Fall at the Lake

It's both green and yellow at the lake this year, as can be seen by this leaf lying on our cinder-covered ground...
...and by our two-toned aspen trees in the backyard.
Seeds are falling from fir cedar trees, twirling out of the sky...
...and the tops of some aspens are barely turning color before the leaves are falling off.

On another front, our drip system stayed intact this last month while we were away, but a few small trees didn't survive the two times the system went down over the summer. The little brown trees are a sad thing to see. We would take the remaining green ones out to our little house in Nevada, but we have no outdoor water line, making outdoor watering quite difficult. So we leave them here, and hope for the best. This fall and winter, we'll be asking some local friends to check in on things.
Wood heat is popular here, as I mentioned yesterday. It smells good, when not overpowering, and reminds me of campfires. We heat with #2 heating oil (similar to diesel), which used to be fairly inexpensive, but which has gone up in price a lot over the last two years.

Where is It?

A few quotes about how to find things: the geological art & science of exploration and discovery.

• "Gold is where you find it." An old adage or saying with no specific source.

• “Where oil is first found is in the minds of men.” - geologist Wallace Pratt, as quoted recently by the AAPG.

• "It is the genius of a people that determines how much oil shall be reduced to possession; the presence of oil in the earth is not enough. Gold is where you find it, according to an old adage, but judging from the record of our experience, oil must be sought first of all in our minds." (Wallace Pratt, 1943.)

• "We usually find oil in new places with new ideas. When we go to a new area we can find oil with an old idea. Sometimes also we find oil in an old place with a new idea, but we seldom find much oil in an old place with an old idea." (Parke Dickey, Tulsa Geological Society Digest of 1958, v. 26, p. 84.)

The last two quotes were quoted on this web page. I didn't find any exact publication location for the Pratt quote.

1981 OCS Drilling Moratorium Links

Brian at Clastic Detritus has recently had an article about petroleum resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). I'm providing a few links for further reference, mostly in order to flesh out the history of the moratorium itself.

A brief history of the moratorium and bans on drilling: first, the initial moratoriums were passed as part of certain fiscal year (FY) budgets for the Department of Interior (DOI). The history and much more can be read here, and is summarized as follows:

1. The 1981 moratorium only covered California.
2. In 1983, a ban on "pre-leasing" was extended to the North Atlantic.
3. In 1988 Congress enacted the first OCS drilling ban, as part of the FY 1989 DOI appropriations - this ban covered leases in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (GOM), south of 26 degrees North.
4. Other extensions were passed in 1990 under the Outer Banks Protection Act, which included "moratorium language" for North Carolina offshore areas.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) summarizes the history the OCS Lands Act and more, going back to the 1800's.

Marathon Oil sues the U.S. in 1997 over part of the OCS ban and certain leases it had been awarded in 1981 prior to the moratorium.

A 2000 update on OCS royalties, and more, by AGI.

A 2004 Geotimes article compares the way we manage OCS leasing and drilling with the way Norway does it, and goes into some of the root causes for our current ban (environmental, primarily).

MMS lists some U.S. Offshore Milestones as of 2006.

Environment: a couple links to 2006 arguments by the Sierra Club for keeping the ban, including 2005 testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

A 2006 Power Point presentation by a coalition for maintaining the current OCS bans, has some history and definitions.

A 2006 letter from the County of Los Angeles opposes the ban.

A CSN News article from 2006, wherein Bush says yes to nuclear energy, quoted in part below:

More Nuclear Power, Bush Says; No Oil Drilling, Pelosi Insists
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
May 19, 2006
(CNSNews.com)

Politicians of all stripes agree that the United States would benefit from a reduced dependence on foreign oil. But that's where the agreement ends.

On Thursday, President George W. Bush said the nation "must start building nuclear power plants." He described them as a "key part of a clean, secure energy future."

Bush spoke on the same day that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned, "We cannot drill our way to energy independence."

June 18, 2008 news from Energy Daily.

June 18, 2008 news from Poynter Online.

The Congressional Record online only goes back to 1983, but some information possibly could be found there, if you know how to look for it. I found it a little cumbersome.

My Truck: Getting Gas

So, today I started out by getting gas in town prior to going to work. As you can see, the gas price is high. The $4.21 and 9 tenths shown is for 85 octane gas, which isn't even sold in most places. In most places, the lowest octane you can buy is 87 octane.

Although I have an old truck, as possibly you can tell from the picture, I go ahead and buy the 85 octane gas. The elevation in eastern Nevada is high; it's also high at the lake and everywhere in between. It's okay to assume that you can lower your octane rating by 1 for every 1000 feet in elevation gained over sea level, just don't immediately, then, cruise back to sea level.

My truck burns a little oil, and is almost at 190,000 miles. It's doing okay. It's a 1992 Chevy half ton with two spare tires in the back and a nice, though slightly rusty Caravan camper. Those are very good metal camper shells that are made in Reno. That's why blue sticker on the truck says, "Nevada's Best." Because it is.

As I maybe mentioned once before, it's really not a desert truck: it don't have no stinking AC. That's a bad paraphrase from - what, oh - Treasure of the Sierra Madre ("We don't need no stinking badges.") For some reason, I'm always thinking that quote is from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Badges remind me of the Test Site, and the Test Site reminds me of Vegas.

My non-desert truck has been up the Alcan 2 times (one of those times, it went part way up on the ferry from Prince Rupert to Skagway), and down the Alcan 2 times. I've been up the Alcan 3 times and down 2 times. The odd discrepancy was because I rode up the Alcan with my dad when he drove the U-Haul that was carrying all my stuff.

I highly recommend driving the Alcan to anyone who has at least two weeks to spare - and I highly recommend having at least one month to spare rather than two weeks. I'm looking forward to hearing about Wayfarer Scientista's journey down the Alcan this summer, and am looking forward to seeing her photos.

A bit about gasoline.

A bit more about the Alaska Highway.

Some Recent Energy News

Alaska again rejects Exxon's plan to drill Point Thompson on the North Slope.

Gasoline usage is going down!

Bush tells Congress to open ANWR to oil exploration.

Juneau is using a lot less electricity (and a lot more energy-efficient lightbulbs - and clothespins!) in the aftermath of recent avalanches, which knocked out power lines.

Also, see Clastic Detritus for some news and discussion about suspending the federal gasoline (fuel?) tax.

The Serpentosphere: An Update

One author of the abstract I quoted in an earlier post - the talk about The Serpentosphere given at last month's GSN meeting in Reno, NV - contacted me via comment on this blog. Martin Hovland pointed out his website, which has numerous references to the interconnections between mud volcanoes, salt diapirism, hydrothermal activity, and deep sources of hydrocarbons and some interesting links. He also referenced his EOS 2005 paper on the Chapopote asphalt volcano. At least one petroleum company is using ideas discussed at the March GSN to find oil. Andrew on Nonmagmatic volcanism:

There are less well-known types of volcanism that don't involve magma: mud volcanism is one. Mud volcanoes come in two types. On land, hundreds of them occur in areas where hydrocarbons are abundant, like Trinidad or Azerbaijan (see this one in the Image Gallery). Under the sea, thousands of them occur near subduction trenches, where serpentinite mud is abundant (about serpentinization). 

Another newly discovered form of volcanism involves asphalt. Asphalt flows were first documented on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in 2003. No one knows how many of these tar volcanoes there are.

A few more references: Supercritical water and Hydrothermal Chimneys 

Lost City hydrothermal field 

Asphalt Volcanism 

Mantle Serpentinization Rates 

Carbon Degassing from the Lithosphere [and upper mantle] 

Mud Volcano Tofu 

Mantle Wedge Water Contents 

MagmaChem 

Tornado Gold

Where in the West: Seward, AK

Wayfarer Scientista and "Alaska Al" both correctly pinpointed Alaska as the state in April's Where in the West. Alaska is a rather large, Pacific Rim state. Alaskan cities that can be driven to and that are on the edge of large bodies of water (the ocean and related bays and inlets) are limited in number. Alaska Al came close in his offline guess of Whittier and Girdwood, which are just north of the above Alaska-Airlines-assisted photo. The photo, which looks westward toward the setting sun, was taken in late February, 2007.

The Google Earth image above (click to enlarge) approximates the orientation, altitude, and angle of the airliner photo, and can be used to identify many features including Exit Glacier, a smallish glacier one can drive to from the Seward Highway: take Alaska Route 1 from Anchorage to Alaska Route 9 toward the town of Seward, and turn west onto the Exit Glacier Road just north of Seward. From the end of that road, a short walk will have you standing on the glacier. Exit Glacier is the eastern "exit" to the huge Harding Icefield. Other glaciers you can drive within walking distance of (in Alaska) are the Matanuska Glacier east of Palmer on the Glenn Highway, Alaska Route 1, and the Worthington Glacier just north-northeast of Valdez near Thompson Pass on the Richardson Highway, Alaska Route 4. There may be others glaciers you can drive to - besides glaciers near Juneau that can be driven to even though you can't drive to Juneau - but the Exit, Matanuska, and Worthington Glaciers are the ones I'm familiar with.

It's possible that the volcanoes Katmai and Augustine are visible in the photo, but clouds and probable mirage obscure the far distance.

Much of the terrain, islands, and inlets west of Resurrection Bay to a little west of McCarty fjord are part of Kenai Fjords National Park, which is accessible mostly by boat from the Gulf of Alaska, that large body of water to the south of the photo (left). Exit Glacier is the only part of the park that can be driven to.

"At the tip of the Kenai Peninsula lies a land where the ice age still lingers. In Kenai Fjords, glaciers, earthquakes, and ocean storms are the architects. Ice worms, bears and whales make their home in this land of constant change. Native Alutiiq used these resources to nurture a life entwined with the sea." -from Kenai Fjords Park webpage.

Although the coastline of the park was affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, wildlife viewing is still reported to be good - wildlife in the park includes mountain goats, moose, bears, wolverines, marmots, bald eagles, sea lions, harbor seals, porpoises, sea otters, horned and tufted puffins, kittiwakes, murres, seagulls, and several kinds of whales: humpback, killer, and minke. Fishing in the area is generally good to excellent - including halibut, Dolly Varden, salmon, rockfish, graylings, and lingcod.

At it Again

Well, Stan Keith is at it again, at least in making up new words that can be applied to either plate tectonics or mineral deposit formation. Unfortunately for all, the new word "Serpentosphere" can only be investigated, as far as I can find, by attending an upcoming meeting of the Geological Society of Nevada on Friday, March 21st in Reno, NV. Free beer is at 6:00 pm, dinner at 7:00, and the talk at 8:00. (Contact Kelly Parsons for reservations or more info, 775/323-3500, gsn@gsnv.org.) The talk is being authored also by Monte M. Swan, Martin Hovland, Hakon Rueslatten, and Hans Konrad Johnsen. Because the abstract has been published in a newsletter by the Geological Society of Nevada (GSN), I'll quote it below:

The Serpentosphere consists of an earth-wide nearly continuous layer (or spherical shell) of rock dominated by serpentine group minerals (serpentinite). The Serpentosphere is typically about two kilometers thick beneath ocean basins where it is mainly composed of lizardite. Beneath continents, the Serpentosphere is mainly composed of antigorite (alpine peridotite/serpentinite) and may be several kilometers thick. The base of the Serpentosphere coincides with the gravity and high-velocity seismically defined transition beneath both continents and ocean basins commonly referred to as the Moho. Beneath ocean basins and adjacent to spreading centers, oceanic Serpentosphere is continuously generated by the interactions of deep circulating marine composition water – partly in super-critical state –with harzburgitic peridotite in a process referred to as serpentinization. Conversion of the harzburgite to lizarditic serpentine under supercritical condition is texturally preservative and probably induces about 40% volume expansion. The volume expansion provides an excellent mechanism to expel and propel fluid products – including hydrocarbons – from the area of serpentinization to seep sites at the crust hydrosphere/atmosphere interface. A downward diffusing, super-critical serpentinization front is present beneath every ocean basin and is more active where it originally formed near oceanic ridge thermal anomalies. When ocean Serpentosphere is subducted beneath continental or oceanic crust areas, it converts to antigorite-dominated serpentinite rock (generally coincident with greenschist facies metamorphism). During flat subduction, the relatively lowdensity antigorite ‘floats’ and is underplated to the base of the continental crust at the Moho geophysical interface.

In effect, both oceanic and continental Serpentospheres reflect a deep ‘weathering’ process that consists of the interaction of deep crustal and oceanic, water-dominated fluids with the upper portion of a mainly harzburgitic peridotite at the top of the earth’s lithospheric mantle. The process is analogous to the formation of the pedosphere through interactions of the earth’s hydrosphere-atmosphere layer with the top of the earth’s lithospheric crustal layer. In this context, the Serpentosphere may be viewed as a thin membrane that separates water-absent, life-free abiogenetic processes in the mantle from water-present, life-related processes above the Serpentosphere in the oceanic crust.

The Serpentosphere has enormous and novel implications for four major geologic problems that are of current interest to the geologic and social community: the driving mechanism for plate tectonics, the origin of life, the origin of hydrocarbons, and contributions to global climate. A close relationship between trace elements in crude oils and serpentinite has been found. Migration of the serpentine-associated hydrocarbons to seep sites on the ocean floor and in subaqueous continental environments is essentially the base of the food chain for the biosphere and provides a nutrient and energy source for life in these environments. Heat, methane and carbon dioxide generated during the serpentinization reaction provide a major thermal and greenhouse effect to the earth’s hydrosphere-atmosphere system that is overlooked and underappreciated by the current global climate science. The ductility of the serpentine group minerals provides the tectonic “grease” that allows crustal plates to be able to slide and glide around on the earth’s crust at the Serpentosphere/Moho interface. Because Serpentosphere has been continuously generated since the beginning of geologic time it must be considered as one of the fundamental entities of our water-surfaced planet – the only water-planet we know of ...

Online references to this idea are scant, consisting of these two, and this interesting cartoon:

I won't analyze this Serpentosphere concept, and will just say that I find it interesting because it is related to flat subduction and the concept of hydrothermal hydrocarbons, evidence for which has been seen in the mercury deposits of the California Coast Ranges. Also, he is trying to promote a new model for oil exploration, which can't be knocked these days (unless it doesn't pan out). I won't be at the meeting, so will not be able to hear about this first hand.

Mining - A Bit of News

Things are looking fairly good in the mining industry - for companies, for new geologists, and for older, experienced geologists who aren't ready to retire yet (like me). Not only are the prices of metals up, but so are the prices of oil and coal. Consequently, geologists in the mining industry are finally making as much money in constant dollars as we were in the 1980's (no data on that last assertion, just some experience). There was a period of time after the price of gold went down in 1997 (and after the Bre-X scandal of 1997), that salaries stayed the same (in current dollars) and maybe even dropped a little. The AGI report compares geoscientist's 2005 salaries with 2004 salaries, and you can see a summary here. As was mentioned in Arizona Geology, the AGI data is really pretty old - out here in the mining fields of Nevada, salaries have increased considerably since 2004, and any geologist - good, bad, or ugly (or indifferent?) - is hard to find. In fact, maybe the name of the game should be exploring for geologists.

And it's also a good time to buy a gold mine in Arizona, I hear.

Update: A good summary of starting salaries for college graduates at Reporting on a Revolution, along with some information geology salaries in India and speculation about the future.

Mid-January: Coffee and Dinosaurs

The month is just about half over, and it's a little more than a week before I go back to work. MOH is in go mode, back to work after 5 days off.

Although the sun has been out for a few days, and the temperatures have risen daily to freezing or above, it was quite cold today, starting out at 1 degree F at 7:00 am. The sun stayed out all day, the temperature rose to at least 28 F, with the wind chill making it feel more like zero. So much for just wearing a fleece vest while shopping this afternoon.

My little shopping trip was inspired by the breaking of our coffee pot this morning. Smash! I dropped the glass pot on the old wooden floor of our tiny little kitchen. So I braved the cold and drove out to get a new one. After checking out the selection of coffee makers at the hardware store, I decided on a standard 12-cup Mr. Coffee version from the grocery store, a version slightly better than the Proctor-Silex pot I broke. This new pot is our third coffee maker since we moved here in August.

Craig Medred of adn.com wrote an interesting article about the "new" wool v. synthetics. In it, he describes how our synthetic fibers, like polar fleece, come from dinosaurs:

It came from dinosaurs and prehistoric plant life. Their accumulating detritus got buried and, eventually, this organic matter was put under enough pressure that it turned into that black ooze known as crude oil.

Petroleum engineers came along and pumped it out of the ground. Chemical engineers figured out how to break it down into individual hydrocarbon molecules. Eventually, someone figured out how to manipulate those molecules into fabrics.

This is, perhaps, an example of a classic geologic misconception - not that it really bothers me. I grew up a dinosaur buff, perhaps from the first time I saw the dinosaur bones at the Smithsonian Institute when I was five years old. In fact, I may have grown up, at least in my early years, believing the dinosaur-to-petroleum misconception, which was fostered somewhat by the Sinclair Oil gas stations , which had (and have) a dinosaur as a logo. Anyway, I think it's rather romantic to think that dinosaurs died and gave us the energy we use today, even thought it's really the environment that they lived in - marshes and fens and bogs - that turned into the petroleum we pump out of the ground.