After a century in the making, AAPG’s100th anniversary Annual Convention and Exhibition is over, and it was a big hit, by all accounts.
“Overall, I think ACE 2017 went very well,” said Dave Rensink, general chair of the ACE 2017 Organizing Committee.
The event was April 2-5 at the George R. Brown Convention Center and saw nearly 7,800 in attendance.
Members of the AAPG 100th Anniversary Committee began work on ACE 2017 a decade ago, and despite planning “in an environment of $80 to $100/barrel oil and… executing those plans in a $50/barrel reality,” as Rensink framed it, it was an event to be remembered into the next century, and many of its events and presentations will see deeper coverage in this and future issues of the EXPLORER.
One of the first major events was a forum held by the Professional Women in Earth Sciences Committee (PROWESS) honoring 100 years of women in petroleum geology, which is covered in this issue (see page 24).
The following day, there was the History of Petroleum Geology forum, which focused on the past 100 years of petroleum geology and the history of AAPG.
There were also two Discovery Thinking forums, which were the culmination of a painstaking effort begun by current AAPG President-elect Charles Sternbach 10 years ago when he co-founded the Discovery Thinking program to celebrate “100 Who Made a Difference” in time for the centennial.
There was also the “Preservation of Geoscience Data” exhibit on display, demonstrating a range of core material, data and media spanning the last 100 years of oil and gas exploration.
The 100th Anniversary Gala featured a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winning energy researcher IHS Markit Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin, which will be covered in next month’s EXPLORER.
Another major attraction was the special event held by AAPG’s Division of Environmental Geosciences and the Energy Minerals Division: “The Next 100 Years of Global Energy Use: Resources, Impacts and Economics,” which featured speakers like AAPG Past President and founder of the Switch Energy Project Scott Tinker, and BP America Senior Vice President Cindy Yeilding. The event was previewed in the January EXPLORER.
Of course, the technical program is the centerpiece of any ACE, and this year was no exception.
“I thought the technical program was one of the highlights of this year, and all of the credit for that goes to Craig Shipp, Amy Sullivan, and Carl Steffensen,” said Rensink.
“The technical program was successful because of the effort Craig, Amy and Carl put into it. Over 2,300 abstracts were submitted, and there were less than 1,300 oral and poster slots available. I think the numbers caused the rejection rate to be higher than normal, and generally improved the quality of the presentations.”