NELL LUKOSAVICH, Senior Editor

This year’s annual conference of the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers, incorporating the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ annual Europec event, will introduce a new conference forum and will debut the first in a new series of joint EAGE-SPE workshops focusing on advanced reservoir applications.

The EAGE Conference and Exhibition is a five-day program that attracts industry professionals from all over the world to discuss the latest developments in geophysics, geology and reservoir engineering. EAGE 2011, in its 73rd year, is themed around new applications of technology in unconventional reservoirs.

Since 2005, EAGE and SPE have incorporated SPE Europec into EAGE’s annual event. Prior to that year, EAGE and SPE held separate annual events in Europe focusing on geoscience technology and applications. The two organizations have teamed up to host an annual conference in order to offer a more diverse array of geoscientific and reservoir engineering topics.

EAGE is a multidisciplinary technical conference and includes an exhibition, oral and poster presentations, workshops, field trips and short courses. Last year’s conference, themed “A new spring for geosciences,” was held in Barcelona, Spain, and attracted about 6,000 attendees and 300 exhibitors. Almost 900 papers were presented at the event.

This year’s EAGE conference will be held May 23–26 in Vienna, Austria. More than 6,500 attendees and 300 exhibitors are expected at EAGE 2011, which will span 193,750 sq ft of exhibition space in Vienna’s Reed Messe Wien Exhibition and Congress Center. Aside from the exhibition area, the event will also include a pavilion, job center, consultancy area, geosciences learning area and student court.

A record number of abstracts—almost 1,000—were submitted for this year’s conference, an increase of more than 10% over 2010.

What’s new. On Tuesday, May 24, the conference will debut the new EAGE Forum, a morning event that features a panel of experts from industry, academia and international agencies in the energy field. After a round of introductory speeches, the panel will engage in an open debate, to which audience members are invited to contribute with written questions.

This year’s show will also introduce the first in a new series of joint EAGE-SPE workshops—titled AGORA (Advanced Geoscience Organized for Reservoir Applications)—which is planned as an annual event. The inaugural AGORA workshop, held on Sunday, May 22, will focus on state-of-the-art practices in building effective models for infill well planning and incremental resource definition. The AGORA program includes the introduction of technical concepts, followed by discussions and a working session. The workshop will wrap up with a business case study.

As part of the 2011 conference’s student program, EAGE will present the first-ever student FIELD (Fully Integrated Evaluation and Development) Challenge activity on Sunday, May 22. The event, intended to promote cross-disciplinary geoscience and engineering integration in university departments worldwide, will be a field development planning competition between eight university teams of three students each. The teams will be required to analyze and propose a field development plan for a discovered hydrocarbon resource, all using the same data set, in front of a jury. The winners will be announced at the EAGE awards ceremony. Also new to the EAGE student program is the oil rig field trip, where students will be taken on a half-day trip to tour a rig operated by Austrian oil company OMV.

Opening session and awards ceremony. This year’s show will kick off Monday, May 23, with the EAGE business meeting, which gives the association’s members an opportunity to meet the board and to ask questions concerning EAGE’s activities and direction. Following the meeting will be EAGE 2011’s opening session, led by Walter Hamilton, chairman of EAGE’s local advisory committee for Vienna.

That evening, EAGE will hold its awards ceremony, chaired by former EAGE presidents Davide Calcagni and John Underwood, from 5:30 to 6 p.m. The opening day of the conference will conclude with an icebreaker reception from 6 to 8 p.m., at which time the exhibition area will be officially opened.

Executive sessions. There will be a series of executive sessions during this year’s event, beginning with the senior executive managers’ lunch Tuesday, May 24, which is by invitation only. On Wednesday, May 25, the executive session will focus on the Caspian region. The session will explore the current exploration trends and extended reach and high-pressure drilling technologies that have enabled new discoveries and development projects in various parts of the Caspian basin.
 
On Thursday, May 26, the executive session will focus on the Middle East, a region with increasingly complex exploration and development challenges. The session will discuss the impact of new supplies from global unconventional resources on supply/demand scenarios, and the role of investment and operations strategies in the Middle East.

Workshops. A series of 14 workshops, typically lasting between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., will be held beginning on Sunday, May 22. The workshops, including the inaugural AGORA program, will include presentations by invited speakers and interactive group discussions of some typical case studies, examining what worked in the past and making recommendation for the future of exploration in specific regions. Featured topics include new representations of seismic data, exploration in mature areas, electromagnetics for integrated reservoir development, and modern structural geology in academia and industry.

Student program. EAGE offers university students the opportunity to participate in a variety of courses, sessions and field trips. The student program includes several parallel sections. The student court area within the conference space will offer registration, exhibition tours, special presentations and other activities. Poster sessions will give students the opportunity to present their research to a broader audience of geoscience professionals, while the student debates will provide lively discussion among students, young professionals and senior company executives. Three-hour short courses and two-hour soft-skills workshops are designed to provide specific practical and technical knowledge to benefit career development.

Technical program. This year’s technical program will feature 110 oral and poster sessions covering developments in five major areas—geophysics, geology, reservoir, near surface and integration—reflecting the multidisciplinary theme of the conference. A menu of 71 oral and 39 poster sessions will explore topics including microseismic methods, electromagnetics, near-surface geophysical methods, seismic interferometry and depth migration. The technical sessions will be presented in 12 conference rooms.

 A series of seven short courses has been designed for EAGE 2011 to address the needs of geoscientists. The short courses are offered following the conclusion of the conference on Thursday, May 26, and Friday, May 27.