The 2nd edition of “Coal and Coalbed Gas: Future Directions and Opportunities” is in production and should be out in September of 2023 – this year! As many of you know the first edition was published in 2014 by Dr Romeo Flores and the second edition is authored by Romeo again as well as Tim […]
Over the last seven months Cipher’s Experts have been working with Mongolian colleagues to assess the coalbed gas resources of Mongolia. The report was signed off just before the 30th of June, on time and to budget. The Australian Mongolian Extractives Program (AMEP – phase 2)/Australian Aid funded the work and our Mongolian team consisted […]
Culturally, it’s not Asia. And it’s not Europe. Although they were under the influence of Russia for decades, its definitely not that either. Mongolia is quite simply unique. I’ve been here for the last two weeks giving some workshops and taking some trips into the countryside; most notably west of Ulaanbaatar, into the center of […]
Cipher Consulting has a few projects in Mongolia and because of this took part in the first annual donor coordination meeting, held virtually and hosted by the Australian Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The event took place on March 29, 2022, featuring two key presentations on the subject matter by the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority […]
The beautiful thing about data is its uncertainty. That is, in a world where sometimes it is hard to know what is real and what is…well, lets say not real, with data you can actually characterize how certain you are about such and such. After a couple of decades of working in coal seam gas […]
When someone says ‘hydrogen’, what do you think of? I think BOOM! I wasn’t sure why I thought that until I looked up the range at which hydrogen can explode compared to methane. And indeed hydrogen is more flammable. Methane’s range of concentration in which it can explode is between 5 and 15% (so lower […]
“Without data, you are just another asshole with an opinion”, said John Ferm standing at the blackboard, chalk in one hand and a cigar in the other with smoke swirling around his head (this was, after all, 1985). It’s a phrase John (my MSc and PhD advisor) would often use when we, his students, started […]
It was like jumping off the end of a pier into unknown depths with unknown dangers – but a quick calculation (in actuality lots of deep reflection) indicated that it was safe…-ish; nevertheless it was exhilarating. Thus, Cipher was born. In early September 2010 Cipher started trading and by late September we had our first […]
Sadly, not The Clash, but something a bit more subdued. Over the last four years I have been acting as an expert witness for an international arbitration. My client is a large Asian oil and gas company who are the respondents in the action. After the decision in early 2018 from the tribunal identifying the damages, […]
The second year of this field trip saw us going up the southern Queensland coast looking at both the modern and ancient geological environments. The students are first and second years, from the School of Resources and Geosciences from Xuzhou, China and come for 15 days. In almost all cases this is the first time […]