I ran into a friend at NAPE this year and we discussed his past experience as AAPG president. He said that after he was elected he decided to set an agenda for his presidency and then focus on making it happen. He recommended that I should set my own goals and follow his same approach. I responded that I my agenda was dictated to me before I became president. AAPG’s financial and membership situation is such that those two issues have forced me to make them the overriding agenda items for my presidency.
I feel like a broken record repeating myself in my President’s Column, so I want to say that everything is not gloom and doom this year. We have some wonderful programs and conventions we are working on at AAPG. From the standpoint of the technical and scientific benefits to our membership, we will accomplish a lot this year. I wish those benefits were all I need to focus on this year, but the bottom line is that if we do not solve our budget and membership problems we won’t be able to support our science and our members in the future.
We have had several strategic planning groups and the Advisory Council study these problems in depth since 2012, and those groups have recommended several strategies that have been consolidated to five strategic goals. The Executive Committee reviewed them in our last meeting and we voted unanimously to endorse them.
It is important to note that these have not been finalized. Our current strategic planning group will review and refine them and suggest ways to implement them. I am forwarding this “rough draft” of the initiatives in order to be transparent about our thinking, and so that you can start thinking about them.
All Energy-Related Geoscience
The first of these strategic initiatives is for AAPG to expand its focus to embrace the geoscience aspects of all energy sources. AAPG would recast its mission and brand to encompass petroleum, energy minerals, CCUS, artificial intelligence and other energy-related subjects. To emphasize, AAPG is and will continue to be fully supportive and engaged in advancing the petroleum geosciences under this initiative. But we see many of our members choosing (or being forced) to move into alternative geoscience roles, and we need to support them, too, as we have in decades past.
Stabilize Finances
Our second initiative is to stabilize and improve AAPG’s short-term financial situation. We would continue to implement cost reductions, focus on meaningful products and continue to improve efficiency through shared services. As previously mentioned, we have experienced persistent operational losses and have been forced to repeatedly withdraw from our rainy day investment funds to make up these shortfalls. Despite this and groundless rumors to the contrary, we are not bankrupt and are still financially healthy. However, we cannot continue to operate on continued withdrawals from our investment portfolio.
Everything is not gloom and doom. Our conventions are our largest sources of revenue and convention attendance has increased since the end of the pandemic. Consequently, we have returned to positive net income from our conventions, which is encouraging.
Despite this good news, we have not returned to pre-pandemic attendance and financial results. Our goal is to transfer funds back into the investment portfolio instead of withdrawing them. It won’t happen this year, but it’s the path we’re pursuing.
Continued Collaboration
We have increasingly collaborated with our sister societies and the continuation of these efforts is supported in the third strategic initiative. This collaboration provides increased scientific and technical content in our conventions, responds to the increased integration across disciplines and shares the financial risk from conferences. We will continue to seek additional collaboration where we find it beneficial to our Association.
Leaner Governance Structure
Our fourth strategic initiative is to implement a more nimble, responsive and mission-focused governance structure. I have set up a President’s Committee, the goal of which is to build a plan for this type of governance structure for our consideration. The Committee is building upon suggestions by our past strategic planning groups and past Advisory Councils to propose a plan to the Executive Committee. Once the EC approves the plan, we will forward it to the membership and the House of Delegates for debate and approval.
A change in governance structure alone will not solve our membership and financial problems, but it might allow us to adjust to our challenges in a timely manner. For example, we currently run a practically incalculable number of elections within our organization, which eats up an inordinate amount of volunteer and staff time. It’s a drain on both finances and membership engagement. It would be wonderful if the efforts we devote to managing our cumbersome governance structure could instead be directed to promoting the scientific programs most of us joined AAPG to support.
Embrace the Energy Transition
The final initiative the EC has approved is to encourage AAPG to fully and publicly embrace the fact that our energy systems continue to evolve –what the media and the public call the “energy transition.” It is increasingly apparent that major companies and many of our members in the oil and gas sector are working to support this evolution. AAPG’s support will improve the public perception of our organization and encourage the younger generation to consider supporting the oil and gas sector as a career choice.
Wait, wait, wait! I know some of my friends are immediately going to jump on me and infer that this means I no longer support the oil and gas industry. I have a different perspective about the energy transition after the MEOS/GEO conference in Bahrain. Several panels comprised of oil ministers and oil industry leaders gave their opinions on the energy transition and one of the main points they made is that the energy transition cannot be successful without the foundational and relatively inexpensive energy provided by oil and gas. They actually foresee increased demand for oil and gas due to this need, and several are already working to increase their production base for this reason. The goal is to continue to supply the needed oil and gas while lowering the carbon footprint involved in producing, refining and transporting it.
Projections of future energy production shown during the conference predict that oil and gas will still provide 40 percent of the world’s needs in the year 2050 in the most likely case. In addition, overall energy demand continues to grow year by year. Oil and gas will be with us for decades into the future and we will continue to support this essential backbone of the energy system. In the meantime, we can feel good about supporting those – including many of our members – who envision a future with a cleaner, less-carbon intensive energy system.