Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to serve and represent the CCGS as this years President. As I compose my last President letter, the phrase “Parting is such a Sweet Sorrow” comes to mind.

I enjoyed my tour, and I would like to thank all those generous members who made my job easy. In particular I would like to thank Juan Cabasos and Randy Bissell who did a great job organizing our luncheon speakers, Sebastian Wiedmann for keeping up with our finances as treasure, Beth Priday for documenting our meetings as Secretary, Owen Hopkins and his help as past President and Academic Liaison dealing with all of the Maps in Schools and various other projects, Sara Venable and Layton Devine bringing in the money with the advertising, Bob Barnard for giving away the money in Scholarships, Dennis Moore with all of his behind the scenes activity as Councilor, Tony Moherek for his help as President of the CBGS and the help of the other CBGS officers, Ray Govett with the History Committee and Sara Miller as Technical Editor. Special gratitude to John Bockelman for all of his time and effort involved in our Arrangements, Dan Pedrotti as President elect, Marian Wiedmann as Editor and all of our Bar Sponsors and the other numerous people who helped.

Our Maps in schools program continues to grow nation wide, see our web site for statistics www.ccgeo.org. Since October 2006, the CCGS has presented 145 framed, laminated “USGS Geologic Map of the USA” along with a lecture, a rolled map for the teacher and a mineral for each student. These maps have been presented by 12 local members of the CCGS and Texas A&M Corpus Christi geology students. Twenty-two were presented to area teachers at our RocksInYourHead program at our GCAGS convention in October. Most presented to a grade at a school. Some have been presented at the local Education Service Center at a summer seminar for teachers. A few have been presented at our local Museum to school groups touring the facility last summer.

The CCGS Education Phase II was approved by the CCGS Executive Committee at a board meeting held on January 23, 2008. Part of the new program includes the funding to commission Dinah Bowman, local artist, to paint a 3.5 by 7 foot mural of a snapshot of the Nueces Bay Floodplain 13,000 years ago that would include 40-50 extinct and nonextinct species. A 14 by 7 foot enlargement on cleanable, scrubable wallpaper of the mural will be installed at the Northwest Branch Library in Corpus Christi, Texas. The board approved $30,000 for the mural and its installation. The mural will then be made into posters to be given to schools along with bone samples from the same time period that will be provided by Dr. Jon Baskin and Ronnie Thomas from Texas A&M Kingsville.

Hundreds of Pleistocene bones, collected at the gravel pit by TAMU- Kingsville, over the last 18 years will be given to the CCGS to distribute to local schools along with the Mammal poster.

Collaboration on this mural has been with Dr Ernie Lundelius, University of Texas and Dr. Jon Baskin, TAMU-Kingsville and Dr. Jim Garrison, TAMU-Corpus Christi. Species list (flora and fauna), paleogeography and archaeology will be approved by them.

The Mural is anticipated to be installed in the winter of 2008.

Our next and last luncheon for 2008, “Oil Patch Roundup” will be held on May 21, 2008 at the Solomn Ortiz Center, not at the Town Club. Our guest speaker will be Mr. Red McCombs who will put on a general talk about the “Oil Patch”. We are inviting the other Petroleum related societies, and we expect a big turn out. Special appreciation to Core Laboratories, our generous bar sponsor for this event. Please see the related flyer in the Bulletin.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeff Cobbs
CCGS President
jc@tlspc.com
361.883.2911

“Part scientist, part detective, part artist, and part salesman, a good explorationist is a true virtuoso. “ …..by Steve Earle, HGS Editor

Truer words have never been spoken of our profession in the oil & gas industry. Sincere thanks to Dr. Jim Garrison with the Geology Department of Texas A & M University – Corpus Christi for presenting at our February meeting “TAMU-CC’s Geology Research Consortium program” which he is initiating that can be of great benefit to both the local students and those companies ( such as Suemaur Exploration & Production , LLC et. al. ) that act to participate in it. For more information on this Consortium where your company can help direct research efforts and give our local university/students a brighter future you can access it on the web @ http://artesian.tamucc.edu/jgarrison/consortium.html. It was heartening to hear that undergraduate geology degree enrollment is up considerably at TAMU-CC since 5 years ago.

The Coastal Bend Geophysical Society held a special meeting on February 25th to discuss the future of the CBGS, and I’m happy to report a new slate of officers were elected for the 2008-2009 calendar year. Tom Long, the original founder of our association volunteered once again to be the Society President. John Ralph cordially accepted the position as Vice-President and Eric Gardner graciously agreed to continue as our Treasurer for the forthcoming year. Please be sure to thank them for their volunteer efforts, and if you have any suggestions for future talks and or seminars don’t hesitate to mention them to Tom , John, or Eric at your earliest convenience.

Some SEG news:

What is the SEG/ExxonMobil Student Education Program?

The SEG/ExxonMobil Student Education Program (SEP) offers travel grants to graduate students who are pursuing a degree in the Geosciences. (Consideration will be given to highly qualified undergraduate students.) This program is focused on preparing students for the breadth and challenges of an oil industry career. This education program is a 2- day course on the subject of multi-interdisciplinary subsurface integration for exploration and production. ExxonMobil will provide course materials, team exercises, and instructors. The SEP will be held in two locations in 2008: North America and Europe. Accepted applicants will be assigned to the SEP occurring in their geographical region. For more info on this go to this link: http://foundation.seg.org/travelgrant/application/

2008 AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition
Deliver the Conventional; Pursue the Unconventional
April 20-23, 2008 • San Antonio, Texas

Every year AAPG has a meeting offering a technical program of papers presented both orally and in poster format. Surrounding this technical program is educational opportunities in the form of courses, field trips and special lectures. This years meeting will be held in nearby San Antonio April 20-23rd and you can review the complete program for this event at http://www.aapg.org/sanantonio/. One interesting Luncheon scheduled is “What Can We Learn from Sandboxes” by Dr. Chris Paola who has conducted years of stratigraphic experiments.

Tony Moherek
CBGS - President
Tonym@suemaur.com
361-884-8824

I would like to thank Bob Barnard for his involvement in our outstanding Scholarship Program. We gave away $4,000 to six students at our December luncheon, and we plan on giving another round of scholarships later in the year. We are always trying to grow the Scholarship fund with the help of our bighearted members who continue giving tax deductible contributions. Congratulations to Brian Sealy for his charitable work and participation in the “STAR” Grant curriculum. This Grant is generously funded by ExxonMobil and rewards its retired employs benevolent efforts by funding non-profit organizations such as our CCGS.

Our Maps in schools program continues to grow not only here but nation wide, see our web site for statistics www.ccgeo.org.

Our next luncheon will be held on March 19, 2008 at the Town Club. The scheduled guest speaker is Tim Garfield with ExxonMobil, and he will discuss methods of reservoir prediction. Special appreciation to 3-D Imaging, our generous bar sponsor for this event.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeff Cobbs
CCGS President
jc@tlspc.com
361.883.2911

Happy New Year !

Our sincere thanks to Mr. Alberto Jimenez for his good talk last month titled “Geoscience Licensing in Texas“ . It was informative to learn how our state is regulating the licensing procedure and how they really need input from us to help guide and measure their requirements. Many of us have been grandfathered in as Professional Geoscientists if we applied for it but it was interesting to learn how difficult the test is for younger geoscientists even after meeting the minimum 5 years of experience. Don’t hesitate to contact Alberto if you have questions or constructive suggestions to help them formulate several ongoing policies they are in the process of implementing. He can be reached by email: http://www.tbpg.state.tx.us/ or @ 512-936-4400.

78th Annual 2008 SEG Meeting : Las Vegas , Nevada : Nov 9th - 14th

This year the SEG has chosen “Viva Las Vegas” for the 2008 SEG 78 th Annual convention. The Technical Program Committee is reminding authors to prepare their abstracts for the Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. More info is contained at the SEG website: http://meeting.seg.org/techprog/index.shtml
Dates to remember:
• 12 March: Online submissions open
• 9 April: Deadline for all abstracts

Note the SEG encourages young people to look at geophysics as a career. Teachers and students can contact SEG for more information or visit the SEG Student Connection : (http://students.seg.org/) to browse through the programs and activities that SEG offers students of all ages.

Tony Moherek
CBGS President 2007-2008
Tonym@suemaur.com
361-884-8824

I hope the holiday season was enjoyable for everyone, and now we move forward to the New Year 2008! A Geologist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

Our next luncheon will be held on January 16 at the Town Club. The scheduled guest speaker is Gary Perry with GeoTrace, and he will discuss Inversion Technology. Special appreciation to Schlumberger, our generous bar sponsor for this event. The kind bar sponsor for our last luncheon on December 19, 2007 was Baker Hughes, thank you, the credit was mistakenly credited to one of our other great sponsors.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeff Cobbs
CCGS President
jc@tlspc.com
361.883.2911

“The closer your words are to the truth, the farther they reach“..... Anonymous

Please give a big thanks to all the countless CCGS & CBGS members who volunteered their precious time in making the 2007 GCAGS annual convention here in Corpus a total success. Total recorded attendees was 1190. Special thanks to General Co- Chairmen Dan Pedrotti & Brent Hopkins, also GCAGS President Gloria Sprague, my Technical Program Co-Chairs Jennifer Smith-Engle & Randy Bissell , Technical Paper Editor Wayne Croft, Dan Neuberger, Global Forum Co-Ordinator Bill Maxwell, Paul Strunk, Bob Rice, Short Course Co-Ordinator Rick Paige, Juan Cabasos, Jeff Cobbs, Larry Billingley, Owen Hopkins, Beth Priday, Poster Chairs Sara Venable & Leighton Devine, Kendall Thomas, Sara Potter- Miller, Ed Egger , Dawn Bissell , Alan Costello, Pete Graham, Sebastion Weidmann, etc., etc for organizing such a fun and informative convention.

On the SEG front its noteworthy that the SEG now counts 26,000 members in over 130 countries worldwide and to that end the SEG has now formally decided to open offices in Beijing, Peoples Republic of China and Perth, Australia. Also of importance is that the SEG has launched an advanced modeling forum ( called SEAM ) open to the industry.

The SEAM mission is to advance the science and technology of applied geophysics through a cooperative industry effort focused on subsurface model construction and generation of synthetic data sets for geophysical problems of importance to the resource extraction industry. Data sets, after an initial two years of confidentiality, will enter the public domain.

The primary goals of SEAM are to:

     Design and generate synthetic model 3D and 2D seismic data
     Share the high cost effort of substantial model design and generation
     Provide a forum to discuss geophysical problems of interest
     Advance the art of modeling and computation
     Provide data sets for industry benchmarks and educational purposes

SEAM Phase I commenced on 1 March 2007. Additional participants are welcome.

To request a model contract, please contact Katie Burk at kburk@seg.org.

Tony Moherek
CBGS President 2007-2008
Tonym@suemaur.com
361-884-8824

Thanks to everyone who participated in the GCAGS convention, it has a very positive impact on our Geological/Geophysical group and our on society.

Our next luncheon will be held on November 15, the date has been moved to avoid a potential conflict at the Town Club with Thanksgiving. Special appreciation to WesternGeco, our generous bar sponsor for this event. The guest speaker is Dr. Matt Brzostowski, and his talk will be on “Simultaneous AVO Inversion for Seismic Reservoir Characterization.”

The Map in schools project continues to grow in many more Texas cities and around the country. The History Committee has signed a deal and committed $30,000 towards producing a television documentary of the history of the oil and gas industry in south Texas.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeff Cobbs
CCGS President
jdcobbs@yahoo.com
361.883.2911

We had a great kick off Bar-B-Q, good crowd, food and bar!

Thanks to John Bockelman and his volunteers for doing a great job putting the event together. John worked the front desk and could not even join us in the dinning room. Thank you, Kendall Thomas and Amy Bufford for your help.

I would like to give special thanks to our bar sponsors IHS and SEI for helping to make this years Bar-B-Q bigger and better then ever.

I also would like to thank Thomas McGehee, PhD for updating us on the state of the Geology Department at A&M Kingsville. Tom received very short notice and stepped in as our guest speaker at the last minute.

October will be and entertaining month. We have Bruce Gates as our guest speaker at our October luncheon on the 17th presenting a talk on a Wilcox discovery in south Texas, and do not forget about the GCAGS convention we our hosting here on the 21st-23rd.

www.gcags2007.com

Jeff Cobbs
President Corpus Christi Geological Society

Welcome to the 2007-2008 CCGS year. I look forward to all the camaraderie, and who knows, maybe we might learn something from the highly talented luncheon speakers!

We have a great preliminary line up of guest speakers, climaxing with Mr. Red McCombs at the final luncheon on May 21, 2008. Thanks to Juan Cabasos, the new CCGS Vice President, and Randy Bissell, the new CBGS Vice President, for putting all this together.

I would like to take time to show appreciation for our new president elect, Dan Pedrotti and our new Secretary Beth Priday. Of course, I would like to especially offer the societies gratitude to all the many continuing officers, editors, committees and chairpersons, special projects, AAPG delegates and people who have donated their time generously over and over to support our geological society and our entire community.

Allow me to briefly point out and commend one of the hardest working retired guys I know, Professor Owen Hopkins, our past President, who has made an astounding effect on education and many various scientific arenas. His local “Maps in School Project” has grown from local to national, and it now is on the threshold of a world wide project. To date locally there has been at least sixteen companies and thirty-six individuals who have donated $17,838, plus money from the Don Boyd fund, to support this project. The money has gone towards putting these maps in eighty-seven schools and numerous private offices and homes. Besides Owens own extraordinary number of school presentations, he has inspired fifteen other CCGS members to give map presentations to schools. To see how this educational program is progressing or to display your prospects, visit our web site at www.ccgeo.org.

I think recognition should be given to all the volunteers associated with the up and coming GCAGS Convention in Corpus Christi. Special thanks to Gloria Sprague, this year’s GCAGS President, along with the General CO-Chairmen Brent Hopkins and Dan Pedrotti, who along with all the numerous volunteers have put together the venue for the convention. Spot your calendars for this event, October 21-23, you can register at www.gcags2007.com.

I hope one and all can attend the kick off Bar-B-Q, featuring prime Angus beef and spirits, on September 6, 2007 5:30-8:00 PM at the Museum of Natural Science and History.

Jeff Cobbs
President Corpus Christi Geological Society