HGS Looks Forward to a Busy Year
We are at the start of another HGS year, and what a year it will be! Stepping into my new role as president, I am amazed at the scope of the events we do, and honored to be walking in the footsteps of so many capable presidents that have come before me.
This will be a year of abundant technical information. It seems to me that the pace of information keeps getting a little quicker, and I’m glad to be able to attend symposia that sum it all up and keep me up to date.
Even the summer has been busy—the July Ethics talk held jointly between HGS and SIPES was an enormous success, and Technofest ’08, ably coordinated by Deborah Sacrey, sold out. Our Student Summer Intern party at
Technofest may become an annual event, welcoming Houston’s student interns into our community and the HGS.
We will be starting off the Fall with the HGS/PESGB Africa Conference, September 8-10. This conference, alternating between Houston and London, has become “the place to be” for anyone working in Africa. It is well worth attending.
October 4-6 will be the GCAGS annual meeting. This year the meeting will be at the George R. Brown Convention Center jointly with the annual GSA and Tri-Societies meetings. As a member of HGS, you are already a member of GCAGS. You can attend just the two days of GCAGS talks or the full five days of joint-meeting technical talks. Be sure to register as a GCAGS member, though, because only member-registrants will get their free copy of the GCAGS transactions and an invitation to attend the President’s party, which will be a fun just-for-members event costing you less than a draft beer. Also, be sure to participate in the enormous slate of short courses and field trips, organized by our HGS members as the host society. This has been a terrific organization effort by our own Leta Smith (short courses) and Gary Moore (field trips) with a great deal of help from Richard Howe. September’s HGS talks look to be exciting as well. Our General Dinner meeting speaker Nansen Saleri will talk about a subject dear to all our hearts, peak oil and the role of national oil companies. As former head of reservoir management for Aramco and current president and CEO of Quantum Reservoir Impact, he should have a lot to say. The International Group talk will be about integrating geochemistry to identify trap potential on the
unexplored south flank of the Santos Basin in Brazil, by William Dickson and Craig Shiefelbein. I always enjoy learning about new ways to integrate different kinds of data into a useable whole, so I am looking forward to this one.
This year will be a shaley one. We will start off with the Northsiders, who will hear Jeffrey Nunneley’s talk about measuring gas-in-place in the Barnett Shale at their September meeting. Then it is a two-part series at the September and October Luncheons by Stephen Trammel on “Hot US plays: Mostly Shale.” This one was standing room only in San Antonio, and I am looking forward to hearing the talk since I missed it there. Mr. Trammel will be back with Part 2 in October. And, in February, we are working on a sequel to last year’s very successful Mudstones Conference organized by Frank Walles.
And now, we have a couple of administrative notes. This year, HGS is going to an all paid-ahead system of reservations on the web site for the general meetings. Over the years, we have consistently lost money through no-shows at our meetings—we make very little over our costs on the dinners and lunches, and one or two no-shows can make the difference between a profit and a loss on some meetings. So we are reluctantly moving to a pay-ahead system. If you are not sure ahead of time if you will be able to attend, you may still be able to attend as a walk-up for most meetings, but the organization will not lose money paying for your meal if you are not able to make it at the last minute. For those folks who do not use the web, the office staff is cheerful and willing to help you pre-register to attend.
It is also time to double-check to make sure you have renewed your membership for this year. Every year in October, the members who have not renewed yet (the renewals went out at the beginning of the summer, y’all…) will be dropped from our membership rolls, and the number of people who fall off the list is appallingly large. Very often people just forget, so do yourself a favor and check your membership now. If you have changed your employer or address, you can update that information on the website while you are there, and perhaps make a contribution to the HGS scholarship funds (HGS Foundation for undergraduates, Calvert Memorial for graduate students—both are tax deductible) if you’re feeling lucky to be a geologist in this boom time.
Remember the old bumper sticker… “Please God let me have another oil boom—I promise I won’t **** it all away this time…”
I’m feeling remarkably lucky these days.