AIPG-TX

Henry Wise, P.G., C.P.G, President of the AIPG Texas Section announced at the June Meeting of the Officers and Advisory Board of the AIPG Texas Section that John Greiner, current Treasurer of the Texas Section, has stepped down because he is moving his residence to New Mexico. In his place, Mr. Wise has proposed (and has received approval from the Texas Board) for the appointment of Boyd Handley as Secretary/Treasurer of the Texas Section effective immediately.  Mr. Wise thanked Mr. Greiner for his commitment over the years to the Texas Section, and welcomed Mr. Handley during the recent Board meeting.

The I2M Web Portal is made available to geoscientists, and to the general public worldwide with a focus on geoscientific and other matters of interest to I2M management. The database just passed 10,000 records and counting. Searches can be conducted using single words, phrases or exact phrases (if you put them in quotes), for example: a simple phrase might be Russian interests in U.S. uranium whereas an exact phrase is “vapor intrusion”. I2M Consulting personnel and associates also monitor hazardous field conditions around the world via our Field Alerts program, cybersecurity conditions on the Internet in our Security Alert program, and relevant bias in the Media in our Confronting Media Bias Alerts program. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

Michael D. Campbell, P.G., P.H. CPG, also serves as Chairman of the Uranium (Nuclear and REE) Committee (UCOM). He presented a summary of the 2020 Annual UCOM report to the Energy Minerals Division‘s Executive Committee, Commodity Chairs, other Committee Chairs, and special guests during a special Zoom presentation during the EMD Annual Meeting on June 6, 2020.  The Annual AAPG-EMD Conference was originally scheduled for early June, 2020 in Houston, but has been cancelled because of the increasing spread of the coronavirus in the the Houston area and in the cities around Texas in general. The final 2020 UCOM Annual report is now available (here).

Henry Wise, P.G., CPG, President of AIPG Texas Section, also serves as Vice-Chair (Industry) to UCOM and contributed to the 2020 UCOM report. Others also serve on the UCOM Advisory Committee, such as:

Kevin T. Biddle, Ph. D., P.G., Houston
Michael A. Jacobs, P.G., Midland
Roger W. Lee, Ph.D., P.G. Austin
Mark Pelizza, P.G., Plano, and
David Rowlands, Ph. D., P.G.

I2M Senior Principal/Project Manager, M. David Campbell, P.G., also serves as Special Consultant to UCOM.

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 Dr. Rima Petrossian. This action allows the Officers and the Advisory Board the opportunity to formally thank Rima for her efforts on behalf of the Texas Section of the AIPG over many years since the Texas Section was revitalized 10 years ago.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.