January 2008

'We want in!' That was the opening statement of the University of Wyoming’s Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) Competition Team – my team – at last year’s event in Long Beach, Calif.

I started writing this column from Tyumen, Russia – the oil capital of Western Siberia and one of the key “oil capitals” of the world.

Most of us have some sort of story of “finding” geoscience. This is mostly due to the fact that most schools don’t give geology a high profile, and many don’t teach it at all.

Examples of P-P and P-SV seismic images of deep geologic targets across the northern shelf of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) are illustrated in figure 1, with the P-SV data warped to P-P image-time coordinates.

David K. Curtiss has assumed the directorship of the AAPG Geoscience and Energy Office in Washington, D.C. (GEO-DC), after serving as deputy director of the office since its inception in mid-November 2005. Curtiss succeeds Don Juckett, who served as director of the GEO-DC since its launch and is retiring to focus on his consultancy and as director of Far East Energy Corp.

The stakes are high for the global competition, with the winning first, second and third place teams vying for large cash prizes to benefit their geoscience departments and trophies for the winning students. Just what does it take to win the Imperial Barrel Award competition?

Foundation officials, in expressing thanks to the thousands of AAPG members who donated money over the past year, noted much gratitude especially for members of the AAPG Foundation Trustee Associates, which accounted for 79 percent of the year's donations.