• Sharing Isn’t Always Caring, Hamish Wilson, PESGB President 2015
• Ireland: A look towards the 2016 Atlantic Margin Licensing Round
• Round One Tender – The Impact On Mexico’s Production

Plus Much More Inside

Sharing Isn’t Always Caring

President Hamish Wilson explains how the PESGB needs support from members to fulfill its objectives…
You should all have received your membership question­naire online by now. This was the result of our PESGB Strategy Day held in March during which we debated the role of the PESGB and our delivery strategy over the next five years. I reported on the themes emerging from that session in the April Magazine. It is important that the membership is engaged with helping us move the Society forward. The membership questionnaire forms a core element of the thinking that goes into forming the PESGB’s five year strategy.

I urge you to complete the questionnaire and contribute to this discussion if you haven’t already done so. At the time of publishing we have received nearly 700 responses which is very positive. To put this in context, 600 people contributed to the salary survey and a total of 300 people voted in the last Council elections. So I hope that this active involvement in the Society’s business will continue.

Our charitable objective is encapsulated by “education for the public good.” The Society has started on two initiatives to further this objective. The first is the ‘Exploration Game’ for which there is an article in this magazine (page 33) by Marc Bond. This is a game aimed at the non-geoscientist to illustrate the excitement of exploration. Marc asks for volunteers to help run the game in schools, universities homes, to attend a training event at the PESGB offices.

The second initiative is working jointly with the Geological Society and AAPG to create a pack of mate­rial (most likely a PowerPoint presentation) that individual members of the Society can use to take into schools and communities to explain the importance of geoscience and the oil industry.

It has been very good to collaborate with the AAPG and Geological Society in furthering these initiatives and to leverage our respective memberships and technical strengths to come up with a product that is likely to be better than any one organisation could do alone.

We have undertaken further analysis of the DEVEX Conference that was held in May. The technical pro­gramme and master classes were a big success at the event. Reported attendance numbers were the same as last year which in itself was good. However it was very disappointing to see the extent to which tickets were shared. There are two issues here. Firstly sharing takes place among younger staff members as they are deemed not as ‘important’ but who subsequently miss out on a tremendous amount of learning. Secondly it reduces rev­enue and thus lowers our ability to invest in education and outreach programmes. Prices are deliberately kept low to encourage attendance but if companies take advantage of the understanding nature of PESGB-run events we don’t sell as many tickets. Because tickets are shared, revenues are less and ticket prices will have to rise.

We have two important key note conferences coming up, the Africa E&P Conference in early September and PGC8 to be held at the end of September. Please reflect on our policies for ticket purchases. We would obviously like to encourage all members to consider attending one of these prestigious events – both of which have phe­nomenal technical programmes designed to stimulate new ideas and learning.

We are pleased to see progress being made by the OGA on the 21st Century Road Map Projects. Over 40 com­panies are now involved in the Paleozoic study which will tie in to the Government funded seismic programme. The intent being to have the seismic data and the Paleozoic studies complete by end of the first quarter of next year to stimulate interest in the next UKCS Licensing Round. Meanwhile Christian Mathieu has completed the analysis of 97 wells in the CNS and results are being presented at a number of industry events to ensure everyone has the opportunity to hear the key learnings. More to do – but if you haven’t been following these projects and want to know more contact Oonagh Werngren at Oil & Gas UK.