PESGB members may not be aware that they have an opportunity to subscribe at a discount to Petroleum Geoscience, an applied geoscience journal jointly owned by the Geological Society of London and the EAGE. However, those with good memories may recall my PESGB Magazine article from 2010 and so, five years on, let me offer a few brief notes on progress since then and where the journal is going.

Almost everything about the journal has grown since 2010: subscriptions from about 5,000 to over 8,000, and a further 1,000-plus institutional subscriptions thanks to electronic access via the Lyell collection (GSL), EarthDoc (EAGE) and GeoScienceWorld. On-line hits and downloads have risen substantially as the unit of consumption moves from the printed issue to the electronic article. Publishing Online First, as soon as an accepted paper is produced, gives authors a citable doi number that stays with the article when printed. Submissions have almost doubled but we are maintaining the quality, and our impact factor, with a rigorous peer-review process.

The editorial team comprises John Underhill, Bruce Levell, Sebastian Geiger, Philip Ringrose, Graham Yielding and myself, with excellent production editing from Sally Oberst. The co-editors are supported by an international Editorial Board of 43 members, spanning all the sub-surface disciplines and representing a huge resource of experience in academic and applied geoscience.

PG publishes four issues a year, featuring multi-disciplinary papers which advance our understanding of the sub-surface. Topics covered include: rifting and petroleum systems; geological controls on fluid flow in reservoir rocks; time-lapse remote sensing for reservoir monitoring; characterisation and risk assessment in CO2 sequestration targets; and so on. The journal’s content is truly global with material from around the world.

Although half our papers come from individual submissions, PG also carries strong thematic sets, including the recent set on exploration to (nearly) first oil in the North Falkland Basin (see figure); forthcoming sets include uncertainty in geomodelling, a return to rifts, and the Messinian salinity crisis. The journal has a broad scope, and welcomes papers on unconventional oil and gas, passive seismic monitoring, geomechanics of producing reservoirs, and especially, geological storage and monitoring of carbon.

Finally, PESGB and the PETEX technical committee plan to offer authors of highly-rated PETEX papers the opportunity to submit their article to Petroleum Geoscience, thereby gaining access to a broader readership through a peer-reviewed journal. We hope that this will prove mutually beneficial for PESGB and the journal and will further enhance the connections between the three professional bodies. Watch this space!

Phil Christie
Petroleum Geoscience, Chief Editor

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The online journal is available from the Geological Society’s Lyell Collection, and two free sample papers are available for the month of January for those who interested in subscribing:
Role of rift transection and punctuated subsidence in the development of the North Falkland Basin
Sea Lion Field, North Falkland Basin: seismic inversion and quantitative interpretation

 

PESGB members can subscribe to Petroleum Geoscience online-only for £25 for 2016, or £43 for print + online. Please contact barbara@pesgb.org.uk if you are interested in subscribing.