The new associations mission included promoting the science of geology, especially

as it related to oil and natural gas, and encourage technology improvements in the
methods of exploring for and exploiting these substances.
AAPG would also foster the spirit of scientific research among its members; to
disseminate facts relating to the geology and technology of petroleum and natural
gas.
Adopted its present name a year after the meeting at Henry Kendall College,
AAPG begins publishing a bimonthly journal that remains among the most respected
in the industry.
AAPG launches a peer-reviewed Bulletin that includes papers written by leading
geologists. With a subscription price of five dollars, the journal is distributed to
members, university libraries, and other industry professionals.

AAPG was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at Henry Kendall College todays Tulsa
University.
By 1920, one petroleum trade magazine noted that the Association Grows in
Membership and Influence; Combats the Fakers.
An article praised AAPG professionalism and warns of the large number of
unscrupulous and inadequately prepared men who are attempting to do geological
work.
Similarly, the Oil Trade Journal praised AAPG for its efforts to censor the great
mass of inadequately prepared and sometimes unscrupulous reports on geological
problems, which are wholly misleading to the industry.

Perhaps the best known such fabrication is related to the men behind the 1930 East
Texas oil field discovery a report entitled Geological, Topographical And
Petroliferous Survey, Portion of Rusk County, Texas, Made for C.M. Joiner by A.D.
Lloyd, Geologist And Petroleum Engineer.
Using very scientific terminology, A. D. Lloyds document described Rusk County
geology its anticlines, faults, and a salt dome all features associated with
substantial oil depositsand all completely fictitious.
The fabrications nevertheless attracted investors, allowing Joiner and Lloyd to drill a
well that uncovered a massive oil field still the largest in the lower-48 states.

AAPGs peer-reviewed journal will bring an end to unscrupulous and inadequately

prepared men who are attempting to do geological work.
Equally imaginative science came from Doc Lloyds earlier descriptions of the
Yegua and Cook Mountain formations and the thousands of seismographic
registrations he ostensibly recorded.
Lloyd, a former patent medicine salesman, and other self-proclaimed geologists risk
public exposure since such geological flim-flam is the antithesis of AAPGs
professional ethic.

By 1953 the AAPG membership has grown to more than 10,000 and a permanent
headquarters building opens Tulsa.
Today, the association is the worlds largest professional geological society with more
than 31,000 members in 116 countries. It still embraces a code that assures the
integrity, business ethics, personal honor, and professional conduct of its
membership.