Abstracts Sought for Melbourne ICE

The call for abstracts is open for the next AAPG International Conference and Exhibition (ICE) – a meeting that will be historic on many levels.

ICE 2015 will be held Sept. 13-16 in the beautiful city of Melbourne, Australia – the first time ever AAPG has used that city as a setting for ICE. The meeting will be hosted by the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia.

But another historic part is this: It will be the first-ever ICE that will be co-presented by AAPG and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG).

The meeting’s theme is “A Powerhouse Emerges: Energy for the Next 50 Years” – a perfect theme, organizers say, because of both the AAPG | SEG union as well as the marking of the 50th anniversary of the Gippsland Basin oil discovery, which unlocked Australasian market activity.

Abstracts can be submitted online. Technical program co-chairs Pete McCabe, of the University of Adelaide, and Steve Mackie, with Santos, said their goal is to build an exciting program of talks, posters, short courses and field trips that focus on recent advances in petroleum geology and geophysics.

“Although the conference will be worldwide in scope, particular attention will be paid to the petroleum potential of the Asia-Pacific region,” McCabe said, “including sessions on unconventional reservoirs of the region and new and emerging E&P provinces in China, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

“Of particular interest,” he added, “will be a session on the Great Australian Bight, a large frontier basin offshore South Australia, that is an area of very active exploration by several international companies.”

In addition to the general sessions, the technical program also will feature three special symposia:

♦ The Reg Sprigg Memorial symposium will be a look back and forward for Australia’s major petroleum provinces – the Gippsland Basin, Cooper Basin and Northwest Shelf, each celebrating 50 years of exploration and production.

Reg Sprigg (1919-94) was a key Australian petroleum geologist who figured in the establishment of both Santos and Beach Energy, which have been critical in the discovery and development of natural gas in the Cooper Basin in central Australia.

♦ A second symposium honors the career of Marita Bradshaw, who recently retired from Geoscience Australia, Australia’s geological survey, after a career of more than 30 years in petroleum geology.

“Marita has been a tireless advocate of Australia’s petroleum potential,” McCabe said, “and has always been willing to share her deep knowledge of Australia’s sedimentary basins and petroleum systems.”

This symposium will focus on the paleogeographic evolution of Australia through time and its relationship to petroleum accumulations.

♦ The third symposium, on Eastern Australasian Basins (EABS), will be coordinated by PESA and will feature recent advances in our understanding of petroleum basins along Australia’s eastern margin and across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand.

EABS and the Western Australian Basin Symposium (WABS), alternately held biannually by PESA, form the key up-to-date discussions of the petroleum basins on the Australian plate.

The remaining 18 technical program themes are:

• CO2 Storage.
• Carbonates.
• Environment, Regulation and Social License to Operate.
• Geochemistry and Basin Modelling.
• Geophysics.
• Getting More out of Mature Basins.
• Mineralogy.
• New and Emerging E&P Provinces/Australia-New Zealand.
• New and Emerging E&P Provinces/South East Asia.
• Petroleum Systems.
• Petrophysics.
• Sedimentology.
• Stratigraphy and Applied Palaeontology.
• Structure and Tectonics.
• Technologies for Unlocking the Future.
• Unconventional Reservoirs.
• Worldwide Frontiers – China.
• Worldwide Frontiers – Other.

The abstract submission deadline is Jan. 15.

To submit an abstract, or for more information, contact Terri Duncan, technical programs coordinator, at (918) 560-2641.

Visit this meeting's website to learn more about submitting an abstract, availability of exhibition space and sponsorship opportunities.