• Fieldwork in Morocco
• Bay of Bengal

Plus much more inside

President’s Page- Jon Gluyas

The AGM of the Society is usually held prior to the London lecture in May. With a growing and very active membership in Aberdeen, it is fitting for the Society that we hold the AGM in Aberdeen and this year it will precede the lecture on May 19th. Formal notice will be given next month.
It is quite possible that as you read this you are travelling to or returning from PGC VII. The Petroleum Geology Conference, affectionately known as the ‘Barbican Meeting’ after several conferences that were held at the Barbican Centre in London, has become an established feature of the global conference calendar in the upstream petroleum industry. The event is now
run jointly by the PESGB, Geological Society and Energy Institute. This, the 7th such meeting, has a global theme; bringing together speakers from around the world and attracting a cadre of international delegates. The proceedings of the meeting will be published and no doubt like those published from the first to the sixth meeting will be of high quality and form a repository for deep knowledge of the petroleum geology of northwestern Europe and other petroliferous basins around the world.
It was in 1973 that the first meeting was held of what was to become the PGC Series. Myles Bowen, President of the PESGB in 1973, recalls that he was the only explorer on the organising
committee and as such, was given the unenviable task of persuading companies to publish details of their discoveries. It was early days in the history of the North Sea and all companies were intensely secretive about proprietary information. In the end Myles had to resort to shaming unwilling companies to participate by telling them that his own company Shell and partners Esso would present papers on the Brent and Auk fields. Full programmes in place, the speakers were treated to an electric atmosphere in the conference. For Myles’ presentation on Brent, a mystery for most people at that time, a thousand delegates packed the auditorium; many had to stand notepads in hand. The speeches were a revelation to many, a first insight into the petroleum geology of the North Sea.
I was still a schoolboy at the time of the first meeting but in 1980 I was commanded to attend the second ‘PGC’ conference at Lancaster Gate in London. I was at the time a PhD student and, although at Liverpool University, I was working at the Institute of Geological Sciences in London. The Head of Department in Liverpool had decided to make best use of the free ticket awarded to the department by sending me, someone for whom he would not need to reimburse travel expenses as I was already in London. Like Myles and others before me I too was enthralled by the conference – oil in fractured basement West of Shetland and, along with all the other fascinating geology, free tea and biscuits!
I have been fortunate enough to miss only one other of these conferences (III) and even for that one I have acquired a copy of the proceedings. Speaking of the proceedings, the PESGB has
worked with the Geological Society which published volumes for the 4th through to the 6th conferences. This back catalogue in digital format has now been issued to members – happy reading and do enjoy PGC VII.