I am pleased to serve as president of the Energy Minerals Division for 2018-19.
EMD is the largest division of AAPG, with a long history since our founding in 1977. Our members worldwide represent a diverse group specializing in the geology of unconventional and alternative energy resources.
My main interest since joining the EMD leadership team as vice president in 2016 is to improve our service to members.
My main goals for this year are to provide frequent, easily accessible, relevant, high-quality technical content, and to improve our member engagement and communication with the regions, local societies and other geological associations. If we get these two enterprises right, then we should be able to retain and attract new members to help develop the next generation of leadership to keep AAPG a strong and viable organization for the next 100 years.
We are off to a good start.
Our members are actively working with the 2019 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition Technical Program Committee to again provide high-quality oral and poster sessions and short courses for the popular unconventional themes. Ursula Hammes is the EMD vice chair to coordinate our efforts with the San Antonio convention committees. EMD members have formerly proposed a session on mudstone diagenesis and a forum on bitumen. We are also planning our regular joint luncheon meeting with the Division of Environmental Geosciences, where all are invited to reconnect with old friends and foster new relationships. DEG President Mary Barrett is also working with EMD to solicit themes of joint interest for the 2019 ACE, such as produced water disposal, carbon capture and environmental regulation.
Upcoming Content
EMD is uniquely positioned to promote alternative energy resources, such as uranium, coalbed methane and geothermal, which will become an important energy mix for a sustainable energy solution, particularly for countries that do not have or choose not to develop unconventional energy resources. We continue to solicit research articles to be published in the Natural Resources Research Journal with our joint collaboration with John Carranza, the journal’s editor-in-chief. For more information and author instructions, visit Springer.com.
I am also pleased to announce that a new AAPG Memoir on mudstone diagenesis is in the final stages of preparation. It has been in the works by several EMD members since the joint Society for Sedimentary Geology-AAPG Hedberg Research Conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2016. I wish to thank Beverly Molyneux of AAPG Publications for her dedicated assistance in producing this volume. I am hopeful that the book will completed in time to be available at the AAPG Bookstore for the May 2019 ACE in San Antonio.
To promote interaction with other geological organizations, AAPG will be participating in the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C., and EMD is working with the Geological Society of America on a joint session, “Niobrara-From Outcrop to Foreland Basin,” to highlight the regional importance of this unconventional resource during the GSA joint section meeting to be held in Manhattan, Kansas in March 2019.
Member Engagement
EMD is in the process of updating and expanding the functionality of our website with the assistance of longtime EMD member Brian Cardott and AAPG web producer Bogdan Michka. This will continue to be the main resource for our members to access content about our activities and resource commodity reports. We also hope to soon launch a new Discussion Forum for EMD where AAPG members can post announcements, questions and comments to help promote communication and mentoring. I also hope to utilize LinkedIn more to communicate outside our organization. To visit our website, select the Divisions tab from the AAPG homepage, AAPG.org.
Please join EMD if you are not already a member, to keep informed of our activities and content. It costs nothing additional to join if you are an AAPG member.
Finally, all of these goals and activities cannot be accomplished without the active participation of our devoted members, including our AAPG liaison, Diane Keim, who work ardently in the background to keep our division up and running. We are a little behind with our election of EMD officers, but we hope to finalize the slate of candidates for an August election. I also would like to thank past EMD President Doug Wyatt for his guidance last year and continued support. I pledge to serve EMD to the best of my ability, but I need to hear from you to let us know what we are doing right and how we can continue to improve.
I can be reached at [email protected].