From the President
Because my term expires at the end of June, I want take a moment upfront to express my gratitude to the EMD Executive and Leadership Committees for their enthusiastic support and willingness to volunteer their valuable time to work with me during the past year. Your continued efforts are recognized and appreciated by many in AAPG. President Denise Cox expressed to me that she views EMD as the most important Division that will help insure AAPG’s future success as our Association keeps pace with a sustainable energy future. EMD will serve an important role in attracting new members to AAPG who are interested in alternate (non-petroleum) energy resources, and critical minerals required to support the transition to renewable energy sources. This view does not diminish the importance of the unconventional oil & gas resources represented by EMD, which will continue as a necessary component to meet the world’s increasing energy demand well into the future.
Member Engagement
Our strategy this year to increase member engagement was to provide more frequent and relevant technical content, and to fill Councilor and Committee Chair vacancies. You will note in the left column on the first page that we have added four new Councilors since the last Newsletter published in January. We still are searching for a Councilor to represent the Middle East Region.
The councilors serve an important role to maintain communication and help coordinate related activities with the Sections and Regions. I encourage you to contact the Councilors listed here and on the EMD webpage to help keep EMD updated with announcements for meetings and new publications of interest https://www.aapg.org/divisions/emd/leadership#178332213-councilors.
You will also note that we have added a new position of Young Professional (YP) Ambassador in an effort to improve our outreach to the YP Special Interest Group https://www.aapg.org/youngpros to increase awareness of EMD’s role in contributing to a sustainable energy future. We welcome our first YP Ambassador, Alvaro Gomez, who volunteered from the YP Peru chapter. With the increasing interest in unconventional and alternate energy resources, we hope to add new YP members to EMD with the potential of developing new leaders in AAPG.
We continue to update the EMD webpage with monthly contributions to the Latest Articles & News section, so please check the webpage frequently to stay informed. We also welcome your contributions for the blog posts. These can be meeting announcements, brief technical articles, or other relevant items. Please contact the President or Communications (Website) Committee Chair https://www.aapg.org/about/aapg/overview/committees/emd/Articleid/26358/committee-emd-website.
Annual Leadership Meeting
The EMD Annual Leadership meeting was held on May 18 in San Antonio, Texas in conjunction with the AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition (ACE). We were pleased to see Denise Cox (AAPG President), Jeff Aldrich (AAPG VP Regions), Susan Nash (AAPG Director of Innovation, and Emerging Science & Technology), and Mary Barrett (President AAPG Division of Environmental Geology) join our meeting. Their representation is testimony to the interest AAPG has in EMD to help lead our Association into the future and attract new members interested in AAPG’s role in supporting a sustainable energy future.
There were no new or old business items presented that required a vote during the annual meeting. Most of the meeting consisted of a summary of the annual reports prepared by the Executive Committee, Councilors, and Committee Chairs. The full reports are now available on the EMD webpage.
EMD Bylaws Revisions Approved
The proposed revisions to update the EMD bylaws were sent for approval to all EMD members on May 25. The voting closed on May 15, and I am pleased to announce that the ballot passed overwhelmingly, and approved by the AAPG Executive Committee in San Antonio. These changes will provide flexibility to guide EMD official business well into the future. Thanks to EMD President Elect Edith Wilson, and AAPG Division Liaison Diane Keim, President Denise Cox, and Executive Director David Curtiss for their consultation and assistance in preparing the new bylaws. A copy of the new Bylaws are now available on the EMD webpage https://www.aapg.org/divisions/emd/about/bylaws.
An ad hoc committee chaired by Publications Chair, Chandler Wilhelm, will begin preparing the updated Procedures Manual. The current Procedures are available on the EMD website https://www.aapg.org/divisions/emd/about. Please contact Chandler if you have any comments.
New Officer Candidates Announced
The candidates nominated for election for the expiring terms of President Elect and Vice President were approved by the AAPG Executive Committee in San Antonio, and announced during the EMD Annual Meeting on May 18. A big thank you for the candidates accepting the call to serve our organization, and to the Nominations Chair, Past-President Doug Wyatt, for working to get a slate of well-qualified candidates nominated. Note the new term for Vice President is two years, overlapping with the two-year term of Secretary. As of this writing, I have not received a date for the EMD Officer election, but hopefully this will occur before July 1 when the new officer terms are effective.
Good luck to the candidates:
For President Elect Ursula Hammes and Justin Birdwell
For Vice President: Tom Temples and Gareth Chalmers
DEG/EMD Annual Luncheon
Honors & Awards
The following EMD awards were presented during the annual DEG/EMD Luncheon in San Antonio. Congratulations to all of the recipients.
Honorary Member: Frank Walles
Distinguished Service: Sam Limerick
Past President’s: Doug Wyatt
Certificate of Merit: Steven Schamel and Ursula Hammes
Frank Kottlowski Memorial Best Paper: Thomas Fender, Cees Van der Land, Mohamed Rouainia, and Thomas Wagner
Best Poster: Stanley Paxton, Justin Birdwell, Lauri Burke, Russell Dubiel, Nicholas Gianoutsos, Scott Kinney, Janet Pitman, Ofori Pearson, and Katherine Whidden
President’s Certificate for Excellence in Presentation: Christopher Ross, Garrett Hickman, Matthew Pranter, Zulfiqua Reza, and Andrew Cullen
Speaker
The DEG lined up the speaker for this year’s luncheon. Eirik Waerness, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist with Equinor (formerly Statoil), gave an interesting presentation on his company’s outlook of the global energy future by outlining three different possible scenarios. His presentation is a summary of the Equinor 2019 Energy Perspective report that is available from the company’s website: https://www.equinor.com/content/dam/statoil/documents/energy-perspectives/Energy%20Perspectives%202019%20report.pdf.
The central theme presented by Mr. Waerness is that the aggregated climate actions of the world community are currently insufficient to keep global warming below the 2 oC Paris Climate Agreement goal, and outlined the enormous challenges ahead to meet the world’s energy demands in a sustainable manner. Mr. Waerness made it clear that to follow a sustainable path of delivering both economic growth and emissions reductions will require continued reliance on carbon-based fuels well into the future.
Website
The Join EMD link is now functioning properly, and we have added an automated message to welcome new members. Vice President Bob Coskey provided a summary of his 2018 website analytic report during the Annual Leadership Meeting. There were a total of 10,867 views during the period from January 1, 2018 to May 11, 2019. There was an unexplained notable spike in activity between September and November 2018, and the average time per view was just over one and one half minutes. The Uranium Committee led the number of visits with 279 page views, followed by Bitumen/Heavy Oil (114), Gas Hydrates (104), Oil Shale (94), Coalbed Methane (91), Coal (83), Tight Gas Sands (64), Shale Gas & Liquids (64), Geothermal (62) and Energy Economics (62). The new Critical Minerals Committee added late this year received 37 hits.
The website report and other submitted annual reports are available on the EMD webpage: https://www.aapg.org/divisions/emd/reports/annual-meeting/details/Articleid/52827/emd-annual-leadership-meeting-may-18-2019.
Publications
Journal Natural Resources Research
EMD publishes a review of our Annual Commodity Reports on odd years in cooperation with the Journal of Natural Resources Research (Springer). The 2017 review article was compiled and edited by EMD member Fran Hein. Fran decided to step down as editor after her long service, and will be replaced by Milovan Fustic (University of Calgary).
There was some discussion during the Annual Leadership Meeting about continuing our relationship with Springer. The 2017 review article is available for purchase from Springer https://link.springer.com/journal/11053. The Advisory Committee recommended seeking alternate publication outlets, such as the AAPG Search & Discovery, so that the report could be more readily available to AAPG members. The Publications Committee will be addressing this issue during the next fiscal year.
No other new EMD publications since last newsletter are in the works.
AAPG ACE
The AAPG Executive Committee approved a new process for organizing the Annual Convention and Exhibitions, see President Denise Cox June Explorer Column: https://explorer.aapg.org/story/articleid/53003/onward?utm_medium=website&utm_source=explorer_issue_page. Rather than relying on the local societies of the host city, AAPG will form a new Global ACE Organizing Committee for all future ACE meetings with a surplus funds distributed to all AAPG Sections and Regions proportional to geographical attendance all AAPG Regions and Sections, rather than to just the host city organization. EMD has been proactive in recommending sessions for the 2020 meeting which will be held in Houston in June. We have been assured that EMD will have a representative on the Global Organizing Committee, and look forward to becoming an active participant in this new process.
Meetings
2019 URTeC, Denver, Colorado
The AAPG co-sponsored Unconventional Technology Conference (URTeC) is moving back to Denver for their sixth annual meeting July 22-24 https://urtec.org/2019.
2019 ICE Buenos Aires, Argentina
Region Councilor Miguel Nicho-Pacheco and DEG President Mary Barrett have been working with the 2019 ICE technical committee to form a session on Energy and the Environment that would address local concerns about shale gas development and geohydrology the August 27-30 event https://buenosaires2019.iceevent.org/technical-program/program.
2019 TSOP Bloomington, Indiana
The 36th Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP) will be held in at the Indiana University in Bloomington, September 7-11, 2019. TSOP is an Associated Society of AAPG. This event is being organized by EMD member Maria Mastalerz https://www.tsop.org/TSOP2019/index.htm.
Rocky Mountain Section Meeting
Mike Bingle-Davis, the EMD Rocky Mountain Section Councilor, is preparing an EMD focused oral session titled: “EMD: Exploring New Energy Frontiers” for the AAPG Rocky Mountain Section meeting in Cheyenne, Wyoming, September 15-18. Presentation topics include uranium, critical minerals, helium, and subsurface CO2 sequestration. This will be a good event to highlight our new Critical Minerals Committee, chaired by Jesse Edmondson.
- EMD FACTOID: Did you know that the Mountain Pass open-pit mine in southeast California is the only one rare-earth mine operating the U.S., and that all of the ore is shipped to China for processing?
Member Feedback
The Executive Committee is interested in improving our service to you and we welcome your feedback. Please contacting me by email , or any of the other Executive Committee members https://www.aapg.org/divisions/emd/leadership#178332212-executive-committee.