President’s Page- Richard Milton-Worssell

I am pleased to report that your Society has got off to a good start in the Year 2000. I was present at both the London and Aberdeen meetings in January ; both events were well attended. The PESGB’s new training programme also started well. The London meeting formed part of the hand-over process between the old and the new Councils and I was able to introduce the new Council Members to the meeting. The Aberdeen meeting was the first meeting in the new city centre venue and it was very well attended. Of course, the question has to be asked, was it the new venue
with the bar at the back, or was it the excellent talk, only time will tell.
In February I attended the AAPG’s 19th Annual Leadership Conference in Tulsa. The PESGB has been an affiliate society of the AAPG for many years. The meeting drew together the AAPG Executive Committee, the Advisory Council, Section Presidents, Affiliate and Associate Society Presidents (see photo) . It was very refreshing to see that the challenges and opportunities that face the PESGB in the Year 2000 were shared by many other Societies. One theme that came through was the delivery of value, especially in training courses; some societies are beginning
to explore the delivery of training over the web.
The Society has been in its new Regent Street offices for three months, and the Members room is being well used (see page 52). We have a new member of staff Jerushah Jardine. Jerushah has taken on  some of the workload of the office team, including the website and PETEX registrations.
PETEX planning is well advanced, and the Exhibition halls are nearly fully booked, for more information about PETEX, see pages 26-31 , and the web site. I encourage Members to register early.
Looking further into the future, the PESGB, with the Institute of Petroleum and the Geological Society, have formed the next company to run the Northwest European Conference (Barbican
Conference).
PESGB is essentially your society, if you have colleagues who have noticed that they are not now receiving the newsletter, please remind them that they may not have paid their subscription. Renewals for 2000 are already very good. In 1999 the PESGB was just over five times bigger than the nearest UK petroleum geological society. The aim in the 2000, to be larger than that. So encourage your friends and colleagues in the industry to join the PESGB, we deliver more value for less subscription, especially in a PETEX year.