The Organizing Committee for the 2000 AAPG-EAGE International Research Conference on Carbonate Reservoirs has issued a call for abstracts for their October 1-5, 2000 conference at the Camino Real Hotel (downtown) in El Paso, Texas. The theme of this year's conference is Carbonate Reservoir Characterization and Modeling for Enhanced Hydrocarbon Discovery and Recovery. One-page abstracts, which can include up to two optional figures, should be sent to Debbie Boonstra, AAPG Education Department, P.O. Box 979, Tulsa, OK 74101-0979, or e-mailed to debbi@aapg.org. Submittals should state that the abstract is for the AAPG-EAGE conference.

According to the committee, "the objective of the conference is to present new advances in carbonate reservoir and petroleum systems research for enhanced detection of new petroleum resources and improved development of known reserves." This objective will be achieved by integrating two and a half days of oral and poster sessions with a one-day field trip to examine Permian carbonates in West Texas and New Mexico, and a hands-on core workshop that will include cores from classic carbonate reservoirs. Abstracts are invited for the oral and poster sessions, and for the core workshop.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is May 15, 2000.

Wyoming Republican Senators Michael Enzi and Craig Thomas introduced a bill last November to amend the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, providing a procedure to resolve disputes between coal companies and oil and gas operators in northern Wyoming and southern Montana. The bill should promote orderly development of coal, coalbed methane, natural gas and oil on federal lands in the Powder River Basin. It was referred to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will begin work on it this year.

The coal-rich Powder River Basin has been a hot spot since last summer when a Supreme Court decision (Amoco v. Southern Utes) held that coalbed methane is owned by those who hold natural gas rights in the area. For years, coal companies and coalbed methane developers all across the country have debated over who has the right to develop their resource first, because developing one has the potential to hurt the development of the other. For this reason, the state of Wyoming and the federal government have encouraged concurrent development of both resources, especially on federal land. Because this is not always possible, Senator Enzi stated that "this legislation is designed to provide a procedure for the fair and expeditious resolution of conflicts between oil and gas producers and coal producers who have interests on federal land in the Powder River Basin."

The bill, as written and submitted, is a result of negotiations among coal, coalbed methane and oil and gas producers to resolve development disputes in overlapping areas. It would require that parties would try to reach an agreement among themselves before they use the new resolution process. It also would direct the Interior Department to encourage prompt development of federal resources in conflict areas where reserves might otherwise be bypassed, and would compensate mineral owners for any rights lost in the resolution of the dispute.

Under the proposed procedure, a dispute that cannot be resolved by the parties themselves would be referred to the region's federal district court. The court would determine if the public interest would be best served by suspending the federal coal lease, or by suspending or terminating some portion of the oil and gas lease, based on the economic benefit of each mineral 's resource. The worth of the less valuable deposit would be determined by a panel of three experts appointed by the parties and the federal government. The court would then order the owner of the more valuable mineral resource to compensate the developer who has lost his right to develop the other resource.

Douglas G. Patchen, Regional Lead Organization (RLO) Director of PTTC's Appalachian Region, has been named as an alternate to PTTC's national Board of Directors. Dr. Charles Mankin, Director of PTTC's Southern Mid-Continent Region, holds the primary seat on the Board. Both appointments are through December 2000. The seat for Regional Directors was approved by Board action in 1999.

Patchen joins Leo Schrider and Kevin Smith as other Board members from the Appalachian Region. Schrider, of Belden and Blake in Ohio, is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors and a former Producer Advisory Group (PAG) Chairman for the Appalachian Region. Smith, of Oxford Oil Company in Ohio, is the current Chairman of the Appalachian Region PAG.

Kevin Smith, Chairman of the Appalachian Region PAG, and Doug Patchen, RLO Director, have released a tentative list of PTTC workshops for calendar year 2000. The list, which was approved by the PAG last fall, was developed from suggestions made by participants in the 10 PTTC workshops held during 1999.

Although both the RLO and PAG realize that play-based workshops, like those held last year on the Knox, Trenton and coalbed methane, are very popular and draw the largest number of attendees, they also recognize the need to continue to offer a wide variety of geologic, engineering and geophysical topics, as well as software demonstrations. Workshops currently being developed are consistent with this philosophy, while still meeting the expressed needs of producers.

The next PTTC workshop will be held May 10, 2000 in Morgantown, WV on Generating Products from Public Databases for the Oil and Gas Industry. A companion workshop will be held later in the year, in Ohio, on Using a Variety of Digital data, with the emphasis on converting paper data to digital data, and generating products from the digital data.

Surfing the web to find information, and creating your own website so that potential customers and investors can find you, continue to be hot topics. Consequently, at the request of the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, PTTC will host a workshop June 10 in Lexington, KY on Creating Oil and Gas Related Websites.

Participants in past workshops have consistently requested that we continue to offer an annual workshop on geophysics, specifically on aeromagnetics, gravity surveys and related topics. In response to this expressed need, we are preparing a workshop for the late summer of fall, in Morgantown, on developing Analogs Between Geophysics and Remote Sensing.

Interest in developing gas resources held in coal beds also remains high, and appears to be increasing into all parts of the basin in which coal beds are present in the subsurface. Therefore, we plan to offer a workshop on New Technology for Coal Bed Methane Developmentin the Beckley, WV area in the fall, perhaps at the Glade Springs Resort and Conference Center.

Sam Ameri and Kashy Aminian have been working with Halliburton to develop and host a one and a half day workshop on Formation Fracturing June 14-15 in Morgantown. A point of emphasis in the workshop will be in developing coal beds as gas reservoirs.

The West Virginia and Kentucky Geological Surveys are developing two core workshops. The WVGS will host a workshop August 1 on New Technology for Core and Reservoir Analysis in Morgantown, and the KGS will host a workshop on Major and Future Gas Reservoirs in Lexington, probably at their new core facility.

For further information on these and other workshops that will be announced at a later date, please check our website http://karl.nrcce.wvu.edu on a regular basis.