First AAPG Publication Pipeline Shipment out of Australia
In January 2016, after nearly a year and a half of planning, a small team of current and past students from Adelaide University’s Australian School of Petroleum AAPG Student Chapter sent off their first shipment of petroleum engineering and geoscience journals to students at Dhaka University in Bangladesh as part of the AAPG’s Publication Pipeline Program.
The mission of the Publication Pipeline Program is to improve geoscience education in developing countries by providing used geoscience books, journals and other published material to universities for use by their students and researchers.
In many developing regions, access to textbooks, journal articles and online information utilising physical libraries and online databases is limited. Students in these countries who aspire to be geoscientists are often hindered by a lack of access to information that students elsewhere take for granted. Other AAPG Student Chapters, particularly from the US, have previously supported universities in Argentina, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Trinidad and Venezuela.
Planning for the shipment commenced in early 2014 after a consolidation of the ASP’s library. Many books and journals stored in the library were found to be in excess of the ASP’s needs, such as multiple prints of journals and publications which are freely available online under university library subscriptions. During the library consolidation, boxes of publications such as The Leading Edge, Oil & Gas Journal, Journal of Petroleum Geology, First Break, Geophysics and many others, some dating as far back as the 1970’s, were compiled and catalogued. When word spread about the effort, the ASP community also donated textbooks to the cause.
In mid-2014 during a field trip after the first AAPG conference in Myanmar, Jon Conti (Beach Energy) met then President of the AAPG Publication Pipeline - Jon Blickwede, who shared his experiences with sending shipments of journals overseas to assist student engineers and geoscientists. Upon returning to Adelaide after the conference, it was decided by the student chapter team consisting of John Counts (PhD Candidate, ASP), Sandra Mann (PhD Candidate, ASP), Carmine Wainman (PhD Candidate, ASP), and Jon Conti (then Honours student at the ASP), to attempt a shipment of the ASP’s surplus journals and textbooks to a university in need of these resources. Over the next few months the team, in consultation with the Publication Pipeline committee, organised the growing inventory and set about connecting with a university interested in receiving the shipment.
By July of 2015, the student chapter team had made contact with a small group of Santos employees who had shown interest in sending a shipment of journals to Bangladesh through their Bangladeshi Regional office in Dhaka. The books and journals would make their way through the Santos Bangladesh office en-route to the University of Dhaka, to their new home with Professor Badrul Imam and his students from the Department of Geology. The shipment of journals, weighing in at around 650kg left the Adelaide University campus on the 14th of January and arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh on the 7th of March. The handover was overseen by Mr Giash Ahamed of Santos Sangu Field, who played a pivotal role in organising the sponsorship, import and clearance of the journals into Bangladesh.
As the first of its kind from Australia, this Publication Pipeline shipment represents a significant achievement for a small group of dedicated and persistent people from within the Adelaide oil and gas industry. The shipment highlights one of the ways in which opportunities are available, even during a low oil price environment, to support the development of engineering and geoscience students in our region.
The AAPG Student Chapter team would like to thank Santos’ Steve Mackie, Andrew DeGaris and Emdad Christy for their enthusiasm toward the idea and contribution to organisation of the shipment. Santos’ Bangladeshi General Manager for Supply Chain & Logistics Mr Giash Ahamed was invaluable in organising the sponsorship as well as planning the clearance, delivery and handoff in Bangladesh. Students and staff at the ASP, including Professor Steve Begg, also played a major role in the success of the project, partnering with the student chapter team and assisting with sponsorship, the donation of publications and with the packaging and moving of heavy boxes. The team hope to follow up this effort with another publication pipeline shipment in the future.
Article contributed by Jonathan Conti, Beach Energy, Adelaide, Australia