Geo-Legends 2006

Geo-Legends 2006, January 9, will Feature Life Stories
from Four Much-Admired Geologists
 
by Linda Sternbach, HGS Vice President
 
 
The HGS dinner meeting on Monday, January 9,2006, will be a special panel discussion featuring four great names in geology: Albert Bally, Arnold  Bouma, Peter Rose (current AAPG president) and Peter Vail, who will be presenting their perspec- tives on the past, present and future applications of geology and oil exploration. The event will include a social hour, elegant dinner and a two-hour talk program to be held at the Westchase Hilton hotel, 9999 Westheimer, in west Houston.
 
It has become a great HGS tradition to host a “Legends” panel discussion  dinner every few years.  The first “Legends in Wildcatting” program in 2001 featured prominent oil legends Marlan Downey, Joe Foster, George Mitchell, John Seitz and Gene Van Dyke and was moderated by Jim Funk. The second program, called “Legends in Wildcatting, 2003,” featured Michel Halbouty, Bill Barrett, Thomas Barrow, Marvin Davis and Robbie Gries and was moderated by Charles Sternbach.
 
It’s time for the Legends theme to recognize that behind great oil businessmen are great geologists who have created the scientific technical work that ultimately results in discovery of oil and gas. Our four invited panelists are well-known names, both for their careers of teaching and their experience in practical hydrocarbon exploration. What they all have in common is that all four Geo- Legends worked for major oil companies during the 1960s and1970s, and then changed careers to be outspoken teachers and communicators.
 
However, each panelist has an individual point of view on geology and geophysics as professions, based on their unique careers. The HGS dinner program on Monday, January 9, will include a presentation from each panelist, and then a group discussion on how geologists work today and what can happen to our profession in the future. The audience will have a forum to ask questions to the panelists. HGS plans to create a video record of the event.
 
HGS members can sign up for the Geo-Legends program using the HGS webpage at www.hgs.org. We expect this event to be highly attended and are making space for 250 people. We suggest that HGS members and their guests pre-register before Friday, January6. The cost is $25 for HGS members and $30 for non-members.
 
Albert W. Bally
Geo-Legend: Seismic Interpretation of Complex Structure
 
Bally has dedicated his career to the complicated task of geophysical interpretation and analysis of complex subsurface structures. He realized that seismic reflection data was key to unraveling highly deformed rocks. His research on fold-thrust belts, basin analysis and the concept of “orogenic float” is classic work. Bally is a pioneer in “thin-skinned tectonics”—originally from research in the Canadian Rocky Mountain fold and thrust belt. His work has provided excellent guidance to geologists drilling for oil in deformed tectonic provinces.
 
Albert Bally was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1925. He became interested in geology as a boy exploring the volcanoes and foothills around Rome and spent his early years in Indonesia, Switzerland and Italy. He received a PhD degree in geology from the University of Zurich in 1953, completing a study of an area in the Central Alpenines, Italy, in his thesis. Bally did post-graduate research at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University, New York before finding his way into the oil business.
 
In 1954, Bally was offered a position with Shell Oil Company. He began with Shell Canada in Alberta, where he explored for prospects in the Rocky Mountain overthrust belt. Exploration programs at Shell during that period included the Rocky Mountains and foothills of Alberta, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and northern Yukon. From 1962 to 1966, as chief geologist, he was concerned with all Canadian exploration matters. In 1966, Bally was transferred to Houston as manager of geological research (U.S.) for Shell Oil in 1968, exploration consultant in 1976 and senior exploration consultant in 1980. While at Shell, he was involved in exploration in the U.S. offshore and onshore. During the early 1970s, his focus was the study of global geology as well as more detailed studies in the Western Cordillera and the sedimentary basins of the United States, including Gulf Coast growth faults and their effect on sedimentation and hydrocarbon traps. Over the span of his career, Bally has studied seismic and tectonics in Tibet, China, Italy, the Canadian Arctic, the Gulf of Mexico, Perdido fold belt, Morocco, Venezuela, offshore Nigeria and Romania.
 
Upon retirement from Shell after 27 years, he became Harry Carothers Weiss Professor of Geology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He was department chairman at Rice early in his career, and established the department’s geophysics program. His insight in melding geology and geophysics has been the hallmark of his research and teaching. A major focus of investigation has been on reconciliation of the complex structural geology of the earth’s upper crust with lower crust and mantle. Bally’s research activities at Rice significantly contributed to the study of
regional, crustal de-coupling in compressional, extensional and strike-slip provinces. Bally is now Rice emeritus professor, yet very active in current research. For example, he is now co-editing a two-volume book called The Phanerozoic Geology of the World.
 
Exploration geologists are grateful to Bally for publishing illustrated seismic lines from petroleum areas all over the world to illustrate the best ways to interpret difficult seismic terrains. Bally’s concept of the seismic atlas as workbook was ground- breaking. Seismic Expression of Structural Styles: A Picture and Work Atlas (AAPG Studies in Geology, 1983) is a three-volume set that illustrates practical seismic interpretation in worldwide extensional provinces, compressive/strike slip systems and rifts/passive margins.  His second work, Atlas of  Seismic Stratigraphy (AAPG Studies in Geology #27, 1987–89), is a multivolume set that describes interpretation procedures and key definitions of sequence stratigraphy in rift systems, passive margins, the Gulf of Mexico, fore-deep environments, active margins and deep sea environments.
 
Bally has been president of the Geological Society of America (1988) and initiated the famous Decade of North American Geology (DNAG) publication series. In the 1980s, he was part of the JOIDES Ocean Deep Drilling Project and COCORP conti- nental reflection profiling projects. He has received many prestigious awards including the Sidney Powers Medal from the AAPG (1998), OTC Distinguished Achievement Award (2003) and Career Contribution Award for Structural Geology and 1990 to 1992, he