Private: Publications

PESGB June 2017

Tue 30 May 2017

Category: Magazines

  • GEOLiteracy Tour 2017 Review
  • Does field-based training still have a role to play in the digital age?
  • Mexico – Unconventional Summary in Preparation for Ronda 2.4 -The First Unconventional Bid Round
  • Brazil E&P – From short-term slowdown to strong growth potential

Plus much more inside

Our events offering

The PESGB prides itself in its ability to provide its members with high quality, low cost events. With the current subdued industry environment we have focused our resources and cash on providing the best events offering that we can.

The topical monthly evening lectures in both Aberdeen and London, along with our Aberdeen Party and London based President’s Evening, provide the backbone to our networking events. We have a very active Young Professionals group that offer a whole suite of events including the prestigious House of Commons event. Our field trip offering includes excursions to North Somerset, the Wessex Basin in Dorset and the Cleveland Basin in Yorkshire and are tailored to support ongoing UKCS licencing round activity.

I thought I’d take the opportunity this month to discuss a few key courses and conferences that we have lined up over the rest of the year. This list is by no means exhaustive, highlighting the depth of what is on offer to both our members and non-members throughout the industry.

This month we will be running a new course – “What geoscientists need to know about developments”. As explorers we are tasked with reviewing new venture opportunities and generating prospectivity. However, not all exploration successes leads on to successful developments. This one day workshop is aimed at geoscientists of all levels who are involved in exploration, in particular, but also appraisal, development and production.

Later in the month sees a continuation of our very successful “Technical Mastery Series” on sand injectites. This joint AAPG/PESGB offering will be hosted in Aberdeen following recent success in London. Led by the ever effusive Professors Andrew Hurst and Mads Huuse from the Universities of Aberdeen and Manchester respectively, this workshop aims to present an overview of the characteristics of large-scale sand injection complexes around the world, in California and the North Sea in particular, and to outline their importance to exploration, development and production.
In late August we have the “Petroleum Systems of North Africa and the Mediterranean” course in London. The Tamar, Leviathan and Zohr discoveries have revitalised interest in North Africa and the Mediterranean. This course is designed to provide participants with a regional overview to back up their own block and prospect-specific interpretations. Immediately followed this, we have the 16th “PESGB /HGS Conference on Africa E&P” at the end of August. This conference series, which has been alternating annually between London and Houston since 2002, has evolved into the premier event for technical discussions and networking on exploration and geosciences in Africa. With attendances in recent years reaching over 600; including operators, consultants, governments and academia, there is a large poster programme in addition to the oral programme of over 25 high quality talks covering E&P in all regions of Africa.

The “Geophysics Seminar”, scheduled in late September, will be focusing on Quantitative Interpretation this year. The risks of exploring for stratigraphic and combination traps, the reduction of reservoir and fluid uncertainties in field appraisal, and the maximising of production and recovery of hydrocarbons from existing fields, are being significantly mitigated by advances in Quantitative Interpretation techniques. Rock physics is today routinely applied to predict reservoir and overburden parameters, such as lithologies and pore fluids, from seismic data.

In October we have the “Sequence Stratigraphy for Petroleum Exploration” course. This two-day course is designed to introduce the principles, concepts and practical methods of sequence stratigraphy as a fundamental component of the petroleum exploration workflow. Also in October we have the very popular “Reservoir Characterization of Deep Water Systems” course. This course examines the aspects of deep water reservoir models critical to exploration and production. Participants will learn how to interpret and map environments of deposition in deep water systems and understand how these different environments and systems behave as reservoirs.

And of course, in December, we have our must-attend PROSPEX conference, the UK’s leading networking event for exploration and development opportunities.

Finally, and on a separate note, the 2017 Annual General Meeting will be held at the Geological Society of London on Tuesday 13 June 2017 at 6pm, immediately preceding the London Evening Lecture. I look forward to catching up then with of as many of you as I can.