logs measured in the well. Crossplotting the well impedance logs with gamma ray, porosity and mineralogy logs provides a rock physics template that can then be applied to the seismically derived impedances, thereby providing 3-D 

For the AAPG Foundation, call it a matter of one good deed deserving another. That good deed was the Foundation’s decision to help sponsor the AAPG Sustainable Development in Energy Competition, a global contest in which students and young professionals conceive and then create energy projects that promote sustainable development within social, environmental and economic impacts. The ”another” good deed? It’s happening again, and it’s happening right now – an encore opportunity for the Foundation to have a global impact through its support of practical, tangible uses of geosciences.

Do you know that feeling when you have done all you can do to mature a prospect, complete your grant application, pitch your ideas to the leadership or client or whatever you do in your professional role – to bring a very large and important project to a decision point? That’s a bit what it feels like for those of us who have been doing our best to reimagine and build a fresh path for AAPG, one that will focus on what members want: energy geoscience advancement and technology sharing, networking, career advancement opportunities and community, all within an updated framework that can bring our finances back into balance.

The Reimagine Committee, formed under the presidency of Steve Goolsby and continued this year, has presented their proposed Bylaws and structural changes to AAPG leadership and the House of Delegates. As you would expect, there is increasing opposition to this plan. Not only because the Constitution and Bylaws are not the cause of AAPG’s problems, but many believe the result of these proposed changes will damage the organization and disenfranchise the membership.

As your AAPG Executive Committee secretary, I ran for office and committed to doing my part in steering AAPG to be a healthy, thriving, professional organization today and in the future. I am passionate about developing an energized pipeline of future geoscientists, of which AAPG is a key enabler through their technical excellence and people. To see these changes happen, AAPG needs a fundamental shift, which is why I am very excited that we are ready to present the culmination of years of work to do just that through Reimagine AAPG.