Course Details

The public course is generally run in association and with the support of SEAPEX in a 4 day format immediately prior to the 2 major upstream industry conferences within the region so that students can attend both the course and the conference in one business trip. The main conferences which are targeted are:

The SEAPEX conference

See www.seapex.org
run every 2 years in Singapore

The IPA Conference

See www.ipa.or.id
Riun anually in Jakarta

The normal schedule is to run the course once a year alternating between the two conferences i.e. it's the IPA conference in "even" years and the SEAPEX conference in "odd" years. Potential students should contact Ian Longley via email (ian.longley@iinet.net.au) to enquire on the forward schedule and register any interest in attendance. The course has been heavily oversubscribed for the last 3 years and interested parties should consider registering their interest as early as possible.

Private courses are run by Ian Longley by prior agreement. These require approval from Ian's employer. Simply put there must be some business or financial advantage to Oil Search for any private course to be approved.

Course Footprint

The area covered by the course covers Bangladesh to Irian Jaya west to east and the southern offshore area of China (south of Taiwan) to Timor Leste north to south. It does NOT include India, PNG nor Australia.

Course History

The course was initiated in 1985 and was run by Dick Murphy until 2005 when he handed it over to Ian Longley. The plan was for Dick to retire permanently but he enjoys the courses so much and adds so much to the course content that Ian subsequently invited Dick to stay and co-present with him for as long as he wants and is able! Ian migrated the course from transparencies to powerpoint and has subsequently built a library of public domain geoscience data organised spacially within ArcGIS. Since its inception in 1985 some 1000+ geoscientists have attended the various 65 courses that have been run around the planet. There is certainly no other course like it available to working geoscientists in SE Asia.

Course Objectives

The objectives of the course is:

To make students familiar with the overall geotectonic development of SE Asia
To acquaint students with the geology of the major hydrocarbon occurrences (and some of the significant minor ones)
To make students aware of the major sources of information in the region
To enhance the students ability to do independent exploration work in the region.

Note - It is a requirement that all students have a basic understanding of both petroleum geology (theory and application i.e. petroleum systems, plate tectonics etc) and modern hydrocarbon exploration methods (i.e. seismic and drilling technologies etc).

Target Audience

Junior Geoscientists who are new to the exploration industry in the region.
Senior national staff geologists who wish to broaden their understanding of plays in adjacent countries.
New expatriates transferring into the region for the first timeget Students

Notional 4 Day Course Outline and Content

The typical 4 day course has the following outline

Day 1

Introduction
Data Sources
Pre-Tertiary Evolution
Tertiary Evolution Models
Petroleum Systems Overview
Regional Exploration History Review
Recent Significant Discoveries

Day 2

West Side Story
Sumatra
Java
Sunda Rifts

Day 3

South China Sea
Borneo Delta Sags

Day 4

East Side Story
Pulling it all together
Strategies for Exploration in SE Asia
Wrap-up, critique

The presentations are interspersed with large scale seismic exercises principally from seismic lines donated to the presenters from oil companies and from seismic contractors active in the region. The presenters acknowledge the support of IHS Energy who allow Ian to use their well, field and permit spacial data files as a backdrop to much of the data in the course. This is with prior agreement with IHS Energy and none of their digital data is released to students.

Course Costs and Handouts

The course attendance cost varies through time depending on venue and overheads. The intent is to promote hydrocarbon exploration and petroleum geoscience knowledge in SE Asia, pay for the presenters costs (flights, accommodation and time etc) and to cover the cost of hardware and software needed to organise and run the course. Typically it is US$1000-2000 per person for a 4 day course. No hard copy of the course notes are provided because the costs for the colour reproduction were becoming excessive (up to US$400 per person) so students are advised to bring a laptop to the course or just take notes as the slides are presented.

Attendees at courses get a CD with a single pdf of the slides at low-resolution, a digital copy of the suggested reference list compiled by the presenters and a few key regional references. The slides in this pdf compilation have a watermark over the images but are still usable for most presentation purposes. Post 2005 students can get all future copies of this low-res pdf from subsequent courses at the cost of copying and postage.