Congratulations are in order for the Corpus Christi Geological Society and all its members as a result of the Awards Program at this year’s Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies. CCGS received a “PROCLAMATION” by the Governing Board for GCAGS as the “2007-2008 OUTSTANDING COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY”. Please see the copy of this proclamation after the President’s Letter in this bulletin.

Our very active member, Frank Cornish received two awards for his paper “Southwest Speaks Lower Wilcox Structural Complex, Lavaca County Texas” co authored by Robert W. Parker. Frank was awarded First Place in the 2007 Thomas A. Philpott Excellence of Presentation Award and Third Place in the 2007 GCSSEPM Grover E. Murray Best Paper in the Transactions”. “Way to go Frank”!

Our Texas A & M University Corpus Christi Professor and Research Associate, Dr. James R. Garrison, Jr., placed Second in the 2007 Gordon I. Atwater Best Paper Award for “The Nueces Incised Valley Revisited: A reinterpretation of the Sedimentary and Depositional Sequence Stratigraphy of Preserved Pleistocene and Holocene Valley Fill Sediments”. This paper was co-authored by Bobby McCoy.

Every member of CCGS should be very proud of these individual achievements, but especially for the 2007-2008 Outstanding Community Service Award because this didn’t happen just this year. This is the result of tremendous outreach efforts on the part of our members over a 20 plus year period starting in 1989 when Pat Nye was President. Pat initiated the BayFest GeoDig, and we have manned a booth at this event every year since. From this beginning our outreach has evolved under the direction of succeeding Boards and Presidents until today when we have the most aggressive programs of any other Society in the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies.

Dr. Thomas McGehee, Texas A & M Kingsville started the “Junior Rock Hound Precollege Outreach Program in the mid 80’s for Kingsville and surrounding areas and brought the idea to CCGS. We then bought books and copies of some of his handouts to create our own Junior Rock Hound program. We now participate in the Corpus Christi informal education educators, a program that has been held annually at the Aquarium and on the Lexington where 400 to 500 educators come by our booth to pick up flyers about the Junior Rock Hound Program and other outreach projects of our society.

To fully appreciate what we have done and why we were recognized by GCAGS, read “Report to the 2008 Annual Meeting of the GCAGS Board of directors” that appears on page 27 in this bulletin.

Those of us who attended our Luncheon Meeting on Wednesday, October 15th were treated to an outstanding, informative and inspiring paper presented by Cathy Farmer of BP/Amoco. What made this speech so inspiring is that it demonstrates what you might call finding a prospect the “Old Fashioned Way.” This huge prospect on the Gulf of Mexico Shelf started with regional stratigraphic and sedimentary studies, then regional 2-D seismic and source rock work that led management to acquire critical leases and conduct a 3-D survey that confirmed the concept. Today, the Bob Palmer, the largest platform rig, is drilling a 28,000 foot test with an AFE in excess of $150,000,000.00 on a sub salt prospect with enormous potential. Cathy pointed out the importance of the team effort involving 10 or more scientists. Cathy, a confident and obviously good geologist and manager is a role model for the type of geologists we need in the future in order to discover, develop and produce the now technically definable prospects with the incredible oil & gas resources in the off shore Gulf of Mexico. She also pointed out that the same rocks should extend on shore, though they may be quite deeper.

This exciting prospect and the way it was found and developed reinforces that the geosciences are alive, and a worthy profession to pursue. It validates the importance of the seeds we are planting through our outreach programs in schools, our scholarships, libraries and community speaking, in an effort to create interest in our profession. Now using this example and pointing to the exciting work ahead for future geoscientists we have the opportunity to again entice our top students to consider studying geology and geophysics and seek careers in our Oil & Gas industry in which people are needed to fill the open positions as our generation retires or becomes dated.

Finally, let me say that although I have not been actively involved in the great achievements of our society, I am extremely proud to be associated with such a dedicated group of individuals. There is no question that we deserve the honor recently presented to us by GCAGS. Each of you should take great personal pride in what you have done to earn this recognition.

I am looking forward to seeing you at the Corpus Christi Town Club on November 19th to hear Peter M. Duncan’s talk on “Aggressively Passive: Microseismic Opportunities Over an Oil Field’s Life.”

Daniel A. Pedrotti
CCGS President

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

Welcome to the 2008-2009 Corpus Christi Geological Society’s New Year.

It is an honor and a challenge to be completing the 50th year of my career as a geologist in the Oil & Gas Exploration business, all of which has been spent in Corpus Christi, serving as your President and working with such a talented group of explorationists.

We have a great slate of officers, outstanding committee chairs, a very dedicated and motivated membership and great momentum at a time when our industry is again in one of its most difficult periodic cycles. Thankfully, after losing a whole generation of petroleum related personnel in the 1985 crash, enough of us have survived to keep the tradition of excellence that is a hallmark of our Society.

After a long hiatus from active participation in society matters, I was very impressed with all the enthusiasm, talent and effectiveness I observed from the membership during my term as Co-Chair of the GCAGS Convention last year. Gloria, you, Brent and all the volunteers pulled off a meeting that is the envy of all the other GCAGS member societies. And we made money too. I am now convinced that we are blessed with one of the greatest cadres of geoscientists that I have worked with during my career, and that we will more than do our share in solving the problems of energy independence for our country.

Speaking of momentum, our maps in schools has taken off like Spindletop under the incredible enthusiasm and creativity of Former President, Owen Hopkins. Not only has it been embraced by every society in GCAGS and now AAPG is considering sizeable financial support, but it is going international with prospects in both Mexico and Canada. Just look at Owen’s reports in this issue of the Bulletin. Owen is also ram roding our “Bones in Schools” and the effort to have a major geological exhibit in each of our 6 major libraries. This comes at a time when we desperately need talented geoscientists to replace the huge number of geologists and geophysicists with hundreds of years of experience who will be retiring in the next five to ten years. Thankfully we have Owen to inspire us and keep these projects moving. I hope we can maintain all of our other activities going at or improving the pace of the past few years.

One of the more interesting developments that I have observed over the past few years is the nature of the articles appearing in our bulletin, such as “Why I Became a Geologist”, “The Roar Heard Around the World” by Bernard Dietz published by Ray Govett and Owen’s “Lessons I Learned” plus all of the very informative technical papers. I want to continue these types of articles, so if you want to tell us about how you became a geologist, an exciting discovery or just a good story from your experiences in South Texas or elsewhere, please contact our editors and have them work with you. In fact I have a few stories of my own that I intend to share this year.

Vice President, Rick Paige, has already lined up some very interesting speakers for this year and John Ralph of CBGS will fill the rest. I may even do a program on how I became interested in wild sheep hunting.

So get ready for another great year by joining us on September 17th at the Natural History Museum for the kick off of our 2008-2009 programs.

Daniel Pedrotti
CCGS President