President Henry Wise Appoints New Senior Student Councilor to the AIPG-TX Board

President Henry Wise announced today the appointment of Christian Martinez as the new Senior Student Councilor to the AIPG-TX Board. Mr. Martinez received his B.S. degree in geology with a minor in geophysics in 2018 from the University of Houston (Main Campus). He is finishing his work on a M.S. in geology. His thesis is on determining the magmatic history/ages of extraterrestrial materials and their relationships to early planetary evolution using Pb-Pb chronology and petrology, under Dr. Thomas Lapen. His relevant course work to date involved: Hydrogeology, Environmental Geochemistry, GeoChemical Reaction Transport Modeling, Geospatial Information’s Systems, Sequence Stratigraphy, Structural Geology, Mineralogy, Field Methods, and Field Camp.

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The Wise Report

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is providing an opportunity for public comment and a notice and comment hearing on the draft Oil and Gas General Operating Permit (GOP) Numbers 511, 512, 513, & 514. The draft GOPs contain revisions based on recent federal and state rule changes, which include updates to the requirements tables; the addition of new requirements tables; and updates to the terms. The renewal also corrects typographical errors and updates language for administrative preferences. For more information go to: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/permitting/air/nav/titlev/news.html

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Glen Collier Recognized for Outstanding Service to AIPG Texas Section

Henry M. Wise, President of AIPG Texas Section, and Michael D. Campbell, Vice-President – Eastern Texas, made a presentation recently by FedEx of a commemorative plaque to Glen Collier of Nacogdoches, Texas. This gives the Officers and the Advisory Board the opportunity to formally thank Glen for his efforts on behalf of the Texas Section of the AIPG over the past 6 years.

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Texas Earthquakes

Pennington and Davis, both of the Institute of Geophysics of the University of Texas at Austin.Texas. reported that Texas has experienced more than 100 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater since 1847. However, because the density of both seismographs and people has been very low in Texas, knowledge of the state’s seismicity is undoubtedly incomplete. The largest known earthquake in Texas occurred on Aug. 16, 1931, near the town of Valentine in Jeff Davis County. The total felt area exceeded one million square kilometers (about 400,000 square miles).

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The Energy Transition and/or Revolution? – 2020

Edith Newton Wilson, President of the Energy Minerals Division of AAPG, asked: A Revolution? What’s in a name? Should we call it a transition? A convergence? A transformation? A revolution? A tipping­ point? A paradigm shift?  Consider that perhaps the name is largely irrelevant, except to sell conference tickets. There’s a radical shift afoot that affects the business model for global energy delivery and consumption. And with it comes with a wealth of opportunities for energy geoscientists, as well as an obligation for every professional society to help its members prepare for the future.

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AAPG Climate Change Poll Results – 2020

In September – October 2019, Aldrich and Shoup designed and oversaw the AAPG email-based poll of all members concerning whether or not AAPG should have a position paper and, specifically, should AAPG have a statement on anthropogenic climate change. The AAPG Executive Committee has reviewed the results of that poll and considered every comment provided by the members. We now wish to share the results of that poll with the membership. The raw numbers are shown in the table below. However, the Executive Committee spent some time to sort through the data to try and understand the distribution of responses and the demographics of those that took the time to respond.

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The Wise Report

The TCEQ discovered and fixed several errors found in the soil TPH calculator (columns E and I of the excel sheets) for the >C12-C16 Aliphatic, >C16 – C21 Aliphatic, and the >C21-C35 Aliphatic carbon ranges. The errors were caused by the incorrect referencing of cells within the PCL calculation equation for the listed aliphatic carbon ranges. Instances of the errors occurred in the TotSoilCombGWSoilIngGWSoilClass3, and AirSoilInh-V TPH excel sheets.

The soil TPH calculator has been updated and posted on the TCEQ external webpage: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/remediation/trrp/trrppcls.html. The revised version (V 3.0 – 02/2020) should be used moving forward.

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Ignite Your Career to Success – National AIPG Conference Call

A New Idea from Your National AIPG Center

It is time to ignite your career to success by writing strategic resumes and developing talking points that transform your job interviews. AIPG is conducting the fifth annual “Ignite Your Career to Success” Conference Call on Friday, January 24, at 4 pm PST (5 pm MST, 6 pm CST and 7 pm EST, 5:30 am Saturday morning India time zone).

Senior AIPG members that have demonstrated success in the earth sciences and a successful young professional will be led by Stephen Baker, hydrogeologist and AIPG Executive National Committee member.

This one-hour session will direct you towards success in the earth sciences job market. AIPG will be providing interested participants with valuable articles that further discuss effective resume writing and interviewing ideas. Have your questions answered and be the one that is chosen for the on call mock job interview.

Check your time zone at (4 pm PST, 5 pm MST, 6 pm CST and 7 pm EST, 5:30 am Saturday
morning India time zone) and ignite your career to success by participating in the January 24, 2020 interactive conference call.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2020
4 PM Pacific Standard Time
CALL-IN: (515) 606-5119
ACCESS CODE: 132507

Mentions of AIPG-Texas Section’s Vice-President by AAPG’s EMD President in Editorial


See EMD’s Uranium (Nuclear and REE) Committee (Here)

Results of the AIPG Climate Change Questionnaire

David Abbott, in cooperation with Peter Dohms and John Berry,  on behalf of the AIPG, asked its members to select one of ten statements that summarized a view about climate range. The range of statements varied from climate alarmist through those denying that humans have any effect on climate change to those with no opinion at all. Those summarizing statements were:

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