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Below are notes of the Industry Biostratigraphy Coordinators Meeting
held Monday, February 12, 1996 at Unocal Corporation, Sugarland,
Texas.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
MINUTES
INDUSTRY BIOSTRATIGRAPHY COORDINATORS MEETING
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1996
UNOCAL CORPORATION
SUGAR LAND, TEXAS, USA
I. ATTENDEES
Oil Companies: R. Lane, D. White (Amoco), S. Barnette (BP), R.
Wasczsak (Conoco), P. McLaughlin (Exxon), B. O'Neill (Shell), Ron
Morin (Mobil), S. Truax, Mike Dumont (Vastar), D. Butler (Pennzoil),
R. Fleisher (Chevron), S. Zellers (Texaco), A. Gary, V. Waters, G.
Jones, K. Shaw, J. Packard, G. Blake, D. Vork (Unocal).
Invited Guests: John Wearing (Landmark), H. Clement Olson (University
of Texas, Austin), G. Sjogren (consulting computer programmer).
II. MINUTES
Garry Jones (Unocal) acted as host and called the meeting to order at
approximately 9:30 AM.
The morning half of the meeting was dedicated to Unocal further
discussing and giving a hands-on demonstration of their in-house,
interactive, biostratigraphic software called the Integrated
Paleontologic System (IPS). (At the last IBCG meeting, Unocal
unveiled its plans to create a strategic university - industry
alliance designed to further develop and apply IPS software.)
To underscore the need for a strategic alliance to further develop
biostratigraphic software like IPS, Garry Jones reviewed the past,
present, and future condition of industry biostratigraphy with respect
to quantitatively analyzing and integrating paleontologic data with
other disciplines.
PAST (1970's, 1980's): Other disciplines, such as seimic, adopt
standard graphic formats to facilitate merging of multisource data;
biostrat adopts few if any standards especially with regard to
taxonomy, paleobathymetry, statistical picking procedures, digital
formats, and data base models.
PRESENT: Other disciplines (e.g., WDS - logs, Landmark - logs,
seismic) move to interactive data analysis, interpretation, and
multidisciplinary data presentation in common language via workstation
technology; biostrat has no comparable analysis and interpretation
software.
FUTURE (next 5 years): Other disciplines will move to true
multidisciplinary integration at the data level of scaled quantitative
attributes (e.g., seismic attributes, log/petrophysical attributes of
reservoir, quantitative facies descriptions, production data,
stochastic modeling, intelligent systems); biostrat future: little
knowledge of what quantitative attributes are important or their
probabilistic distribution.
Ken Shaw (Manager of Unocal Strategic Alliances) gave an overview and
update on the proposed IPS strategic alliance being negotiated with
University of Texas, Austin, Landmark, and Unocal. Ken stated that a
comprehensive business plan for the strategic alliance could be ready
for distribution to companies interested in participating by the next
IBCG meeting in April.
Anthony Gary and Gary Sjogren gave a hands-on demo of the
functionality of Unocal's IPS software. IPS, programmed for both DOS
and UNIX platforms, displays paleontologic data in four general
formats:
(1) Digital equivalent of fossil distribution or range chart;
(2) Paleontologic "curve"displays (diversity, total counts, sample
similarity coefficients, etc.);
(3) Specialized (basin-specific) paleobathymetry display;
(4) Biostratigraphic cross-plots of well sections vs. composite
standard sequences of stratigraphic events and sedimentation rate
diagrams.
During lunch break, Gary Sjogren met separately with computer
specialists from Landmark and several oil companies to review
programming details of IPS software.
After lunch, the regular IBCG business meeting was held. Brian
O'Neill and Garry Jones gave a progress report on the Gulf Coast
Section SEPM Project for Gulf of Mexico Taxonomic Equivalency. Garry
announced that Exxon had formally joined the other companies in the
project. Brian showed images of foraminifera captured by the British
Museum's PaleoVision system. This system, and an allied relational
data base, are being considered by the Project Steering Committee as
one means for archiving and disseminating the taxonomic information
that will be collected during the course of the Project. Garry
reported that Jim Ogg (Purdue University) was making good progress
linking donated company biostrat zonations to a numerical time scale,
all in Excel spreadsheet format.
Rich Lane announced he is helping to organize a conference on
Paleontology in the 21st Century to be held in Frankfurt, Germany on
August 25-30, 1997. This conference would cover all aspects of
paleontology and will be designed to bring together paleontologists
from industry, academia, private consulting, government, and museums.
Brian O'Neill asked IBCG reprentatives to consider inviting John Wrenn
(Louisiana State University) to the next IBCG meeting so that John
could discuss several palynological research proposals; everyone
agreed to the invitation. Garry Jones offered to contact John Wrenn
to ask him to consider bringing a cost/time analysis of what it would
take to get donated Shell Oil Co. paly data for the Gulf of Mexico
into a standardized format.
Hilary Clement Olson announced the creation of a fund to support
micropaleo research at University of Texas, Austin on behalf of Martin
Lagoe who passed away last December. Hilary also asked for support
from the IBCG to lobby the Dean at UT Austin to keep Martin's
biostratigraphy position open. Sally Zellers offered to write a
letter on behalf of the IBCG and bring it for review at the next
meeting in April.
Pete McLaughlin mentioned the need to continue development of a
worldwide biostratigraphy vendor directory. The Group discussed
various data they would like to see in the directory. Dave Vork
offered to donate Unocal's directory which was based on a worldwide
survey about three years ago.
It was brought up that the Houston area Paleo Lunch Bunch (coordinated
by Rashel Rosen of Excalibur, Inc.) would like to have an update on
recent IBCG actions at their next regular meeting. Sally Zellers
offered to give this update and would focus on the proposed IPS
strategic alliance and Taxonomic Equivalency Project.
The next meeting of the IBCG will be hosted by Amoco on Monday, April
8th.
Respectfully submitted,
Garry Jones
UNOCAL
Lafayette, Louisiana, USA
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