Events & Courses

The Petroleum Geology of Northwest Europe Conference, organised jointly by the Geological Society of London, the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain (PESGB) and the Energy Institute (EI) will mark a major milestone: 50 years since the first UK North Sea discovery of the West Sole gas field.

The event will cover the North Sea and surrounding onshore areas, as well as exploration frontiers in the North Atlantic and the Barents Sea. The conference technical sessions will comprise invited keynote speakers, selected papers and posters. The central theme “50 years of learning – a platform for present value and future success”, will lead the conference sessions which will focus on four areas:

• Standing on the shoulders of giants – what we have learned from past successes?
• Finding and developing more oil and gas in both mature basins and new plays
• Optimising recovery – extending the life of existing fields and re-developing old fields
• Future – what is still not understood?
• In particular, emphasis will be given to crafting and selecting talks to transfer learning from the past 50 years of the North Sea to younger generations of geologists and geophysicists.
• In the same spirit of providing an opportunity to learn from the past the event will feature a dedicated presentation of classic core material from a wide range of fields and discoveries.

In particular, emphasis will be given to crafting and selecting talks to transfer learning from the past 50 years of the North Sea to younger generations of geologists and geophysicists. In the same spirit of providing an opportunity to learn from the past, the event will also feature a dedicated presentation of classic core material from a wide range of fields and discoveries.

The technical programme will include the following themes:

• Key fields and fairways
• North Sea for the next generation 
• Technology-lead opportunities 
• Infrastructure-lead exploration and development 
• Key geoscience challenges  
• Northwest European petroleum systems
• New looks at mature basins – Imaging challenges in mature fields: learn from the past, invest in the future
• Regional understanding – new play fairways 
• Onshore exploration and development 
• Late-life fields and re-development 
• Recent successes and learnings from failures  
• Core material 

All delegates will receive an abstract book on the first day of the conference.  The registration fee also includes a copy of the complete conference proceedings which will be published following the event.  The volumes from previous conferences have proven to be the seminal Northwest  European Petroleum references