Fellow members, invited guests, dear friends...ladies and gentlemen:

Isn't it nice that we can come together tonight, to spend some time with each other, to share ideas over some good food and good wine ... in short, to do the things that society does! What we are really doing tonight is satisfying one of our Society's fundamental needs ie. our need to associate - to come together ... and to share. Now it is customary at this particular get-together, for the new President of the Society to list the things that the Executive would like to undertake in the coming year.

I want to deviate slightly this year ...Instead we are going to momentarily revisit the aims and objectives of the Society. The idea is very simple: I believe that we must know what we want before we can get what we want.

Our society addresses the challenge of the geology of Trinidad and Tobago - that is to say, we are seeking the truth about what took place here during the course of geologic time. To be more specific, our Society must disseminate this geological information - this truth - to our members - so that they may grow as geoscientific professionals. We must disseminate this information to the public so that they can apply this knowledge in many diverse areas for the benefit of our country. And we must convey this knowledge to our youth because we must attract young people to our profession so that they will carry on where we have left off.

Unravelling Trinidad's geology is no mean task - because after all - this is the graveyard of geologists!

In addition, we are our own greatest obstacle when it comes to this particular objective - as our own negativity and even our corporate culture works against us.

Michel Halbouty, one of North America's most prolific oil finders had this statement to make on the subject. He said: "The oil industry is not particularly interested in geology or geologists, geophysics or geophysicists as such; it is interested in all of these various efforts to the extent that they help to find oil."

Sad but true - because this industry, like all other industries, is ultimately driven by the bottom line ...we have been schooled and trained to be this way. So any intellectual activity that is not perceived as generating hydrocarbon reserves is regarded as academic and of low priority. Corporations also tend to hoard data and are rather reluctant to share information - the object of this particular game is to keep their competitors in the dark as much as possible - this is sometimes misnamed as being competitive ...We measure our success by the failures of our competitor companies.

If we are to be true to our mandate, our Society must seek to change these types of attitudes - we must provide more forums where companies can come together to share information and ideas - eg. we must plan more seminars like the Basin History Seminar of last September. We must encourage our members to take on the challenge of our local geology and provide avenues for the communication of their findings. Furthermore we must also seek to disseminate such information to a wider audience - to the public - by issuing publications of these papers. In short we must document our geology in a more permanent and accessible form.

With regard to attracting young people to our profession - the present enrollment of Trinidadians at UWI's Geology program is two. We are obviously failing to attract young and bright people to our profession. Both the Society and our Corporate membership must come together and become more proactive in career guidance if we are to attract quality people to the profession - because lets face it - geology is not one of the preferred career choices of young people today. So we must work at it - and we have to start from the High School level - our education system dictates that this early level of involvement is required. Career Guidance must always be a priority for us. The only thing at stake here is the future viability of our companies - and given Trinidad's continuing dependence on the energy sector - I think the future viability of our country depends on the initiatives that we take in this area in the next few years.

To achieve these objectives we plan to establish several working sub-committees this year. We will solicit your early assistance on this as the success of these sub-committes will largely depend on the voluntary participation and input from you our members.

•A Publication Sub-Committee will work on publishing regular Newsletters to improve communication to all our members and also to undertake publication of Seminar papers.

• A Conference Committee must be established early in the year - this is a key committee if we are to host the 4th GSTT Conference in the year 2000.

• A Field Trip Sub-Committee will continue to convey to members some of the new field aspects of our geology.

• A Career Guidance Sub-Committee will devote its energies to the important issue of attracting quality people to the profession.

• A Continuing Education Subcommittee will organize professional training and improvement for members.

• A Technical Sub-Committee will work at organizing various technical presentations on our local geology.

• A Web Page Sub-Committee will provide information, updates and maintenance of the new Society's Web Site

• An Executive Handbook will be designed to put systems in place for the smoother running of the Society and Executive changeovers and also to document the responsibilities of the various executive positions. The Executive will undertake this project during the year.

• And last but not least, a sub-committee for a GSTT Home has been formed this year. The objectives of our Society cannot be successfully achieved without a permanent home for the Society - a place where we can conduct Society business, and store and display our scattered assets, archives, samples and exhibits. Derek Smith has volunteered to lead this committee and interested members are asked to contact him as soon as possible.