Dr Kaydy Pinetown and I just gave a workshop on methane – from its formation, to measurement, to in-ground assessment to fugitive emissions and the legislation governing that. We were at the 42nd Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP) in Beijing, China. TSOP is the premier international organisation that looks at all […]
Our group has just published a paper, with the research headed by Alex Wheeler, in Evolving Earth (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eve.2026.100156) on the palaeoecology of an area in Laurasia. This is the fourth paper on our efforts to unravel the paleoclimate, paleovegetation and paleoecology of the Early Cretaceous in the Central Asian region*. We still haven’t found any […]
Sign up now before it is overbooked! 4 September 2026 Join us at the 42nd Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology, Beijing, China (register here: https://tsop2026.tiemeeting.com/EN). This one-day workshop explores the fundamentals of measuring methane from resources to fugitive emissions. Methane is both a commercial source of energy but also a greenhouse gas […]
Colombia has spectacular landscapes, spectacular people and of course … spectacular geology! Since I first went to Colombia almost 10 years ago, I was impressed with its abundance of … well,… almost everything. But one of the abundances it doesn’t have so much of anymore (and it is getting less abundant each year) is natural […]
The control of fire is arguably mankind’s most important learned skill. Yet … …Yet, we humans are still at the mercy of fire (natural or otherwise), which, when uncontrolled can obliterate not just forests, but whatever gets in the way, such as houses, infrastructure and even whole towns and communities. So, we take notice. And […]
One of the nice things about not being a tourist in places like Mongolia (as an example) is that you get to see a much fuller cross section of the place you are visiting. There are those who take the ‘high-road’ by only taking the ‘low-road’ travel options (though unless they’ve walked there from home, […]
If you have not already, please check out the review of the book “Coal and Coalbed Methane: Future Directions and Opportunities (2nd Edition) by Romeo M. Flores and me. You can find the review here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coal.2025.104756 (International Journal of Coal Geology, v. 304, 104756). Prof Smith from Curtain University in Perth, Australia is one of […]
40th Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology Decoding the shift: Organics and Critical Minerals in Future Energy Everything is in Place! Abstracts are coming in and registrations are being made. Don’t miss out! This meeting is one of the most ambitious annual conferences to be undertaken by TSOP. If you want a truly […]
In March I had the pleasure of accompanying the PhD candidate Edafe Ominigbo (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Queensland University of Technology) to Kalimantan, which is the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. We were there to collect mafic rocks as part of his study. I know very little about igneous petrography (I […]
Decoding the shift: Organics and Critical Minerals in Future Energy ABSTRACTS DUE: 1 July 2024 It has been four decades since the first official TSOP meeting at Tyson’s Corner, Virginia (USA) in 1984. Although the aspiration was always for TSOP to be an internationally recognized professional organization, I think few of us could have imagined […]