Geological Soceiety of Oman


GSO Honorary Membership Award
 
Prof. Dr. Ken Glennie

To appreciate Ken Glennie’s contribution we need to go back in time to 1928 when George Lees wrote “The Great arc-shaped mountainous belt of Oman, projecting like a spur into the vitals of Persia and with heights reaching 9,900 ft, is the most striking feature of the map of Arabia, in that it is so obviously abnormal”.

In the 1960’s, Ken led the first major regional geological surveys for Petroleum Development (Oman). In 1973, Ken and his team produced a map and a memoir, which became a classic study of the Oman Mountains.

Ken’s contributions did not stop at the borders of Oman. He studied the other side of the Hawasina basin and integrated the learning from the Iranian plate to come up with a more complete picture.

In an introductory note to the Geology and Tectonics of the Oman Region, 1990, Robertson, Searle & Ries stated that the basic conclusion of Glennie at el. in 1973 that the Oman Mountains preserves a tectonically emplaced Late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic continental margin and Tethyan basin sequence, together with a huge slab of Cretaceous oceanic crust and mental has never since been seriously disputed.

In 1995, Gavin Graham, wrote “If the Oman Mountains appear any less abnormal today, then it is largely as a result of the extensive studies of Ken Glennie and his Shell co-workers in the late 1960’s …..”

Glennie’s work laid the foundations for future studies and formed the basis for all subsequent research. Ken is also known as a first class sedimentologist and an expert in aeolian desert environments. His contributions in the Wahiba Sands projects of Oman cannot be over emphasized. He is an editor of the Quaternary Deserts and the Climatic change, published in 1998.

After being pensioned (having spent 32 years with Shell), Ken became an unpaid consultant in Scotland, preferring new geological data to financial gain. Ken is an active member of the London Geological Society.

Ken is an honorary professor at Aberdeen University and has contributed in educating and supervising a number of Omanis who successfully completed their MSc/PhD’s in the UK.

Ken is a generous man who would engage his colleagues in long discussions not only about the academic aspect of geology but also about oil and gas business.

Ken’s contribution towards petroleum geology is remarkable. He has been a principal editor of many books including the Geology of Oman Mountain, Quaternary Deserts and the Climatic change, 1998, NW Europe’s Hydrocarbon Industry, Petroleum Geology of the North Sea, 4th edit.1998. Ken worked in Oman just after the exciting major oil discoveries of Yibal, Natih and Fahud fields. It was Fahud/Natih finds that led to our Oman Mountains work.

Ken, in recognition of your contributions over the past 38 years, we the Geological Society of Oman are proud and honored to award you an honorary membership of the GSO.

On behalf of the Geological Society of Oman
 
GSO Excom Member
Mohamed S. Al-Harthy

 

To: The Executive Committee,
Geological Society of Oman



It was with a mixture of pleasure, pride and humbleness that I heard from Mohamed Al Harthy that the Committee of the Geological Society of Oman wished to present me with Honorory Membership of the Society. My pleasure was increased by the knowledge that it had taken many years of effort to establish the Society.

You have stressed the role I played in unraveling the geology of the Oman Mountains, but, apart from the other members of my team, I must do justice to the many in IPC, PDO, Shell and Academe who, since G.M. Lees, have contributed to that understanding. Probably the most important of our early work was to recognize that the Hawasina comprised an oceanic turbidite system that was deposited to the NE of the Arabian Platform, that the overlying Semail Nappe represented former oceanic crust; and that both were emplaced over the autochthon tectonically. All else stemmed from that work.

I doubt if any single person could have interpreted the complexities of the Mountains within a reasonable number of years. We had the benefit of an international team that had very different geological backgrounds. My task was to ensure that everyone could work as efficiently as possible and that everyone knew of the important finds of the other members; that way, through repeated discussions, we all contributed to the whole. Following a period of ‘fixisist’ geology, allochthoneity had again just been advocated by PDO geologists Jan Horstink and Jean Harembour; in 1966 they showed Pit Pilaar and I the essence of their new interpretations while Ben Reinhardt (later our ophiolite ‘guru’) and Michel Boeuf were constructing the bulk of our photogeological map back in The Hague. And Mike Hughes Clarke set up a base in Doha, Qatar (no suitable accommodation in Oman), to determine the microfossil ages and environments of deposition of the field samples we sent him while calibrating the photogeology. Finally, Mark Moody-Stuart joined the team for our second year when we had the use of a helicopter. And, of course, we could not have achieved these results without excellent Omani field helpers and camp staff.

All the foregoing is to stress that a good team is likely to produce much more than the output of the same number of individuals working alone; and through your Committee I have just benefited from the results of that teamwork.

I thank the Committee for this great honor, and wish the Society, of which I am its newest member, all success for the future.

Honorary Member,

Ken Glennie.