Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is a collection of technologies that enable the mitigation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from large point sources, such as power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities, or the removal of existing CO2 from the atmosphere. The captured CO2 can then be used, transported, or stored.
Behind the Science
The mobility and behaviour of CO2 in the subsurface has led to the identification of new carbon storage plays that are very different to those in the oil and gas world. A migration loss model leads to composite trapping through multiple mechanisms including: pore-scale capillary forces, dissolution trapping, cap rock rugosity and storage complex tortuosity. Modelling shows that such a saline aquifer play is extremely robust and that even large volumes have very low risk of migration out of the storage site. Even very minor heterogeneities such as small variations in grainsize will significantly divert CO2 migration – this can be used to advantage in storage sites. Legacy well penetrations are one of the principal leakage risks and will require much work by well engineers to identify and remediate. CCS projects across the world are rapidly developing beyond concept stage and there are optimistic discussions of projects including Endurance and Northern Lights in the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea and Morecambe Net Zero in the Irish Sea.
In the News
In October 2024, the British government pledged nearly £22bn for projects to capture and store carbon emissions from energy, industry and hydrogen production. Sir Keir Starmer, who visited the north-west of England with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to confirm the projects, said the move would ‘reignite our industrial heartlands’ and ‘kickstart growth’. Read more here
Meanwhile, in the USA, on 30 December, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) issued four Class VI permits for carbon dioxide (CO2) injection wells in California. These permits are the first such permits approved for California and the first for the EPA’s Pacific Southwest Region. Read more here
Find out more
GeoLogica are running a number of CCUS courses in 2025.
Reservoir Characterisation and Subsurface Uncertainties in Carbon Stores is a brand-new field trip with CCS expert and renowned tutor Richard Worden. Based in northwest Cheshire, the course will give participants the opportunity to see some of the rocks at outcrop that are planned UK CO2 storage sites.
Seals, Containment and Risk for CCS and Hydrogen Storage is a virtual class that examines the nature and properties of seals as they relate to containment for permanent storage of CO2 and cyclical storage of hydrogen and/or compressed air. Taught be Richard Swarbrick, it is a 3-day course comprising a mix of lectures, case studies and exercises.
Geochemical Effects of CO2 on Reservoir, Seals and Engineered Environments During CCS is a 5-day virtual course with Richard Worden. The reactions of CO2 with different reservoir rocks and top-seals, and their constituent minerals, and the cement and metal work used in the construction of wells are central to this course. Exercises will be used throughout the course; these will include calculations, largely based on spreadsheets, and quizzes will be used to test knowledge development.
It’s a cold a wintry day in Moray, with a brisk, northwest wind blowing snow showers inland from across the Moray Firth. As a keen outdoorsman, periodic visitor to the mountains and geologist, my mind wanders back to the heroic age of Himalayan exploration and discovery, post First World War, which saw British men battling against Everest. Their aspirations to physically reach the summit were coupled with an intrigue for scientific discovery, including geological curiosity. For those who follow mountaineering, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition that saw George Mallory and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine losing their lives on their famous summit attempt.
Mallory and Irvine’s final climb is, of course, steeped in mystery – did the duo reach the summit or not? If they did, it was nearly 30 years before the successful ascent and descent by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Speculation as to whether the two boys from Birkenhead (as Mick Conefrey refers to them in his new book Fallen) summited is abounding, with a multitude of books, articles, YouTube videos and publications all picking apart the evidence and ultimately drawing different conclusions. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d say that Mallory’s determination and proven climbing ability, coupled with Sandy’s youth and strength, was enough to propel them to the summit, and that the pair sadly succumbed to a fall when returning to their departure camp, probably in darkness and in a state of exhaustion. Mallory had always promised to leave a photograph of his beloved wife Ruth at the summit – perhaps it is still there frozen in time…
Mallory’s body was found in 1999 by Conrad Anker, and this year we saw the partial remains of Irvine discovered by a National Geographic team. The pictures from the 1924 expedition reveal men of strength and durability, recovering from the horrors of the First World War, with a passion for adventure, albeit in some of the harshest conditions that exist on Earth. I must admit that the whole summit mystery has become a bit of an obsession of mine and a trek to see Everest with my own eyes is something I’d like to do, if my lungs allow! However, the climbing secrets and ghosts that Everest holds cannot, for a geologist, overshadow the geological wonders that the mountain preserves, which is something that links us back to the 1924 expedition itself.
Noel Odell was the 1924 expedition oxygen officer in addition to being a geologist and, not only was he the last person to photograph Mallory and Irvine alive (as they were checking their oxygen apparatus at Camp 4), but he was also the last person to see them during their final ascent (as they moved along or near the northeast ridge towards the summit). Noel himself was an accomplished mountaineer and, during that expedition, climbed twice to over 8000m without oxygen. Away from mountaineering and time spent in the army during both World Wars, he worked as a geologist with spells in the mining and petroleum industry, as well as in academia. Odell was one of the first to study the geological structure of Everest, noting the presence of sedimentary rocks towards it summit and metamorphic strata at its base.
From a geological perspective, the mighty Everest sprang from the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates, with the resultant Himalayan range beginning to rise about 50 MYA. The mountain is made up of a variety of rock types, including metamorphic rocks of the Rongbuk Formation at its base, overlain by sedimentary and metamorphic rocks of the North Col Formation, including the famous yellow band of marble, and finally the summit pyramid comprises dark grey, fossil-rich Ordovician limestones – the Qomalanga Limestone. Odell published a few papers on the geology of Everest, perhaps his best known is from 1925 and is entitled ‘Observations on the rocks and glaciers of Mount Everest’. For those interested, there are also some wonderful clips online of an interview with Noel where he speaks about his Everest experiences – a classic English gent!
Back in Moray, the icy north wind is a shock as I step outside to the log store for more wood for the stove. I can only imagine what grit, determination and strength those Everest pioneers possessed. Not only had they fought for king and country in scenes unimaginable in the modern world, but they then turned to the Himalayas to endure further challenges in the brutal cold and punishment of high-altitude mountaineering. That great quote from Mallory – ‘Because it’s there’, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest by a reporter in America, resonates with the spirit of the day and the essence of early mountaineering, telling a story of a mountain and men, of geology and time.
I was fortunate to attend a days’ training seminar on CCS jointly run by PACE CCS and GeoLogica in PACE’s offices in London. PACE have enormous experience in the CCS field, having worked on many of the world’s significant projects, designing specifications and software. But the CCS industry is in its infancy – as GeoLogica tutor and Pace’s Managing Director Matt Healey says, “I have 5 years’ experience in CCS which would make me a junior engineer in many other industries.”
The day’s discussion focussed on the issues surrounding the capture and transport of carbon dioxide before it is injected into the subsurface. Matt emphasized the point that capture is perhaps the limiting factor, due to the physical size of the current amine-based capture technology. This was an early eye-opener for me, as my geoscience-bias had caused me to assume the key challenges are understanding the subsurface…
In brief, my key takeaways from the day were:
Contrary to some narratives, CCS is not a way for oil and gas companies to continue business as usual. Rather, it is a critical element on the pathway to net zero.
CCS plus renewables plus hydrogen will facilitate a cheaper and more rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
Capture technology is currently the principal hurdle, in terms of cost and engineering challenges.
Not all CO2 is created equally. Different industries produce CO2 with different impurities, which in turn changes the specifications for different projects.
Oil and gas companies understand the subsurface and can deliver large projects. However, CCS projects are distinct and O&G companies need to change their project delivery methodology.
Governments have a critical role in promoting the development of CCS/renewables/hydrogen hubs, where the new energy ecosystem can develop and thrive.
Challenges remain in the engineering of capture and of transport facilities, but they are surmountable, and technology is advancing. There is an enormous market and opportunities out there that are worth trillions of dollars. Time is short – CCS is essential, not optional.
I’d like to extend GeoLogica’s thanks to Pace CCS for sharing their knowledge, time and facilities for the course. For more information on the course, visit the course page here.
Field work remains at the heart of GeoLogica training, typified by a recent course to the coastal outcrops north of San Diego, California, with one of our client companies. The outcrops were explored with direct application to Guyana deepwater reservoirs, with a focus on reservoir modelling.
The central theme of the course was reservoir model design, on the premise that it is design rather than software knowledge that typically distinguishes ‘good models’ from ‘bad models’. The coastal field localities were used as an analogue reference and were viewed from source to sink, with a focus on specific deepwater architectural elements, including canyons, slope channels, channel margins and lobes.
Considerable time is often dedicated to reservoir model and simulation exercises but the results often disappoint: the time taken to build models is often too long, the models are too detailed and cumbersome, and the final model often not fit-for-purpose. The field course explored the reasons why and the remedies to fix these problems. Lecture sessions concentrated on model purpose, fluid-sensitive selection of reservoir elements, use and abuse of geostatistics, handling of scale and multi-scale, and uncertainty – the joy of the ensemble.
Many thanks to Mark Bentley for his energy, enthusiasm and time. No software running on this course, just sunshine, stunning coastal deepwater outcrops, opinions and space for discussion. In Mark’s concluding words, ‘Data ≠ Model ≠ Truth, and good design just needs clear vision.’
Slope-channel sandstones at Dana Point Harbor
Channel margin at San Clemente
Submarine canyon conglomerates and sandstones at Black’s Beach
My research has focused on the sustainable utilisation of the subsurface for low carbon energy applications. So, this will include things like carbon capture and storage, energy storage, particularly hydrogen storage, unconventional hydrocarbons and geothermal operations. And then, for my own work, I design and build experimental equipment that recreates the subsurface conditions, effectively creating a window into the subsurface from the laboratory. It means we can look at what changes are going to happen in the subsurface rocks and fluids during any of these low-carbon energy applications. For example, I can look at what geochemical changes might be induced when hydrogen is injected into a porous depleted gas field. We can use these experiments to unpick the underlying controls, such as how pressure might influence the rate of reaction. These experiments will really help us select the best storage sites and manage them most effectively to avoid negative impacts on storage integrity during the storage operations.
Tell us a bit about your teaching journey.
I started as a PhD tutor while still doing my own PhD, and I’ve loved that part of my academic role ever since. I really enjoy teaching classes, but I prefer it when we can be interactive (with the students). One of the aspects of teaching that I really enjoy, therefore, is working with students on their dissertation projects, where I get to see them grow in confidence and watch them embark on their exciting careers after graduation.
I’m a fellow of the Higher Education Authority and I did a postgraduate certificate in academic practice to really develop my teaching and reflect on and improve my practice. So, I’m constantly learning from the students.
I don’t know what else to say about this one… I just really enjoy it!
What is your favourite memory from fieldwork or field training?
That’s an easy one! When I was doing my master’s degree with Heriot-Watt [University], we did a field trip to the Book Cliffs in Utah, which is HEAVEN for a geologist. Just being there was phenomenal – the exposure is extraordinary – but during the day we happened to come across a fresh rockfall that had revealed some dinosaur footprints, and we were seeing those for the first time since they had been imprinted in the mud all those millions of years ago. And that was, from an emotional point of view, just spectacular.
And, at the end of the day, while drinking beer at a microbrewery (which are so good in Utah!), we were treated to a very impressive, particularly bright fly-past from the Hale Bopp comet. That was fantastic.
Being someone who spends most of my time in the lab, I also want to add here the fact that not all geologists regularly work out in the field and not all geologists actually like being out in the field. Some of my absolute favourite moments have been in the lab! When you’ve drawn something on a piece of paper, then designed it, built it, it works exactly as it should and you gain new insights or perhaps see something that you weren’t expecting to see – THAT to me is as fantastic, as rewarding, as any fieldwork.
(Image: A photo from one of Katriona’s favourite outcrop visits, to Arches National Park, Utah)
Tell us about your upcoming course with GeoLogica – what is it about and who is it for?
As we pivot to a world away from fossil fuels and move to more sustainable energy solutions, which we absolutely need to do, hydrogen is increasingly becoming recognised as a very important part of this future low-carbon energy system. It provides essential energy storage to support increased capacity for renewable energy. We’re looking to switch the energy balance from the current 70–80% fossil fuels and 20–30% renewable electricity to the opposite of that: 70–80% renewable, 20–30% another energy vector, which is most likely to be hydrogen.
My course will really highlight the role that hydrogen can play in supporting our journey to net zero – how it can support increased renewables and how it can decarbonise or tackle some of those harder-to-electrify sectors, such as industrial heat or heavy-duty transport. My hydrogen masterclass dives into the complexities and opportunities for hydrogen, looking at production, geological storage and the intricacies of the operational engineering and its integration into the energy system. It offers theoretical knowledge and practical insights.
In terms of who the course is aimed at, I would say it’s suitable for geologists, geophysicists, engineers, regulators and policymakers – anyone, really, with an interest in the emerging hydrogen economy.
We cover everything from the basics through to the more complex. The aim is for you to have a wider appreciation of the role of geoscience within the hydrogen economy and the contribution that hydrogen can make to the energy transition.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that most people don’t know
I really like restoring old cars. So, I spend an awful lot of my time looking after my 1984 Citroen 2CVthat I am managing to keep going on the road. She has recently passed her MOT with no defects so I’m feeling pretty chuffed about that. She’s getting a bit rusty now but we’ll get there – my job for the winter!
What is the biggest challenge facing the sector today from your perspective?
From where I sit, there has certainly been a shift in awareness that we need to cut our emissions from energy. However, translating that into action is really challenging. For me, I think the most important thing we need to do is bring the public with us –change public perception– highlighting the community benefits that can come from hydrogen storage and taking away that element of fear or uncertainty.
What would be your advice to geoscientists who are just starting their careers?
So, I’m the careers coordinator for geosciences [at the University of Edinburgh] and I ran a careers event yesterday because a lot of the big environmental consultancies start their graduate recruitment in November–December for the following September. There are plenty of opportunities out there but it’s really just a case of understanding how you can connect with people. I suppose, therefore, the main piece of advice I give to anybody starting their career is to begin to build that professional network; join LinkedIn, join organisations, attend conferences (especially the free industry ones) and connect with your peers and with professionals who are working in that field. Don’t be frightened to reach out to someone – what’s the worst that’s going to happen? They might ignore your request but, equally, they may get back in touch with you, and once you’ve got that, it’ll open the door to job opportunities or possibilities for collaboration.
Secondly, this field is changing particularly quickly. Three years ago, nobody would have even heard of you if you’d said you worked in hydrogen, whereas now, they can’t get enough people working in hydrogen. So, from a geoscience point of view, keep up-to-date with current research and attend workshops, conferences and webinars. Maintaining that up-to-date and broad knowledge base and network will help.
Lastly, just try always to remember why you started [geoscience] in the first place. Keep passionate about the subject you do and remain adaptable in that ever-changing job market.
Give us your best/worst geology joke?
This is so bad.
Q: Did you hear about the geologist who was reading a book on helium?
I’m a geoscientist specializing in sedimentology and stratigraphy and how they relate to tectonics. My background is primarily in carbonates, but I’ve worked siliciclastic systems as well. As for tectonics, I’ve worked a lot in both foreland and rift basins, but for the past 20 years I’ve been fascinated by all things related to salt tectonics.
Tell us a bit about your journey into teaching.
My training to be a teacher has basically been learning from watching others, starting as an undergrad at UW-Madison. I had some terrific, enthusiastic professors and grad students that were really inspiring and opened up a whole new world to me. This continued when I moved on to Iowa for my master’s and then Arizona for my PhD – just really terrific mentors and people. I took note of how they approached teaching and how they related their science to me, seeing what worked and what didn’t. Interestingly, in almost all of those cases, the teaching was field-based – I’ve found that physically seeing the relationships in the outcrop really brings it all together for me. So that’s how I like to approach teaching – by using field examples.
I started my career in the carbonate group at Exxon Production Research in Houston and, although I was in a research position, a significant part of my responsibility was teaching. The audience wasn’t just geologists, I was teaching the basic principles of carbonates and stratigraphy to engineers too. Their minds work a little differently, so it was really fun adapting my take on the science to a completely different audience.
After I left Exxon, I entered the academic realm, first at New Mexico State for 18 years and then UTEP for the past 12 years. I’ve taught at all levels – everything from highly focused technical work with PhD students, to trying to capture the interest of undergrad students who have never even thought about looking at a rock. So, it’s been a broad journey and I’ve really enjoyed relaying the science to everybody.
Tell us about a favorite memory from fieldwork or field training?
I have so many, but I’m going to tell you about one I had just over a week ago, and it’s probably the most incredible Zen moment of my whole life.
For more than 20 years, I’ve been going out to the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, doing field work on salt diapirs. A ridge of dolomite at a couple diapirs called the Rim Dolomite has been a thorn in my side from the beginning. We’ve interpreted it at least 500 different ways – we joke we’re working on hypothesis 627 now. There are a couple of issues with this bugger. Firstly, it has the whole ‘dolomite problem’ going on, but also the contacts above and below are always covered by talus from the ridge, so it’s hard to see what’s going on.
Last week we were finishing up in the field, it’s the last day and it had been raining for a couple of days and the ridge was completely covered in fog. We poked along on the talus slope looking for the outcrop one last time. At about 11:30am, the rain breaks, the sun starts to come out, and we hike to the ridge crest where we’re greeted with the most amazing view – sun rays in all directions bursting through the wall of clouds, down onto the rim dolomite ridge – casting it in the most amazing golden light. The birds start to come out and chirp; it’s sublime. Just then, I look down over the cliff and see there’s a drainage cutting across the rim dolomite and all of that talus has been stripped off. There is 100% exposure. For the first time, I can see this perfect inter-bedding of the rim dolomite and outboard mini-basin red siltstone. That little spot shreds our previous ideas on the area. To top it off, as we’re high-fiving in a total state of euphoria, the most beautiful iridescent blue-green little bird hops onto the contact and starts taking a bath in a puddle. It was just an incredible moment where everything in the universe came together in this one little spot.
Tell us about your upcoming course with GeoLogica – what is it about and who is it for?
This is a really exciting new course, which I’m delighted to be co-leading with Cindy Yielding. It’s designed to provide an opportunity for women to both learn and network out in nature. We’ve chosen to run it in the Paradox Basin of Utah and Colorado because of the exceptional exposures of salt diapirs and amazing scenery. It’s set up for women geoscientists and engineers at any level: those who want to gain some experience in looking at the fundamentals of salt tectonics, as well as those seeking high-level discussions about the intimate details of the structures. The main idea is to get out in the field to look at geologic relationships and consider how we might take these fundamental concepts and utilize them in a modern energy world.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that most people don’t know.
I really love architectural design and gardens. I probably spend more time looking at them than actually doing geology! Geology allows me to go around the world and see architecture and gardens from all different cultures. The whole geology thing and field geology totally plays into that. And so, while I’m looking at the rocks, I’m also looking at the communities I’m going through – how they live, how they use the land, how they build their structures to tie into what they need it for. It’s really fun.
Whatis the biggest challenge facing the sector today from your perspective?
If I think of my sector as geoscience education, the biggest challenge is how universities need to evolve to meet the changing needs of our students and knowing where future geoscience careers are heading. We can’t even imagine all the new career options that will be available for students coming through now and in the future. We’re trying to develop curriculums that will help them be successful in these new career pathways, but we don’t have formal training in place for a lot of the topics they need. We’re scrambling now and I think the biggest challenge is the speed at which we’re trying to adjust. Obviously, the whole technological thing and being able to program and apply AI to the science is a really big deal, and so we’re changing our curriculum to be geared pretty heavily into those fields. I’m really worried, though, that we’re getting too far away from teaching the fundamentals of geoscience. But it’s so important for our students to come out suitably equipped to move on to these new careers and have the ability to adapt to future shifts – so that is a big challenge right now.
What would be your advice to junior geoscientists starting their careers today?
In short, keep learning. You come out of university with your degree, you start a career, you think you know what you’re going to be doing and you settle in. But you need to keep learning. Keep reading, taking classes, get out in the field and experiment with new stuff. Don’t be afraid of tackling things you think you’re bad at. Go learn about it, get good at it, or at least get to the point where you’re not afraid of it anymore. You want to set yourself up to be able to pivot because things are going to keep on changing. We don’t know for certain where things are going in the future, but we do know for certain, they will go fast. Also, as you’re moving forward, don’t lose sight of the fundamentals. Keep refreshing yourself on the basics and building on them.
Final question, can you give us your favorite geology joke?
I’m really bad at remembering any jokes, good or bad, but I do remember a pun from my structure TA as an undergrad: ‘All my faults are stress related.’
Kate and Cindy’s upcoming course is scheduled to run 30th September-4th October, starting and finishing in Grand Junction, Colorado.
I am a structural geologist by training, by talent, by passion, by any measure. And although I’ve worked in all types of structural environments, from rift basins to fold and thrust belts to passive margins, the vast majority of my work since about 1992 has been in the area of salt tectonics. And so, whatever the depositional environment, whichever basin I’ve worked, I’ve been looking at salt movement, salt evolution, salt geometry, salt-sediment interaction and all sorts of related issues.
Tell us a bit about your journey into teaching. OK, let’s see, I was doing a University degree in biology and, after taking a geology class during my very last semester, I decided to switch to geology, taking classes part time, while being a ski bum for four years. Then I went to grad school where I was supposed to do a PhD on carbonate turbidites but turned it into a Master’s because I saw all these amazing folds and decided I’d rather become a structural geologist!
I worked in the industry for about four years, then went to get my PhD in structure, which is where I first started doing some teaching as a teaching assistant. After working at a consultancy in Scotland for three years, I went back to university as a research professor and that’s where I started teaching classes on my own for both undergraduate and graduate students. I left there in ‘98, started my own business and I’ve been teaching courses for industry ever since.
It turned out to be a move for the better because, although I always enjoyed teaching students, I discovered that I much prefer to teach professionals. They’re taking the class because they want to, because they need it, rather because it’s required for the major or their degree, so I’ve always found they tend to be more invested in the class. They have their own experience to bring along with them, they can see the applications right away, and so it’s just generally more rewarding in terms of that feedback loop.
I still do a ton of research, too, which informs my teaching. And the teaching informs my research and consulting; it all goes together. I hate to use a buzzword, but it is rather synergistic.
Tell us about a favourite memory from fieldwork or field training? Well, I can’t think of one specific course or experience, but I can tell you what my favorite part of training is more generally – when something you’ve been struggling with comes together. You might be walking around mapping, having a conversation with a course participant, doing this and that, when suddenly things fall into place – those light bulb moments. Some people like to really sort things out in their head before they say what they think. But I’ve always been one of those people who figures out what I’m thinking by talking it through with people first – that’s part of the value in of in-person courses; it’s being able to have those conversations. Now, that doesn’t just happen in the field – it can be in the classroom, while having conversations with people in the office, or while looking at seismic. It can happen in a variety of ways. But, there’s no question that being out in the field is more fun!
(Above: Contact between a flaring diapir (grey gypsum) and continental redbeds in the Sivas Basin, Turkey)
Tell us about your upcoming course with GeoLogica – what is it about and who is it for?
It’s about salt tectonics in general – the fundamentals, the styles, the processes, the implications for other aspects of petroleum systems and the salt basins, but with a particular emphasis on the Gulf of Mexico, both northern and southern. So, it really covers everything. The learnings are applicable to working other salt basins, but this course goes into a little more detail on some aspects that are most germane to the Gulf of Mexico. It is lecture based primarily, with time set aside for questions, discussion and, importantly, exercises (about two per day), which gives participants a chance to get their eyes on some real data and assimilate some of the concepts we’ve been working through.
It’s aimed for anybody working in salt basins, from people who just started working there last month and really know nothing about salt and the Gulf of Mexico, to people who are internal salt experts! On the whole, it’s an intermediate course, but that categorization is only so useful – really, we’ll go from the basics right up to more complex things.So, yeah, it’s for anybody working salt basins.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that most people don’t know Because I tend to give out too much information, most people already know all these things about me! But the one that comes to mind relates back to a conversation I had with my wife, from when we first met. She said to me, ‘So, Mark, what’s your dark side, because everyone has a dark side…’ Yep, that’s my wife! She’s a philosopher. So, at first I said, ‘I don’t really have one.’ But then I realized that I do.
My dark side, or perhaps just my ‘deep secret’, is that at heart I’m really a climbing, skiing, surfing bum . . . but one whose brain isn’t challenged enough by those things. I thrive on solving problems and, well, ‘doing the geology’. In reality, I don’t do nearly enough of those other things that I love because I’m a workaholic, but yeah that’s me at heart.
Whatis the biggest challenge facing the sector today from your perspective?
I’d say the biggest thing is the transition to clean energy – it’s thrown everything into a bit of turmoil, certainly in the world of salt tectonics. Standard exploration for traditional plays in salt basins has definitely slowed down, with both major and minor oil companies moving more towards oil shale and gas and so forth. It’s funny, there are more people doing research now on salt tectonics than at any time in the past because it has become better known, more data sets have become available and so more and more students are going into it.But, at the same time, the need and the opportunity for more fundamental research is decreasing because the focus is shifting. Right now, the biggest new issue on salt is hydrogen storage in salt diapirs, which I touch on a little in the class.
The world is changing, but I’m nearly 70 and approaching the end of my career, so it’s not so much a problem for me but for the younger researchers, explorers and students trying to fit in and find out how they can match their interests (which might be salt) to where things are going in the future. And there’s a lot of uncertainty. I think that’s the biggest challenge right now.
What would be your advice to junior geoscientists starting their careers today? 1. Keep taking classes and keep going in the field – if you can convince your companies to let you go on a field course. I find the field absolutely invaluable because if one person learns just one thing that makes them put a well in a better place or take the decision to not drill a specific well, or just see things differently in the seismic, then it has more than paid off the cost of sending ten people to a class. And there is always someone who’s going to learn something like that. But it’s an easy one for the companies to cut because it’s seen as a line-item budget issue. Often the true cost of that “cost-saving” isn’t realized at the time.
2. Keep going to conferences! It’s easy for us to get stuck in our offices but even just attending a conference can give you some fresh insights into stuff you’ve been struggling with.
Any closing thoughts Mark? Well, I always say that ‘Geology, just like food, goes better with a pinch of salt.’
And at the end of the day, to quote some sage, ‘Geology is mostly guesswork; the rest is alcohol . . .’
My background is structural geology and tectonics. I have worked in petroleum exploration and my current field is CCS. At heart I am an explorer, wanting to know what’s over the horizon and how things work.
“If you drill here, what are you going to find?”
“How does this work as a system?”
“How do I put ranges on what I’m likely to find?”
“What is the performance likely to be using minimal data?”
I bring the eyes of an explorer to CCS thinking.
Tell us a bit about your teaching journey.
I started teaching geology as a grad student 30 years ago . . . and, at first, I was terrible at it! But I wanted to be good, so I watched good teachers and I read about it, studied it and was fortunate to work with some really excellent instructional designers. I went on to teach courses for BP, the University of Arizona, members of the public, and I’ve continued teaching different audiences and subjects at the University of Texas.
What is your favourite memory from fieldwork or field training?
You know, I’m hard pressed to identify a particular favourite, but I’ve got a collage of wonderful memories of being high in the mountains, gazing out over a valley of beautifully structured geology, just pinching myself that I actually get paid to do this stuff! And, you know, I’ve described this job sometimes as getting paid to go play in the mountains and solve puzzles. And those are the days when there is no better job in the world.
Tell us about your upcoming course with GeoLogica – what is it about and who is it for?
The course is about the subsurface aspects of CCS, the geologic components of CO2 storage, and it’s effectively trying to adapt petroleum expertise for CCS. It’s aimed at geologists, geophysicists and engineers. It’s part geology, part modelling, part surface monitoring.
My understanding initially, coming from petroleum geology, was that CO2 seems fairly simple: it’s a buoyant fluid and we’re talking about subsurface fluid flow with reservoir seals and traps. How different can it be? And the answer is actually really different. First, you’re injecting at industrial rates, so pressure build-up is a major constraint. Second, the economics are very different. It’s a low-margin business, so you’re far more constrained than when dealing with petroleum. And third, you don’t want it back. The goal is sequestration, which opens up a whole new series of plays and concepts that work, and also risks. So all together, these components ripple through the entire system and make you rethink all your ideas of what ‘good’ looks like.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that most people don’t know?
Outside of geology I am a lifelong endurance athlete, woodworker, dad and caffeine addict by necessity!
What would you say is the biggest challenge facing your sector at the moment as a whole?
Oh, that’s a good question. You know, as much fun as I have working on the subsurface, as much room as there still is to optimise subsurface geology, and as much of a need as there is for geoscience, the big barriers to CCS are above ground. In different parts of the world, it varies a little bit, but it’s a combination of economics, permitting and public acceptance.
In the US, the economics have radically shifted over the last couple of years so that is no longer the big barrier – now, it’s public acceptance and permitting. These things will get worked out eventually but it’s early days and a new industry. The public is unfamiliar with it and are – fairly enough – distrustful. Permit and regulators are new to this game and are, again, proceeding with appropriate caution. But those are the big barriers in the US. In other parts of the world, economic incentives vary dramatically and so, in those countries, economics is the primary barrier. But if you find a way to pay for it, then the other things become much more significant.
I grew up in New England, one of the oldest parts of the US, where you commonly see farmhouses that are a couple of hundred years old. Behind every one of those farmhouses, like the one where I grew up, there would be a pile of rusting cans and bottles, which harks back to an age when municipal trash collection was unheard of. And it actually wasn’t very long ago – say 50–60 years. But nowadays, municipal rubbish collection is almost taken for granted. And that was, in some ways, the first step in a journey toward pollution control. It continued with cleaning up the general practice of dumping industrial waste into the nearest waterway. In the US, the Queen Water Act of 1974 started the era of underground injection of hazardous waste, and that has continued, right? We’ve cleaned up sulphur dioxide emissions and chlorofluorocarbons – the sources of acid rain and ozone degradation. In some ways, CCS is just the next step in this journey, of realizing the impact of widespread dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere. And, you know, just like those other things, there is a learning curve and a public acceptance curve and a remuneration curve that all has to come together before it works at scale – this takes time. We’re low on that curve in CCS but you can see the day coming when it’s simply a routine part of doing business.
What would be your advice to geoscientists who are starting their careers?
I gave this one some thought and I would say, “Learn to think in terms of systems but learn to talk in terms of stories.”
Geology is governed by a fairly simple set of processes. There are lots of processes at work and they can combine in complex ways. So, by stepping back and thinking in terms of systems, you’ll be a much stronger interpreter. Think “How does the system work here?”, but also think about how you link the observations you make to an outcome via reasonable geological processes. So, it’s thinking about systems, linking the observations with a story that incorporates reasonable geologic processes, and that is a powerful QC on interpretation.
With regards to talking in terms of stories – scientists think in terms of facts, but people communicate in terms of stories. Those who talk in terms of pure facts tend to lose their audience. So, learning to tell stories is a really powerful way to connect with an audience and communicate research in a way that lands. It’s critical: brilliant research routinely falls flat because it simply wasn’t intelligible to the audience or didn’t connect with them.
Give us your best/worst geology joke?
Q: Why was the sandstone so cheap?
A: It was on shale!
That is truly awful.
Well, when you start telling geology jokes, you really know you’ve hit rock bottom.
I’m a structural geologist with over 30 years’ experience, working primarily in oil and gas after completing my PhD in structural geology from Texas A&M University.
How did you get into teaching?
It came about naturally. I started my career at Shell in Exploration and Development in New Orleans working the Gulf of Mexico. Three years in, I realized I wanted to get into more of a technology group. So, I left Shell and joined the structural geology technical team in a company called Arco in north Dallas. In the technology group at Arco, you were an in-house specialist and, as such, you were expected to apply your expertise to projects internally but also educate, so you were assigned a course to develop. One of the courses I developed was the Moab Fault Seal outcrop-based course I am teaching for GeoLogica. I started teaching it in the mid-90s and, when I left the company, after ARCO was bought by BP in 2000, I joined Rock Deformation Research, a small structural geology consulting company based in the UK and was able to take the course with me as I owned the IP and continued to offer the course. At Rock Deformation Research I started to develop more classroom courses, too, primarily with a fault seal focus. When I moved to Schlumberger, I worked with their training division and taught similar courses to clients worldwide.
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
Well, not the students! [wisecrack]
What do I like? Well, there are a couple of things I really like. When you’re teaching a training course, it can be a bit boring because, in a way, you’re teaching the same thing. So, I try to modify what I’m teaching a little bit each time. To do that, I take the reviews from previous courses, the sense of what worked and what didn’t work, how the students reacted and how smoothly it went as it forces you to stay on top of the field and the literature and things like that. You don’t want to be teaching the same course 20 years later – you’d be talking about 20-year-old concepts – science moves forward. For me, staying current and on top of recent developments is important and something I enjoy. I try to stay dynamic and often modify the course on the fly depending on the group interest and questions.
The other aspect I particularly enjoy is mentoring. I didn’t appreciate how important it was when I was younger. When you are younger and building a career, you’re looking to see where you fit; you’re looking for openings; you’re trying to move forward in the race. As you get older, you realize there’s really nothing to build, so mentoring becomes extremely important. Not just in terms of teaching but also in terms of working with younger professionals. I have been very lucky in my career, but I think it’s quite difficult for somebody young now to get the kind of career I have had – to have the same opportunities in terms of research, field work, consulting services and working for major oil and gas companies, service companies and small consulting companies. So, I most enjoy mentoring, teaching and the transfer of knowledge.
Can you tell us about a favorite memory from fieldwork or field training?
Well, I’ve run many, many courses in my time and done loads of field work – it can feel like a bit of a blur – but there are still lots of experiences I’ve had that are unique. I mean one of them was I had an opportunity to go on a field trip and camp in the desert in Oman, which was just amazing. Our fieldwork party consisted of about fifteen Westerners and fifteen Omanis, vehicles with drivers and a big food truck, and we just took off down the main road heading southwest and then turned north into the desert across the sand. I remember vehicles getting stuck in the sand and having to push them out. They put up a big tent that served as a dining hall and as a mosque for the Muslims to pray. And then you camped outside on cots that they brought in. Three days in we were eating tuna steaks and French fries in the middle of the desert – certainly a memorable experience!
On another occasion I remember a trip to Muddy River in Utah with Janok Bhattacharya and sitting there just eating lunch on a clear day. We got caught in a sudden rainstorm and I was on one side of the Canyon and Janok was on the other. I remember watching Janok across the canyon trying to get under a under a rock overhang to avoid the rain. But what he didn’t realize was that that there was a sort of mini waterfall that came through behind the rock. And when I saw him next, he was absolutely covered in mud!
With so many years and experience in the field I am not sure what triggered these two memories.
Source: Russell Davies
Tell us about your upcoming field course with GeoLogica?
Well, the focus of the course is faults, and it is designed for petroleum geologists or geoscientists, whether that’s geologists, geophysicists or reservoir engineers. Oftentimes in their work they’re trying to understand what controls the hydrocarbons staying in place. With hydrocarbons being lighter than water, they’ll just continue rising to the surface if nothing traps them, so they need something that stops their flow laterally and vertically with a seal (a layer of shale) that’s impermeable for all intents and purposes. Laterally and vertically, you need to have confinement from seal layers with a shape like an upside-down bowl. And if you don’t have that, you could have a fault which can then act as a barrier to lateral flow. So, a lot of the course talks about methods and techniques to evaluate that seal in the subsurface with a focus on fault seal.
One problem with collecting data in the subsurface is resolution. We might collect well data, for instance, that’s at a high-enough resolution, but has no lateral information away from the well bore. Seismic data has lateral extent but doesn’t capture the higher resolution stratigraphy and structure. The nice thing about the field course around Moab, Utah, is that there are some very nice exposures of faults and associated deformation at a range of scales that are excellent analogs to the subsurface where the resolution is inadequate. You can look at the deformation along a fault, think about the processes that led to that formation, and then think about the tools that we have in the office to evaluate it in the subsurface. Seeing the formations in person allows you to consider the strengths and weaknesses of those tools and methods, because invariably they don’t capture exactly what’s there. What’s particularly nice about the faults near Moab is that there is enough displacement across the fault at a scale at which you would see those faults on seismic but here you get to touch them and you can see how wide they are, what the deformation mechanisms are and we also look at some of the geometries of how the faults connect together in a lateral sense. There are other areas around the planet that have some of those characteristics, but I know of no place that has all of them in one place. That’s one reason why geologists are falling over each other out there – it’s such a spectacular spot for learning about structural geology.
The fault seal field course around Moab is relevant for anybody thinking about those sealing characteristics and characterizing faults in the subsurface. Historically that would have meant petroleum geologists working for petroleum companies but in the last three to five years, I’ve also been applying it to CO2 containment and incorporate some of these concepts into the training.
In terms of the level of expertise, the people who get the most out of the course are those who’ve already asked the questions about fault seals. It’s probably more of an intermediate/advanced level course, although I do think that even somebody relatively junior would get something out of it – it would inform them of the key issues and things to think about.
I am not only teaching the outcrop-based training in Moab with GeoLogica but also offer classroom training on fault seal and can modify the courses to meet a company’s needs, which I have done frequently in the past.
Can you tell us a fact about yourself that most people might not know?
I guess one thing would be that I’m an immigrant to the United States. Even though I speak like an American and even though I’m very red, white and blue, my family immigrated to the United States when I was 11 from South Africa (like Elon Musk). As a kid I used to drink a lot of tea with milk and eat a lot of Marmite on toast and sardine sandwiches (not together) – something that the other kids in school used to tease me about! I also took speech lessons because I had a lisp. I remember telling the teacher, ‘I want to speak like a real American!’ So, sure enough, I changed my accent and that helped me integrate more fully. It took me about 40 years before I ever went back to SA, and I’ve only been back once since moving in 1969. I don’t have strong ties to SA; we moved to Ohio to begin with, so I’d say I’m more Midwestern American than anything else.
What would you say is the biggest challenge to the oil and gas sector at the moment?
I mean, they seem to be doing quite well, right? If anything, they’re probably not being challenged enough. All the major oil and gas companies are doing well, Saudi Arabia’s doing extremely well. The reality is that we’re still tied to oil and gas and will be for a long time.
Public pressure to reduce our reliance on carbon energy sources is important. But there is a tendency to think that we would move very quickly – that we can just turn it off and immediately shift to something else. Well, if you want to see a huge crash of world economies and mass starvation then sure let’s do that . . . but I certainly do not. With that said, if anything, big oil isn’t being challenged enough. Companies are still given too many opportunities to drill in places that they shouldn’t, in areas which should be protected to maintain some areas of wilderness. Oil and gas companies are too often protected from lobbyists. But, at the same time, they have given me my career and I’m very bullish about oil and gas – we can’t just ‘turn off the spigot’.
I don’t even think we should stop exploration. A few years ago, companies talked about doing only development (i.e. no more exploration). Well, look at Germany – from a security perspective alone, you have to have your own energy sources. And oil and gas, for the moment, has to be your main energy source.
However, we’re probably not moving fast enough and there are too many people who dismiss the threat of global warming/climate change. But I don’t know what the answers are. Personally, I don’t think that there’s a huge threat to the oil and gas sector, as such, because there is still a need for us to keep producing the stuff!
What would be your advice for junior geoscientists joining the industry in 2024?
It’s a difficult question because the field has changed so much – not because geologists and geoscientists are changing it, but because of the way new technology is being driven by AI. It’s a shame. I’ve been lucky to spend as much time as I have looking at rocks in the field for research and also teaching. And I think that is important. I would suggest young geoscientists continue as best they can to maintain geology fundamentals, whether that’s structural geology, sedimentology, petrophysics, whatever it might be, because there’s a tendency to lean too much on the technology. There’s a tendency to sit in front of a computer and let the computer generate results – to think that AI or machine learning is a solution now for everything. I have seen corporate managers pushing technology because they see it as the future, and professionals who don’t fully understand what the technology is, what it does, what it is good for, what it isn’t good for, resulting in poor or unnecessary solutions using the wrong tool for the problem. That is the trap you get into. I would often see professionals relying on software to generate results but couldn’t tell the result was wrong. Sometimes the results would be orders of magnitude off. The problem is that they’d lost the fundamentals. So, the one suggestion I would make is don’t lose track of the fundamentals. If you don’t have the fundamentals, you’re going to train the AI incorrectly and it’s going to give you the wrong results. So, while AI and machine learning are very powerful tools, you’ve just got to be careful.
And, finally, take any opportunity you can to get back into the field. I admit this can be difficult because many companies aren’t as willing to invest in training as they used to but take it if you can.
Hydrogen is the simplest possible molecule yet it is set to have a prominent role within future energy scenarios, predominantly driven by its ability to store and deliver usable energy.
In the UK, there are plans to develop a number of projects with hydrogen production and industrial usage, coupled with CO2 capture and storage. These will be driving the sustainable development of a future hydrogen economy but are clearly impacted by the need for hydrogen to be industrially produced, either by steam-methane reformation (blue hydrogen) or electrolysis (green hydrogen). There is, however, much recent discussion about all that is gold – natural hydrogen. This is produced naturally underground and is something that could be explored for and produced as we have done so for oil and gas.
The last few years have seen a growing interest in natural hydrogen accumulations, in particular surface seeps and expressions (often referred to as fairy rings), and how much hydrogen could potentially be stored naturally in subsurface reservoirs. Hydrogen-rich gas seeps have been known about for thousands of years. Perhaps the most famous and well documented continuously burning natural gas seep is at Chimaera, near Antalya in Turkey, that has up to 12 per cent hydrogen content. Near the Malian capital of Bamako, Hydroma Inc. have identified a number of hydrogen-bearing reservoirs capped by a dolerite sill. Ninety-eight per cent pure hydrogen is produced from the subsurface and it now generates electricity for a local village using a fuel cell driven by the produced hydrogen. More recently Helios Aragon in Spain confirmed the presence of natural hydrogen at an old oil and gas well, and has plans to explore it further with the ultimate aim of producing hydrogen commercially. Meanwhile, recent drilling by Gold Hydrogen Ltd on the Yorke Peninsula near Adelaide found natural hydrogen up to 86 per cent purity and the future goal is also commercial production.
So, it appears that the subsurface could potentially hold large volumes of stored natural hydrogen. But, how is it produced? This is a key question that has several possible answers. We know that there are both non-biological and biological processes that can lead to hydrogen being produced in the Earth’s crust. It can be made by microbes living in the crust, in addition to geological processes, such as serpentinization, where the mineral olivine is weathered to form hydrogen-rich fluids. Other geological processes include iron reduction, where iron-rich minerals are reduced to ferrous iron and hydrogen sulphides.
There is clearly much still to understand about the way natural hydrogen is produced in the subsurface, as well as how much is present and where these accumulations are. Commercial exploitation will also need to assess the engineering challenges for extracting this hydrogen and how it can be utilized as part of the changing face of our modern energy landscape.
GeoLogica continues to offer courses focusing on the hydrogen within the energy transition, with two new courses on offer in 2024:
The Transportation and Geological Storage of Hydrogen (E576) explores the need for geological storage of hydrogen and the geological storage options available for the secure storage and withdrawal of hydrogen from these different geological stores.
If you’re interested in joining the hydrogen debate, want to learn more about natural hydrogen, or simply discover the role that hydrogen can play in decarbonizing our energy systems, then GeoLogica has a training course for you – find out more here!
