Lecturers Ready for New Season

Wide Range of Topics Offered
September 2004

Volatile global conditions continue to be a factor, but not a deterrent, for AAPG's Distinguished Lecture program, which this year will again sponsor 14 speakers on tours to both domestic and international groups.

This year's topics will be as specific as "Making Sense of Turbidite Reservoirs," to as big as "Global Energy — the Next Decade and Beyond," to as relevant as a look at Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, to as offbeat as "Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds."

The DL program, funded in part by the AAPG Foundation, will offer nine domestic and five international speakers this season.

Last season's slate of eight domestic and five international speakers made 153 visits to a total audience of nearly 9,000.

AAPG's Distinguished Lecture program was developed to expose students, young geologists, college faculty members and members of geological societies to current information, research and thinking.

Remaining on track this year is the continuation of the intersociety lecturer effort — a cooperative program that presents an opportunity for cross-discipline lectures.

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Volatile global conditions continue to be a factor, but not a deterrent, for AAPG's Distinguished Lecture program, which this year will again sponsor 14 speakers on tours to both domestic and international groups.

This year's topics will be as specific as "Making Sense of Turbidite Reservoirs," to as big as "Global Energy — the Next Decade and Beyond," to as relevant as a look at Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, to as offbeat as "Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds."

The DL program, funded in part by the AAPG Foundation, will offer nine domestic and five international speakers this season.

Last season's slate of eight domestic and five international speakers made 153 visits to a total audience of nearly 9,000.

AAPG's Distinguished Lecture program was developed to expose students, young geologists, college faculty members and members of geological societies to current information, research and thinking.

Remaining on track this year is the continuation of the intersociety lecturer effort — a cooperative program that presents an opportunity for cross-discipline lectures.

The AAPG-SEG Joint Distinguished Lecture speaker — fifth in the series — will be given by Heloise Lynn, an AAPG member with Lynn Inc., in Houston, who will talk on "The Winds of Change: Anisotropic Rocks — Their Preferred Direction of Fluid Flow and Their Associated Seismic Signatures."

In keeping with the alternating logistical responsibilities for the intersociety lecturer, Lynn's tour will be coordinated by SEG.

And also as in past years, support for several tours comes directly from the AAPG Foundation's Distinguished Lecture Fund. They are:

  • The Allan P. Bennison Distinguished Lecture — An international lecturer who makes a U.S. tour, funded by contributions from longtime Tulsa geologist Allan Bennison, who died this past year at his home in California.

This year's Bennison lecturer will be Rob Gawthorpe, a professor of sedimentology and tectonics at the University of Manchester (UK). His topics are:

    • "Sedimentary Response to Fault Evolution in Rift Basins: Insights from the Gulf of Suez, Greece and the North Sea."

    • "Seismic Geomorphology and Modeling of Deepwater Slope Systems."

  • The J. Ben Carsey Distinguished Lecture — A domestic tour, provided by contributions from J. Ben Carsey Jr., of Houston, to establish a named lecturer in memory of his father, who served as president of AAPG in 1967-68.

    This year's J. Ben Carsey lecturer is Arthur R. Green, retired chief geoscientist with ExxonMobil, Houston. His topics will be:

    • "Global Energy — The Next Decade and Beyond."

    • "Dynamics of the Sun/Earth Climate System."

  • The Haas-Pratt Distinguished Lecture — A domestic tour, provided by contributions from the late Merrill W. Haas, in honor of famed geologist (and Haas' mentor) Wallace Pratt. The funding is granted for emphasis on a specific case history application of geology in a discovery.

    The Haas-Pratt lecture will be presented by Jack C. Pashin, manager of the energy and minerals unit for the Geological Survey of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala. His lecture is "Geologic Heterogeneity in Coalbed Methane Reservoirs of the Black Warrior Basin: Implications for Gas Production and CO2 Sequestration."

  • The Roy M. Huffington Distinguished Lecture — An international tour, provided by contributions from the Huffington family in honor of the oilman-geologist.

    The Huffington speaker will be Robert S. "Bo" Tye, senior geological adviser for PetroTel Inc., Plano, Texas. His tour, scheduled to begin Sept. 20 and go through Oct. 15, will have stops in China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Australia. His talks are:

    • "Alluvial Basin Filling Processes and Quantitative Determination of Channel and Channel-Belt Dimensions Using Cores and Logs."

    • "Reservoir Description and Unique Horizontal-Well Designs Boost Primary and EOR Production From the Fluvio-Deltaic Prudhoe Bay Field, Alaska."

  • The Dean A. McGee International Distinguished Lecture — Provided by contributions from Kerr-McGee, which annually supports international speaking tours.

    This year's McGee lecturer is Carlo Doglioni, professor at the University of Roma La Sapeinza (Italy). He is scheduled to tour central Europe in November or December. His topic is "Global Tectonic Asymmetries and Applications to Europe."

This year's list of domestic Distinguished Lecturers also includes:

  • Philip J. Currie, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Drumheller, Canada. His topics are:
    • "Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origins of Birds."
    • "Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs from Mongolia."

    • "A Pack of Giant Carnivorous Argentinean Dinosaurs."

  • David C. Jennette, research project manager, Bureau of Economic Geology, Austin, Texas. His topics are:
    • "Making Sense of Turbidite Reservoirs: A Multi-Basin Perspective on What Drives Architecture and Rock Properties."

    • "Merging Rocks and Lasers: Bringing 3-D Outcrop Geology to the Workstation."

  • Tony Reynolds, development geologist for BP, Chirag Field, Azerbaijan. His topics are:
    • "Pressure Data in the Development of a Giant Oil Field: ACG Azerbaijan."

    • "Paralic Oil and Gas Fields — What Makes Them Distinctive: From the Pore Scale to the Reservoir Scale."

  • Ron Steel, professor and Davis Chair, University of Texas, Austin, Texas. His topics are:
    • "Shelf-Transiting Shoreline Systems and Generation of Stratigraphic Sequences in Shelf-Break vs. Ramp Basins."

    • "Improving the Lowstand Component of the Sequence Stratigraphic Model."

  • Lori L. Summa, senior research geologist, ExxonMobil Upstream Research, Houston. Her topic is "Issues and Approaches for Integrated Hydrocarbon Systems Analysis in Tertiary Deltas — What We Have Learned: Examples from Deep Water Nigeria."
  • A special lecture tour of North America will be presented by Abdulkader M. Afifi, senior geological consultant-upstream ventures department, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He will tour in the early fall this year, and his tour will be subsidized by Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil. His topics are:
    • "Ghawar: Anatomy of the "World's Largest Oil Field."
    • "Paleozoic Hydrocarbon Habitat in the Arabian Plate."

This year's other international Distinguished Lecturers are:

  • John Castagna, school of geology and geophysics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla. He will tour Latin America, on dates to be determined. His talk is titled "Using Spectral Decomposition to Increase Confidence in Direct Hydrocarbon Indicators."

  • Richard Swarbrick, professor at the University of Durham, UK. He will tour western Europe during the winter of 2005, and his talk is titled "Overpressure as a Primary Control on Fluid Flow in Sedimentary Basins."

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