Pacific Section Imperial Barrel Winners

The SDSU team wins the Pacific Section AAPG’s Imperial Barrel Award Program (IBA) which includes all West Coast schools and a prize of $1500. Finals are April 17 in San Antonio against national and international competition. Team members are: Andy Aulia, Cameron Campbell, Sarah Johnston, Afton van Zandt, and Aaron Hebeler.

AAPG’s Imperial Barrel Award Program (IBA) is an annual prospect/exploration evaluation competition/presentation competition between university student teams competing to win scholarship funds dedicated to petroleum geoscience education created for geoscience graduate students. The program is rigorous and contributes to AAPG’s mission of promoting petroleum geoscience training and advancing the careers of geoscience students.

This is a global competition, where the University teams analyze a complete dataset in six to eight weeks prior to the competition and (geology, geophysics, land, economics, production infrastructure, and other relevant materials). Each team delivers their results in a 30-minute presentation to a panel of industry experts.

Students gain experience using real technology on a real dataset. Additionally, students benefit from the feedback from the industry panel, the opportunity to impress potential employers in the audience, and the chance to win cash prizes for their schools, who will select the winning team on the basis of technical quality, clarity and originality.

The IBA is a hands-on opportunity for students to experience the creative process and the high-tech science that is the foundation of the Energy Industry today.

SEMINAR - Gabi Laske

The Hawaiian PLUME Experiment and its Initial Data Assessment

Gabi Laske
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics
Scripps Institute of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego

March 19th, 2008

Hawaii has long been viewed as the textbook example for a plume-fed hotspot. Yet, the plume model has been contested because the collected seismic data to support or disprove it have so far been inconclusive. Compelling constraints on even the most basic features such as the plume conduit and its head have been elusive. One major problem that seismology has faced has been its complete reliance on land-based stations.

During the Jan. 2005 – May 2007 Hawaiian PLUME experiment we occupied nearly 70 sites with broad-band ocean bottom seismometers (OBSs). We collected continuous time series at a 1000 km-wide array that was augmented by 10 dedicated sites on the Hawaiian islands. The seismic data will facilitate the construction of surface wave and body wave tomographic images of never-before obtained coverage and a depth-extent that reaches well into the lower mantle. The data will also be used to constrain the topography of mantle discontinuities through receiver functions and anisotropy through shear-wave splitting. The data analysis has just begun and in my talk, I will present our first images obtain from surface waves.

Loihi Code Trailer

If you're a petrologist, you'll get it.

Most images used for this video are from: www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/loihi.html ...
Check out their website!!! Sounds used are from the DaVinci Code trailer

Created by Arifandy "Andy" Aulia
in honor of the fearless spirit of all petrology students - Spring 2006

SEMINAR - PetroAzteca

Cooper basin, Australia petroleum prospects: Imperial Barrel Project

Aaron Hebeler
Afton Van Zandt
Arifandy Aulia
Cameron Campbell
Sarah Johnson
Department of Geological Sciences
San Diego State University

Wednesday, March 12th

AAPG’s Imperial Barrel Award Program (IBA) is an annual prospect/exploration evaluation competition/presentation competition between university student teams competing to win scholarship funds dedicated to petroleum geoscience education created for geoscience graduate students. The program is rigorous and contributes to AAPG’s mission of promoting petroleum geoscience training and advancing the careers of geoscience students.
This is a global competition, where the University teams analyze a complete dataset in six to eight weeks prior to the competition and (geology, geophysics, land, economics, production infrastructure, and other relevant materials). Each team delivers their results in a 30-minute presentation to a panel of industry experts.
Students gain experience using real technology on a real dataset. Additionally, students benefit from the feedback from the industry panel, the opportunity to impress potential employers in the audience, and the chance to win cash prizes for their schools, who will select the winning team on the basis of technical quality, clarity and originality.
The IBA is a hands-on opportunity for students to experience the creative process and the high-tech science that is the foundation of the Energy Industry today.

Background

The ‘Barrel Award’ has been part of the MSc Petroleum Geoscience course at Imperial College for the past 30 years. Started in 1976, the program originally focused on the North Sea -- a frontier basin where interpretations required using color pencils. Today, Imperial and the IBA use new technology to provide students a unique learning experience using data sets from basins around the world.
Although the technology has changed, the key learning elements of the program remain remarkably similar to the original concepts pioneered by Imperial College. Teams must demonstrate: (1) evidence of rigorous and creative technical evaluations, (2) the ability to work to a strict deadline, (3) the ability to work effectively within a team (4) the ability to make decisions based on incomplete data, and (5) the ability to give convincing oral presentations to a panel of industry experts.

AAPG’s Imperial Barrel Award Program (IBA)

SEMINAR - Richard Norris

Ice, Alligators, and Hot-tubs in the Cretaceous Super-Greenhouse

Richard Norris

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California San Diego

Wednesday, March 5th

It is generally accepted that there were no large glaciers on the poles prior to the development of the Antarctic ice sheet about 33 million years ago which initiated the “Icehouse world”. Before this, the world was in a “greenhouse” state which reached the warmest temperatures of the past ~300 million years during the “Cretaceous Thermal Maximum” about 91 million yeas ago. I show that despite very warm conditions during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, with tropical ocean temperatures of 35-37°C [95-98.6°F], an ice sheet about 50-60% the size of the modern Antarctic ice cap existed for about 200,000 years. The common assumption that substantial ice could not have existed during past super-warm climates is apparently wrong. Certainly, ice sheets were much less common during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum than they are during more recent “Icehouse” climates, allowing tropical plants and animals like breadfruit trees and alligators to occasionally frequent the high arctic. However, paradoxically past greenhouse climates may actually have aided ice growth by increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere and creating more winter snowfall at high elevations and high latitudes.

See also: Bornemann, A., Norris, R.D. et al. 2008, Isotopic evidence for glaciation during the Cretaceous supergreenhouse: Science 319:189, DOI: 10.1126/science.1148777.