The Kick Off BAR-B-Q was a great success, thanks to the bar sponsorship by Geosource and the arrangements by John Bockelman. It was nice to see some of our old timers as well as a number of guests. I feel that we will have a successful year after seeing such a good turnout.

Those who did attend got to see a pilot video of our proposed documentary on the oil & gas industry in South Texas the film will be prepared from the numerous interviews with our old timers and some of the information in our history book, “Wooden Rigs and Iron Men.” The purpose of the pilot is to try to use it to contact major donors to the documentary that is expected to be shown on PBS locally, state wide and eventually nationally. The cost of such a project is in the $250,000.00 range and our society has already contributed seed money in the amount of $30,000.00 that we expect to get back once the documentary is complete. We will try to show it again at our October meeting. The producers need names of contacts in major companies, foundations or other philanthropic groups who would be inclined to participate financially in such a project. If you know of anyone who might be a lead, please let us know ASAP. They will make the presentations. All you have to do is give them the names.

I am in need of volunteers to reinvigorate two of our committees that have been relatively inactive for several years – the Type Log Committee and Publications. There have been a plethora of new discoveries completed and wildcat wells drilled since our last type log was added to our collection. Type logs are extremely valuable tools for all of us locally, but very important to other explorers who want to work South Texas. They also provide a nice source of income to our society, and now that we have all of Owens’ educational initiatives and other worthwhile projects , we can make valuable use of the extra funds. I would like to have a volunteer with enthusiasm for this project and help from all of you who have logs that would be of interest.

The other committee that used to be very active is Publications. I don’t remember when our publication “Typical Oil & Gas Fields of South Texas” was published, but there have been a lot of new fields and trends discovered since then. I don’t think any of the results of our ever growing technological progress have been published in a volume similar to “Typical Oil & Gas Fields.” I need someone to compile the many interesting papers that have been presented at our meetings over at least the last decade into a publication that will be useful to all explorationists who work South Texas. This chairman would also seek new papers that have not been presented. Even if some of these are published elsewhere, we need them in a central publication that will be available for sale by the Society.

I would like to remind every one that geology students from all of our universities are invited to attend our luncheon meetings free of charge due to the generosity of Core Lab in picking up one half of the meal cost and our Society doing the rest. Of course the bar is always sponsored, and if anyone would like to help with the bar please contact Rhett Fisher.

Rick Page has done a great job in bringing Cathy L. Farmer of BP/Amoco to speak to us at our first luncheon meeting on October 15th at the Corpus Christi Town Club. Her topic is “Structural and Sedimentological Evolution of the ultra-deep gas play fairway – GOM shelf, Texas and Louisiana.” This is an outstanding paper and should be of great interest to all of us even if we do not work offshore. Don’t forget to make your reservations on time, so John Bockelman can turn in an accurate meal count.

Daniel A. Pedrotti
CCGS President