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October/November 2003 |
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What
Does PESA Deliver To You? People
And Organisations Caught Doing Things Right • PESA is VERY grateful to (and thanks) the organisations spread across Australia which enable PESA officers to attend PESA meetings. What goes around comes around. PESA is good for professionals and professionals are good for industry, government and universities. Thanks for gratis venues, too! Who's
Your Board? What's
Your Board Doing For You? High Notes From PESA's 3Q/03 Board Meeting • Online Payments System: After restablishing that costs were higher than necessary through one financial quarter, the PESA Board nimbly and unanimously agreed to temporarily pull the plug on our trial system for secure online payment of membership dues. The Board remains unanimous in its desire to implement an optimum online payment system for membership dues and events as appropriate. The alternative options developed for the Board's consideration were to either (1) sustain relatively high gateway and banking transaction fees offset with very limited application development costs or (2) sustain $15k–$20k expenses for application development and achieve very competitive gateway and banking transaction fees. The Board has now approved the second option—with funding for application development coming from PESA Federal accounts. Lower transaction costs over roughly 2 years will more than offset the application development costs. Online payments will be re-instituted as soon as possible, most probably by 1Q '04. All PESA members will then have the convenience of paying dues online. Online payments will be enabled for PESA publications. Branches will have the option of adopting online credit card payments for luncheons and other events. Thanks to Chris Carty (incumbent President PESA NSW) for asking the hard questions and David Cliff (PESA's incumbent VP) for bringing clarity to PESA's options. • Online Technical Papers Library Service: The PESA Board has long been unanimous in its desire to implement easy online access and 'word-search' of papers from (1) PESA's basin symposia and journals and (2) APPEA journals. Seed capital to develop the OTPLS application came from PESA's Federal coffers. The key aims in relation to implementation remain the quality and the financial sustainability of this initiative. Implementation of an online library for PESA and APPEA publications will inevitably facilitate E&P efforts and link the good works of Australian professionals to the global E&P community via the WWW. APPEA and several major Australian E&P organisations, especially Woodside, have been very supportive of the concept. PESA's Board has now endorsed step-wise implementation to manage associated financial risks to PESA. Organisations with an interest in promoting and undertaking petroleum E&P in Australia will be approached (in 2003) to take up 24-month subscriptions (to gain considerable access to this valuable E&P tool). Subscription revenues will at least offset PESA's expenses to sustain the system e.g. optical text reading (OTR) of legacy abstracts, scanning the 'back-log' of legacy papers, file compression, upload of additional papers and running costs. It is hoped that a sufficient number of cornerstone subscriptions will be confirmed quickly. That will trigger incremental expenditures to conclude the lion's share of OTR, scanning and file compression of APPEA journals to have a very valuable on line library service, hopefully in early 2004. Those incremental start-up costs will be paid from Branch coffers (shared prorata— based on Branch member numbers). The global WWW community will have gratis access to word-searching abstracts and the option of purchasing paper downloads. PESA members will be able to get paper downloads at a very significant discount to non-member rates. At the limit—this virtual library will shine a light on Australian talent (and supplant some bookshelves). • PESA to Continue As Member Society in the Australian Geoscience Council: In the belief that a majority of PESA's members desire to 'do something' to influence outcomes for petroleum geoscience—the Board has approved the cost ($2,500 pa) to sustain PESA's AGC membership. Details of AGC's membership and aims are expressed in Table 1. Whilst the majority of AGC's budget is used to support a 'generalist' lobby group for the 'health' of science in Australia—the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FAST)—AGC's Executive and Secretariat are fully focused on advancing Australian earth science. Through AGC, PESA has some chance to leverage its influence on outcomes in relation to geoscience education in general and petroleum geoscience education in particular. Tom Loutit (PESA ACT) will represent PESA at the 14–15 October 2003 'Science Meets Parliament' gathering—to promote progress on key recommendations from the Prosser enquiry into exploration impediments (http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ isr/resexp/contents.htm). PESA's participation was enabled through PESA's AGC membership. Silence is concession—and PESA has opted not to be silent. In this regard, PESA's board is considering how to influence FASTS' agenda to be more fully focused on the needs of petroleum geoscience. One means is to secure a position for a PESA member to be an AGC representative to FASTS. That will require a willing volunteer. Please shout if that could be you. Our
Volunteer Committees —What's Up? • PESA Publications Committee Chair: David Cliff E-mail david.cliff@woodside.com.au and sub-committees (PESA News and Website) - The splendid quality of PESA News has and will be sustained through (1) Herculean efforts from its Editor (Adrian Williams – aw@diamondgas.com.au), the many contributors of articles and PESA's publisher (Brian Wickins – RESolutions Resources & Energy Services) and, (2) advertisers—without whom PESA News would not be financially sustainable for our society. - The PESA Website will become evermore useful as PESA gains experience (Chair: Damien Ryan E-mail Damien.Ryan@ga.gov.au). Re- instatement of PESA's online payment system is the first priority. Implementation of a sustainable online library service is next on the list. • PESA Education Committee Chair: Phil Lock E-mail phillip.w.lock@exxonmobil.com- Applications for the 2003 PESA Post- Graduate Scholarship ($5000) closed on September 1st and the recipient will be announced in late November 2003. - Plans have been finalised for Dick Murphy's PESA Visiting Distinguished Lecture (PVDL) for late 2003. - PESA has liased with ASEG, SPE, AAPG, SPE and kindred petroleum exploration societies in NZ to lay plans for 2004–5. • PESA Membership Committee Chair: Andrew Krassay E-mail andrew.krassay@ga.gov.au - Branch Membership Secretaries, the Federal Executive Secretary and PESA's Secretariat have on-line access to make queries of the database and to update member details. Members can update their own details as described in the August/September 2003 issue of PESA News (pp 6, President's Page). Branch Membership Secretaries have put the online membership database through its paces and put comments to the Committee Chair. A consolidation of comments will result in prioritised forward actions (to enhance the utility of the online membership database) for discussion at the November ''03 PESA Board meeting. Traditions
Started As Successful Innovations • PESA Queensland Symposium: Another very valuable and enjoyable PESA Q/NT Symposium has been delivered with 115 local and interstate delegates. Queensland's Minister for Energy, the Hon. Paul Lucas, opened the Symposium. The co-winners (Emma Brand and Lucasz Krawczynski) of the 2003 PESA Q/NT Scholarship received their certificates and cheques. There was a talk on the CSM project to supply gas to the Townsville power station, an update on progress at the Rundle shale oil project, and papers from several small companies using innovative technologies to achieve their exploration objectives. The next PESA Queensland Symposium will be a part of the second Eastern Basins Symposium (see below). Conferences
To Put In Your Diary • PESA's EABS II, 19–22 September 2004, Adelaide Convention Centre: Abstracts are due December 2003 (Email: mailto:eabs2@santos.com). Principal sponsors established (Santos Ltd and PIRSA). For more info visit http://www.eabs.info or E-mail: eabs2004@sapro.com.au) Second-To-Last
Words —Quotes For Icebreakers
Cheers, 1
Daily quotation server - http://dqs.worldatwar.org/ Synopsis
of Australian Geoscience Council (AGC) Purpose & Activities AGC's
main activities are Of
late, the AGC has made submissions on behalf of its member societies to
the: The AGC's proactive positions are proposed for consideration, modification and finally endorsement by its member societies before using a range of mechanisms to lobby for policies aligned with sustaining a vibrant Australian geoscience community that is essential to the well being of Australians at large. The President's of both PESA and ASEG are AGC Executive Committee members and, as such, link AGC objectives to the aims of the petroleum E&P community. AGC is a member of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), which coordinates active participation by geoscientists in the annual "Science Meets Parliament" event. AGC's incumbent President is Dr David Denham (Email: denham@webone.com.au). For
more information visit: Table 1. |
