December 2003

Director Scott W. Tinker recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with five members of the White House staff as a representative of the National Research Council and as Chair of the Report on Natural Gas [click here for an image of the cover page]. Scott met with Dr. Kathie Olsen, Associate Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy; Dr. Sharon Hays, Deputy Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy; Phil Cooney, Chief of Staff, Council on Environmental Quality; and Dr. Gene Whitney, Science Policy Analyst in the Executive Office of the President. 12/18/03

The conference included field trips to Oxy’s North Hobbs Unit and the Amerada Hess Seminole gas-processing plant. Sue Hovorka stands in front of the Seminole plant. Producers in the Permian Basin, a mature petroleum province, are the world’s largest users of CO2 floods in the world. The 9th annual Permian Basin CO2 Conference was held in Midland, December 9–12. Bureau staff members Sue Hovorka and Sigrid Clift attended the conference, along with several hundred professionals from around the world interested in CO2 issues. The conference included a 1-day workshop on carbon management, and Sue gave a presentation on CO2-enhanced recovery monitoring and verification. PTTC Texas Region was one of the sponsors of this event. 12/17/03

Dr. Hovorka is in the news again. “Computer Simulation Brings Aquifer to Life—San Antonio Museum to be Home to Virtual Reality Tour” is the title of the Wednesday, December 17, 2004, Austin American Statesman article featuring Bureau researcher Susan Hovorka and the Bureau’s virtual reality simulation of groundwater flow in the Edwards aquifer. The simulation will become part of a new Water Resource Center at the Witte Museum in San Antonio. Click here to read the story. 12/17/03

Bureau researcher Sue Hovorka is cited in the Tuesday, December 9, 2003, edition of USA TODAY by staff writer Traci Watson in her article titled “Administration Eyes Burying Carbon Dioxide.” The article, which appears on page 3A of the newspaper, describes current tests to dispose of CO2 by injecting it into subsurface rock formations. Click here to read the article. 12/10/03

On December 4, 2003, Bureau researcher F. Jerry Lucia presented “Petrophysics and Stratigraphy of Sacroc and Cogdell Pennsylvanian Reservoirs, Horseshoe Atoll, Permian Basin, West Texas” to the Integrated Carbonate Reservoir Research group at ExxonMobil’s Upstream Research Company in Houston, Texas. 12/08/03

Senior Research Scientist Bob Loucks is the new President-Elect of the Gulf Coast Section Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists (GCSSEPM) for 2004-2005. 12/08/03

Nancy Ewert as the newest addition to the Bureau staff. Nancy is an Administrative Assistant and will support Associate Directors Jay Raney and Eric Potter. She has a B.S. in education from the University of North Texas and for five years owned her own first aid and safety supplies company. 12/03/03

Researcher Jim Gibeaut and the topographic image of Matagorda Island acquired by the Bureau’s Coastal Studies Group made the cover of the November issue of Geotimes, as well the geotimes.org front page. The journal features Jim’s article “Lidar: Mapping a Shoreline by Laser Light.” 12/01/03

The Bureau welcomes Dr. Tim Dooley as a new Post Doctoral Fellow working in the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory. Tim is a structural geologist and analog modeler, and comes to us from Royal Holloway University of London where he was a researcher in the Department of Geology’s Fault Dynamics Research Group. He has a Ph.D. in geology from the University of London and a B.S. degree (with honors) from the University of Dublin. 12/01/03