Private: Publications

PESGB October 2009

Thu 01 October 2009

Category: Magazines

  • Zechstein Field Trip Review
  • BGS Core store: Correspondence
  • Svalbard Field Trip Review
  • Caribbean/Central America

Plus much more inside

President’s Page- Jon Gluyas

October marks the start of the academic year and of course 2009 is no exception but what marks this October as a little bit special for a few new MSc students is that they have been able to take up their places with financial help from you via your membership of the PESGB. This is now the second year of the PESGB Scholarship Scheme. Our Scholars from 2008 will, by the time you read this, have completed their exams and submitted their theses. By way of feedback to the membership we will be hearing from a few of the 2008 students at the Aberdeen and London lectures. They will provide the warm-up acts to our main speakers, over the next few months.
As with last year we had around 40 students from around the globe applying to receive PESGB awards to study petroleum related MSc courses at UK universities. For the coming year the
PESGB students will be in Imperial College, Manchester University, Leeds University, Southampton University and Bangor University. You will be pleased to learn that the PESGB has been able to stretch its funding a little further in 2009 than it did in 2008 because of generous donations from a variety of sources. PESGB Secretary Paul Burnham told in the August/September Newsletter of the support we have received from the Karen Reed Memorial Trust and from a donation in memory of Dr Tadeusz Brzozowski. In addition to these, matched funding from Kosmos Energy will help support a Ghanaian student; thank you Kosmos COO Brian Maxted, and funding from the University of Manchester will help support an Eritrean student; thank you Jonathan Redfern.
October is also the time of year when you should be thinking about standing for Council. There are 6 posts up for election: President Elect, Secretary, 1st Vice President, Aberdeen Director Elect, Education & Training Director and Events Director. Nomination forms can be downloaded from the website or received via email from the PESGB Office. I hope I speak for all Council members when I say that serving on the PESGB Council is a delightful experience – one you should not miss!
On a rather different note, I have received a flurry of emails and letters recently all concerning the announcement from the BGS that the core store in Edinburgh will be closed and a new purpose
built facility constructed on the BGS site at Keyworth in Nottinghamshire. The PESGB membership, as represented in the emails and letters, are not happy and view the move in very negative terms. A number of concerns have been raised. I will not repeat them here; instead we reproduce two of the letters along with a response from the BGS.