Rocks always held a special fascination for young Arnold Bouma as he wandered around the natural-gas rich fields near his hometown of Groningen, The Netherlands, turning over stones and puzzling at their shapes and composition.
Last month we shared success stories from AAPG student chapters at the University of Texas-El Paso and the University of Bucharest. This month three more outstanding student chapters share their experiences and advice for success.
Quantity, not quality: The past year saw only a few jaw-dropping discoveries, but some important world developments opened new areas, bolstered existing production and provided a solid foundation for the future.
Widely available and ever-popular seismic technologies are great for detecting subsurface structures and identifying potential reservoirs.
Installation of a permanently placed seismic cable system to acquire time lapse, or 4-D, seismic at the BP-operated Valhall Field in Norway in August 2003 created a goodly bit of buzz -- particularly in the geophysical community. An experimental array had been installed in 1995 by Shell and BP at Foinhaven, but Valhall was the first such system to be financed and purchased by a business unit.
In mid-September, while visiting London to meet with AAPG European Region president John Brooks and AAPG European office director Steve Veal, I had the rare opportunity to view William Smith’s geological map of Great Britain — the first geological map.
The AAPG European Office, the Association’s first Region satellite bureau, opened in London, England, with little fanfare in early September.
Earlier this summer I traveled through Europe with then President-elect Lee Billingsley and European Region President John Brooks. We were taking a tour that started in Oslo, Norway, then headed to Moscow and ended in Vienna for the EAGE annual meeting.
In August I attended the North American Prospect Expo in Houston, also known as Summer NAPE. The show was a success with over 500 booths and 5,000 attendees, and it provided a great opportunity as president of AAPG and vice president of Abraxas Petroleum to visit with a wide variety of geologists.
AAPG’s newest Special Publication – a memoir five years in the making – is intended to provide a valuable source of information on the entire spectrum of regional and applied geology of the Carpathian.