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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
It would not be untrue, though perhaps unwise, to say to a burly coal miner ‘your coal is full of holes’. Indeed, a fundamental property which makes coal such a special and unique material – and has implications for coal properties ranging from not just methane holding capacity but also activated carbon and liquefaction – […]
Cipher has been engaged to oversee the evaluation of gas in coal in an area near the town of Tete, Mozambique. An extensive drilling program is being undertaken to characterize the coal and organic sediments for gas content within the Moatize Formation (Permian). The coal-bearing formation is upwards of 800 m thick in some places with […]
As we travelled between Katowice and Krakow, the Polish translator switched effortlessly back and forth between English, Chinese and her native language. I can vouch that her English was impeccable and can only guess that her Chinese was too, based on the intensity of the exchange and the frequency of the erupting laughter. I confess […]
Arriving in Bandung at 11pm on an early February evening the first thing I noticed was the coolness. Of course I already knew that Bandung, being over 750 m above sea level, is much cooler than Jakarta. But I was travelling from Brisbane, Australia where the temperatures had been above 35ºC and often over 40ºC […]
Prof. Joan Esterle (and Chair of the Vale-UQ Coal Geoscience Program as well as being ‘godmother’ to my son Micah!) was presented with the Dorothy Hill Medal on the 27th of July. The award is given out by the Queensland Division of the Geological Society of Australia each year and this year it has gone […]
It looked like machines and the weather were conspiring against us. The last flight from Denver to Gillette, Wyoming was ‘temporarily’ delayed (which in airport speak means “quite possibly cancelled”) and then there was the weather. I had flown the previous day from Brisbane, Australia to Denver to meet the field trip participants at one […]