Art Saller, the inaugural Shell Distinguished Lecturer, completed a successful, nearly four-week-long lecture tour of Asia and Australia this spring.
Saller, a stratigrapher and exploration geologist for Cobalt International Energy in Houston, presented 15 talks at 12 different locations in six different countries.
The Shell Distinguished Lectureship, made possible through a generous contribution by Shell to the AAPG Foundation, annually endows a speaker who this year focused on petroleum geology topics related to Southeast Asia.
Geoscientists attending Saller’s lectures varied from young college students in blue jeans to experienced professionals in suits.
His tour started with talks to the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Following those were talks at the Shell Technology Center in Bangalore, India, and at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby – with a gathering of students, teachers and other geologists sponsored by the university and the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum.
The tour then shifted to Tokyo, with Japex as the host for geoscientists from local petroleum companies, universities and research labs, and then to Kuala Lumpur, where Petronas sponsored presentations at the Universiti Teknologi Petronas and the Twin Towers.
The tour’s final stops were in Jakarta and Bogor, Indonesia, sponsored by Pertamina; after a talk at Pertamina Upstream in Jakarta, Saller addressed AAPG student chapters at the University of Pakuan (Bogor), Trisakti University (Jakarta) and the University of Indonesia (Jakarta).
Saller offered four talks:
- Diagenetic Evolution of Porosity in Carbonates During Burial.
- Pleistocene Shelf-to-Basin Depositional Systems, Offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia: Insights Into Deepwater Slope Channels and Fans.
- Controls on Hydrothermal Dolomites and Their Reservoir Properties.
- Sequence Stratigraphy of Classic Carbonate Outcrops in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico with Subsurface Analogs.
Travel included planes, trains and automobiles – but mostly planes; the itinerary included 17 plane flights with 87 hours in the air covering approximately 40,000 miles.
Many helped make this trip safe and successful. Guruh Ferdyanto, volunteer with AAPG Asia Pacific Region, and Lorry Oldefest of AAPG DL coordinator, organized the trip and schedule, with help from Adrienne Pereira of AAPG Asia Pacific Region office in Singapore.
Others helping with arrangements along the way included Louise Goldie-Divko, Phillip and Marina Cooney, Sue Slater, Ankush Singh, Bitan Munshi, Ankush Ghosh, Mick McWalter, Kazuyoshi Hoshi, Bahari Md Nasib, Ummi Farah Binti Mohamad Rosli, Noor Alyani Bt Ishak, Rick Major, Tavip Setiawan, Heribertus Satrio Wibowo, Zulkha Arfat, Dewi Syavitri, Rendra, Fakhmi, Renky Apriliani, Mill Sartika Indah and Andi Mardianza.
Saller said thanks go to all of them, as well as the AAPG Foundation and his employer, Cobalt International Energy, for allowing him to go on this three-week tour.