World's oil and gas experts in South Australia

Tuesday, 3 December 2002

The University of Adelaide's international reputation as a hotbed of petroleum research will be further boosted this week with a major conference being held in the Barossa Valley.

Eighty-five of the world's top oil and gas researchers are attending the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Hedberg Conference, which focuses on the latest research on how best to find and develop oil and gas resources. The AAPG is the world's largest petroleum geoscience organisation, with 30,000 members worldwide.

One of the convenors of the conference is the University of Adelaide's Professor John Kaldi, who is director of the National Centre for Petroleum Geology and Geophysics (NCPGG) at the University.

Professor Kaldi says hosting the conference is a great honour for the State as it is the first one ever in Australia and only the second ever in the Asia Pacific region," he says.

"The idea behind Hedberg conferences is that they are 'brainstorming'- type meetings, where world leaders in the field can discuss state-of- the-art concepts, methodologies, case histories and future directions.

"By having this conference in South Australia, we are further boosting the University's profile internationally. It will also benefit our efforts to set up our own oil and gas 'think-tank' in this State through the University's School of Petroleum Engineering and Management and its associated partners, such as Santos, who have put $25 million into the school, the NCPGG and the Schlumberger Oilfield Company."

The Hedberg Conference's major theme evaluating the hydrocarbon sealing capacity of faults and caprocks.

"If you imagine an oil and gas reservoir below the surface of the Earth as something like a giant bottle, then it requires a 'cork' of some sort to seal in the hydrocarbon," Professor Kaldi says.

"World experts from more than 20 countries will be focussing on the various aspects of rocks that make up these 'corks', or seals, such as determining the size and shape of seals, and how to predict brittle seals."

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