Thinking About a New Career?

Have you been thinking about a new career in something completely different?  Recently, IDT corporation, a telecommunications company, has decided to get involved in shale oil.  IDT Energy and Genie Oil and Gas believes in a new shale venture and discusses this in the video below.  There are some slight un-educated remarks in the video from the CNBC reporters, but you get a chance to listen to the CEO, Howard Jonas. If I was an investor in IDT, I find this video not to be supportive.  It almost sounds that they do not know what they are talking about but that might be because of the reporters remarks. 

 

"IDT Corporation (IDT) is a multinational holding company with operations primarily in the telecommunications and energy industries. Its principal businesses consist of IDT Telecom, which consists of Telecom Platform Services and Consumer Phone Services, and Genie Energy, which consists of IDT Energy and Genie Oil & Gas. IDT also hold assets, including real estate and operate other smaller or early-stage initiatives and operations, such as Zedge.net and Fabrix T.V., Ltd. The Company has four business segments: Telecom Platform Services, Consumer Phone Services, IDT Energy and Genie Oil & Gas. On September 14, 2009, the Company completed the pro rata distribution of the common stock of CTM Media Holdings, Inc. Telecom Platform Services provides various telecommunications services, including prepaid and rechargeable calling cards, a range of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) communications services and wholesale carrier services."

Utilizing the Resource

Have you ever wanted to know who was drilling in your back yard of Colorado? The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a division of the department of natural resources, is a great resource to access public information about oil and gas in Colorado.  The COGCC has databases full of information from permitting wells to drilling locations to maps and forms.  They are a resource that any petroleum engineer or petroleum geologist needs to utilize. 

One of the more useful aspect of their site for a petroleum geologist is there map interface.  This interface allows you to see well surface locations, directional well bottom hole locations, other oil and gas facility locations, oil and gas permit location, oil and gas field polygons, and wild life habitat maps.  From this a petroleum geologist can select a well location which does not affect a possible wild life habitat or any other restricted area for drilling. 

Self Evaluation #2

For the second evaluation period, I have posted a fair number of posts (8) in the time frame and commented on multiple blogs each week.  I also recomment on comments towards my blog.  I feel my blogging is improving, trying to make a connection to my audience.  My posts vary in length from a couple paragraphs to multiple with different visual aids (pictures, movies, links) and supporting articles.  One thing that I need to work on is my frequency of posting; I feel I have improved on this but there is still room for more improvement.  My posts are on relevant topics and recent news going on in the petroleum industry today, making my blog attractable and up to date with new information and technology.  If I had to give myself a grade it would be around a "B+" right now.

A Sweet Deal

Recently, Anadarko petroleum made a $1.55 billion dollar deal with the Korea National Oil Corporation for the interest of the Maverick Basin assets, located in the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas. The Korea Nation Oil Corporation is going to pay for all the capital cost of drilling and completions for the first year, and then, pay 90% of the cost for the next two years.  This is a sweet deal for Anadarko, but now Korea is going to be profiting from a United States asset?

The Eagle Ford shale is another hydrocarbon rich producing formation that offers both gas and oil.  It is a carbonate shale which is brittle and easily fracable for completions.  The Eagle Ford shale is ideal in today's market because it is highly oil prone.  The short video below talks about Anadarko's stock market increase due to this joint venture with KNOC. 

Bituminous Sands vs The Environment

One of the greatest mountain biking, climbing, dirt-biking, four-wheeling, and hiking in the United States is in Moab Utah.  It has beautiful geology which attract tourist from all around the globe.  Utah also has the potential to be a contributor to producing tar sands or oil sands; naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, water, and a dense, low maturity, extremely viscous form of petroleum know as bitumen.   Earth Energy Resources, a Canadian company, has permitted an area in eastern Utah (north of Moab, south of Vernal) to start mining oil sands.  The town of Moab looks at this in a negative impact towards their state and tourist attraction, but the drilling town of Vernal looks at this as an increase in petroleum production and revenue for Utah.  Here is a link to a film by CBC News which discusses this issue and some of the environmental impacts (Utah Oil Sands).

Neon green runoff sits at the bottom of Earth Energy Resources' PR Springs mine in Utah.

WRA filed an appeal on EER's commercial mine permit due to concerns

about groundwater contamination from mine operations.

As seen in the picture above and from the video, there are multiple environmental and social issues that must be addressed when mining oil sands.  EER says that they can mine the oil sands and replace the sand with very minimum chemicals in place by using a citrus based solvent to separate the bitumen from the sand mixture.  Mining oil sands, if not done right, can lead to surface water contamination, high water usage, destruction of land, disruption of wildlife, and climate issues from refining. 

The Salt Lake Tribune discuss how the refining process is energy and water intensive, "about 10 parts water per part oil are added and heated to 100 degrees, an energy-intensive step. The resulting slurry is agitated and then allowed to settle. The water is drained, centrifuged and about 80 percent recycled, leaving damp sand with water-soluble chemicals and residual citrus oil-bitumen to be redeposited in the ore body. The citrus oil is distilled from the bitumen and recycled, another energy-intensive step. What’s left — bitumen — must be heated to get it into barrels for trucking to a heavy oil refinery and heated again to get it out. As in Canada, bitumen must be upgraded to make synthetic crude oil, and upgrading requires roughly 17 percent of a barrel of energy. It uses water as well to cool the porous coke to get it in and out of transportation carts."

Mining oil sands can help supply the large oil demand of the world.  For the health of the environment, companies who are getting involved in mining oil sands need to be aware of their impacts and minimize their footprint.  Companies need to continue to research and develop cleaner techniques and processes which could help with the high energy inefficiency of mining oil sands. 

Related Links to this issue:
http://www.westernresourceadvocates.org/land/oilshale.php
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/51389205-82/oil-energy-sands-bitumen.html.csp

Travel the Oregon Trail

Did you know that you can not pump your own gas in Oregon? Did you know that there is no sales tax in Oregon? Well...I just spent the last week in Oregon on a lacrosse trip and found out many new things about the northwest coast.  It rains a lot during the spring or maybe all the time! But, as I drove through the state of Oregon as a young geologist, I noticed that there was a massive amount of Basalt.  As a petroleum geologist, I wondered if there is any gas and oil production in the state of Oregon, and if there is, where are they producing?

(The Greatest Game for Computer, early 1990s)

Apparently, according to the Bureau of Land Management, there are no active drilling or exploration sites in Oregon.  There are multiple lease sales though for the potential exploration to take place.  The thick basalt flows could potentially be a good seal for marine type reservoirs below, but drilling through basalt is very costly.  Maybe in the near future "when" oil and gas prices increase more exploration drilling will take part in the State of Oregon.  Another thought was drilling and production offshore of Oregon, but the Oregon state House bill 3613 bans offshore Oregon coast drilling until year 2020.  With no sales tax and no domestic petroleum production where does Oregon collect for its states financial needs? ...it must be from all the tourist going to Crater Lake :)

A Day in the Life

All of us at school run into the days, weeks, of work on a single project and lose connection with the rest of the world.  We spend countless hours working days and nights, exhausting our bodies and minds.  Lately, the past eight weeks, I have spent a large portion of my life working on a project for an international competition in the Great Bight Basin, Australia.  The competition is call the Imperial Barrel Award sponsored by AAPG.  This Thursday the team and I will be presenting our investigation of oil prospective properties in the basin for a school review.  The region competition will be on March 19, and then the international competition in Houston will be on April 9, 2011.

The Bight Basin is a highly prospective area for oil and gas exploration.  There has only been a few unsuccessful well drilled in the basin; therefore, most of the exploration is done through seismic data.  Our Team and other teams are evaluating this basin for the best locations to drill the next well.  We are mapping multiple units that have the potential to act as a reservoir and areas that contain all the petroleum elements and systems for hydrocarbon potential.   This article (Regional Geology of the Bight Basin) is a good source about the geology of the basin and exploration history.  With that being said...I hope the team and I find the best spot, and we find the billion dollar well.

Dont Miss the Boat

With all the recent activity around the globe and conflicts going on in the eastern countries, there will be a decreasing of oil supply importing into the United States.  Some of these countries (such as Libya and Egypt) have some of the largest oil fields and reserves known in the world.  With that being said, it is important to recognize the importance of domestic oil and start targeting oil reserves in the United States to keep our oil prices within reason. Below is a movie from Thomas Petrie, Vice Chairman of Bank of America, talking about the opportunities in US Shale oil right now. He also discusses about investment opportunities into medium and smaller companies that are focusing on these shale plays today.  Please take a look at the video...I would like to here your thoughts on it with the current situations of higher oil prices relative to the conflicts going on in the east right now. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jSLTvVMTSc