GEOL 115: The Earth’s Energy Resources

Monday’s Omaha World Herald carried an article by the New York Times with the headline “Firms of all sizes hoping to distill biofuels.” The article actually conflates a whole panoply of liquid fuels and refers to corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, as well as a number of systems with synthesis gas inputs. We will […]

Scott Tinker is the current President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He has a commentary up on 10 energy myths.
The copy has been written carefully. There is nothing wrong with that and there is little in here with which I would disagree vigorously. We will talk about some of these […]

Fortunately most media sources got this right. Senator John McCain recently visited Bakersfield, CA. The senator and his wife visited the Red Ribbon Ranch lease for an energy photo-op while in Bakersfield. I believe that this lease is in the Fruitvale field, a historically significant (more than 100 million barrels of oil […]

We’ve noted that additional offshore exploration won’t decrease the price of oil or gasoline significantly. One talking point that is circulated by those opposed to more offshore leasing is the contention that the oil industry isn’t using the acreage that it already has leased. This op-ed piece by Sen. Biden refers to 7000 […]

I’m aware that almost all our recent posts have been about petroleum. When oil is pushing $150/bbl in an election year there is much that is worthy of comment (to put it politely).
What was the point of that series of posts tabulating the history of previous lease sales in the Alaska, Pacific, and Atlantic […]

Every year I try to incorporate more technology into my teaching. I’ve got some ideas that I want to try but they require that there be a critical mass of certain types of devices in the classroom on a daily basis. The purpose of this survey is to find out what you typically […]

There was considerable excitement regarding the Atlantic OCS during the “days of disco.”  The giant Hibernia field was discovered off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada in 1979.  There were also a number of discoveries in the North Sea and on other parts of the Atlantic coast in Africa and South America.  These latter discoveries may […]

The University of Nebraska has a program called the Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Corps (UTAC).  UTAC peer mentors are undergraduates that have taken a particular course and performed well (usually by getting an A).  These UTAC peer mentors are then paid by the office of Undergraduate Studies to run study sessions throughout the semester for students […]

Sorry for the time that has elapsed since my last post. Its taken me a little time to compile these data and to learn about coding tables in html. The data are all taken from the Minerals Management Service website (www.mms.gov). The MMS is the division of the federal government charged with […]

Everybody is talking about oil exploration in ANWR and offshore. They’re talking about bans on exploration, about how much oil is out there, and about how much this oil can affect gas prices. We spend a great deal of time on this in GEOL 115 and by the end of the class you […]