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president’s report
Year End Report
Dear members,
As you are filling out your 2013
membership renewal it may interest
you to know our final membership
figure for the year (yes, it takes some
people until October to renew, and we are
probably still chasing some people) was
1995 members. Our membership is growing
slowly but steadily. It would be nice to top
2000 members in 2013 so please mention
to your colleagues the benefits of PESA
membership and sign them up for the new
year. The membership renewal forms will be
out by the time you read this column.
Keen-eyed members will not have missed the
rise in membership fees for 2013. Such rises are
never popular but it was necessar y to ensure
that our capacity to carry out objectives of the
society are not consumed by rising costs. The
society has a substantial cash reserve however
members whose memory matches their visual
acuity may remember the rare occasion when a
commercial mishap with a symposium cost the
society dearly. Our large flagship conference
budgets are now close to one million dollars: a
cash reserve is no luxury. That time was longer
ago than the last membership rise, so we have
done OK for a while. Student memberships
have remained free and retirees have not
copped the increase.
Last issue I predicted a perverse outcome for
Victoria’s fracc moratorium. It might be perverse
but it was surely predictable. Victoria’s 2012
onshore petroleum acreage release passed
deadline without troubling the assessors with
bids of any kind. Anything for the quiet life I
guess. Never mind that the rest of the world
is creating a revolution in unconventional
production. Never mind we can see the
US working towards energy self-sufficiency
with the pure “black swan” opportunity this
represents. Never mind that we don’t even have
aquifers within the prospective sequences. We’ll
just mothball the whole thing behind an openended
review process that when I last checked
had (read carefully now) no timeline, and no
timeline for even announcing the timeline, let
alone for the conclusion.
I won’t bang on about lost investment – that’s
obvious. I do feel acute disappointment for the
fine professionals who, in the faint hope that
someone gives a damn, work extremely hard
keeping Victorian prospectivity fresh and in the
eye of the industry. If anybody had put in an
application it would have been based on the
excellent precompetitive work built up over many
years by these folk. It must be hard to maintain
the enthusiasm to compete for investment dollars
with legislative regimes that, y’know, accept
petroleum as a legitimate endeavour.
Victoria is the second largest producer of oil
and gas in Australia, supplying largely into
the domestic market. One would struggle to
see this recognised in government talk and
certainly not in the walk.
Also, as flagged last issue, the ASX, in its review
of reporting rules has determined that reserve
and resource reports to the public must be
prepared by a qualified petroleum reserves and
resources estimator being:
A member in good standing of a pr ofessional
organisation of engineers geologists or other
geoscientists whose professional practice
includes petroleum reserves, contingent resources
and prospective resources evaluations and/
or audits. The professional organisation must
have disciplinary powers, including the power to
suspend or expel a member.
I have been in touch with the review group
in the ASX and the upshot is that PESA has
most of the requirements. Our Articles are
under review anyway, and a tweak to the
existing disciplinary process will allow PESA
membership to be accepted for this purpose: a
step forward.
I was pleased to receive a note from the
organisers of the Central Australian Basins
Symposium (CABS), that they would like PESA
to adopt the organisation and management
of future CABS symposia. CABS has provided
a specific forum for the sharing of information
on the older basins of central Australia like
the Amadeus, McArthur Georgina and Officer
basins, among others. With the focus on
unconventional resources, and the aptly named
Surprise-1 oil discovery in the Amadeus Basin,
these basins, are undergoing one of their semiregular
resurgences of interest and activity.
PESA has been happy to help in a small way
with previous CABS and is very proud to be
asked carry on the tradition. The scheduling of
CABS within the existing framework of EABS
and WABS is yet to be worked out but the
existing periodicity of 7–8 years can be more
than honoured I feel.
Gordon Wakelin-King.
By the time you are reading this a new crop of
graduates will be banging on doors, or if they
are lucky, swimming luxuriously in the warm
all-enclosing Turkish bath of your company’s
generous graduate development programme.
Hopefully you hired some good ones.
Our chance of getting good graduates depends
on good students choosing Earth Science in the
first place. Through our sponsorship of the teacher
earth science education programme TESEP we
have introduced nearly half a million high school
students to earth science via teacher workshops
throughout the country. Many general science
teachers have no background and no confidence
in earth science curriculum material. Our
industry will inevitably fall to the bottom of the
pile in bright students’ career selection unless
they are exposed to it at school via teachers
with some knowledge and a positive view.
Through TESEP workshops teachers see earth
science in action and gain some familiarity
in practice. The workshops are tailor-made to
teachers’ requirements and are in the right
place and the right time as the new National
Curriculum with earth science is rolled out.
Feedback to TESEP organisers from teachers is
overwhelmingly positive. The second phase of
TESEP will extend the workshops and develop
case studies and field guides and a lot of online
material. TESEP has been an excellent way to
get teachers thinking about earth science and I
urge companies to get on board as Phase two
sponsoring partners. More information is to be
found at www.tesep.org.au.
Just enough time to say thanks and good luck
to those writing their paper for WABS or the
PESA ASEG symposium.
PS Andy Whittle won the footy tipping … with
luck and persistence he’ll get his money in time
for the next season.
8 | PESA News Resources | December 2012 / January 2013