Pace Picks Up Without Pause

July 2007 Rick Fritz

Once more we are at the start of a new fiscal year for AAPG -- and once again it arrives after an extremely busy year for AAPG.

We started out the year building a new Business Plan and restructuring AAPG’s committees.

The new Business Plan was built from the recently revised strategic plan with a focus on member services worldwide. For the first time in AAPG’s history all parts of AAPG were asked to develop a basic business plan -- basically stating their purpose, current reality, goals and action items to obtain those goals.

Every committee and each Section and Region was asked to go through this process. As a result we have an extremely comprehensive Business Plan.

We are in the final stages of editing and restructuring the document to make the format consistent and readable -- and then it will be posted on the Web.

We also restructured the Corporate Advisory Committee into a “board” format, whereby we present new ideas for development.

The new Corporate Advisory Board is led by Bobby Ryan of Chevron, and it now plans a mid-year meeting plus teleconference to review and develop new programs.

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Once more we are at the start of a new fiscal year for AAPG -- and once again it arrives after an extremely busy year for AAPG.

We started out the year building a new Business Plan and restructuring AAPG’s committees.

The new Business Plan was built from the recently revised strategic plan with a focus on member services worldwide. For the first time in AAPG’s history all parts of AAPG were asked to develop a basic business plan -- basically stating their purpose, current reality, goals and action items to obtain those goals.

Every committee and each Section and Region was asked to go through this process. As a result we have an extremely comprehensive Business Plan.

We are in the final stages of editing and restructuring the document to make the format consistent and readable -- and then it will be posted on the Web.

We also restructured the Corporate Advisory Committee into a “board” format, whereby we present new ideas for development.

The new Corporate Advisory Board is led by Bobby Ryan of Chevron, and it now plans a mid-year meeting plus teleconference to review and develop new programs.

There are six goal areas of the strategic plan -- the following is a short summary of programs and activities developed this past fiscal year related to those goals:

  1. Advance the Science

    Under the guidance of our previous editor Ernie Mancini, the AAPG BULLETIN continued to improve and provide members with great technical information. This year, based on a proposal by President Lee Billingsley, Ernie developed a new set of procedures that will ensure we have E&P Notes in the BULLETIN on a regular basis.

    AAPG’s digital geology program continues to add new products and services. Especially exciting this year is the number of talks and poster sessions that have been added to Search and Discovery. Also, all members now have the opportunity to use our new geographic search engine for BULLETIN articles.

    Of course, a lot of the feedstock for future technical publications, hardcopy and digital, comes from presentations at the successful Perth International Conference and Exhibition and the Annual Convention at Long Beach.

  1. Continuous Professional Development

    AAPG’s education program has been very popular this year -- especially our Fall and Winter Education Conferences.

    We also held three very successful Hedberg conferences: In October we held a conference in Veracruz, Mexico, on “Heavy Oil Origin, Prediction and Production in Deep Waters,” hosted by the Asociación Mexicana de Geólogos Petroleros; a strategically important conference on “Understanding World Oil Resources” was held in Colorado Springs, Colo., in November 2006; and in this past May a very successful conference on “ [PFItemLinkShortcode|id:17617|type:standard|anchorText:Basin Modeling Perspectives: Innovative Developments and Novel Applications|cssClass:asshref|title:See related article - Basin Modeling Hedberg Draws 200|PFItemLinkShortcode] ” was held in The Hague, Netherlands.

    Finally in February 2007 the first joint SPE/SEG/AAPG workshop on “Integrating Stress & Pore Pressure Predictions for Exploration, Production and Drilling” took place in Galveston, Texas.

  1. Public Awareness and Understanding

    This was the first full year of operations for the AAPG GEO-DC office, our primary outreach vehicle with the United States’ leadership. In addition, the Public Outreach Committee this year is in the process of developing a dynamic Web site that will help the public know about AAPG.

    One of our more dynamic develops in this area is the formation of the ad hoc committee on global climate change, which developed a basic statement on global climate change. The Executive Committee then solicited and received comments concerning the statement.

    These responses will be used by the new Global Climate Change standing committee to develop a final statement.

  1. Membership and Membership Services

    This year we had two major programs initiated for membership -- the corporate group membership program and the graduated dues program.

    Both programs have the promise of significantly increasing Active membership.

  1. Financial Stability

    We were budgeted in FY06-07 to have a financial loss of just less than $6,000; by the end of the third quarter we had reversed that loss, and AAPG is projected to be well into the black.

    This will be the third year in a row that we have been on the positive side of the ledger.

  1. Worldwide Presence

    Global development continues to be one of the highlights of this year’s activities. This year we initiated AAPG’s first international office in London, and the Executive Committee approved an office in Bahrain.

    Both offices are designed to break-even in three years with the development of new AAPG services especially short courses and workshops.

As you can see, it’s been a very busy year -- and there does not appear to be any slowdown in new programs or services.

A very wise lady once told me that “there is no rest for the wicked -- and the righteous don’t need any.”

I guess we can take our pick!

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