Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center Students Experience the Bureau’s Geology First-Hand

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center for Business, Law, and Policy at The University of Texas at Austin offers a dynamic Energy Minor program designed to prepare students for leadership roles in the evolving energy sector. It’s a cross-disciplinary initiative that brings together UT’s McCombs School of Business, the School of Law, the Cockrell School of Engineering, and the Jackson School of Geosciences. The program focuses on the intersection of business, law, engineering, and policy in the energy industry. Participating students can pursue a minor in Energy Management and Leadership, which includes coursework, mentorship opportunities, and access to industry professionals.

Recently, the Bureau of Economic Geology hosted a group of undergraduate students from the program and presented a workshop designed to leave a lasting impression on the importance of geology and the subsurface—especially as these students prepare to become future leaders in the energy sector. While most of the students who visited may not become geoscientists, many will go on to work in the energy industry and hold influential leadership roles. The goal of the visit was to help them to understand why the subsurface matters.

The workshop in which they participated featured core samples, and connected those rocks to key milestones in energy history in the United States. Presentations by Bureau researchers included “Why Rocks Matter” (an introduction to core data by Kelly Hattori); “The Barnett and the Shale Gas Revolution” (presented by Bob Loucks); “Eagle Ford Shale, South Texas: A Proving Ground for the U.S. Shale Oil Revolution” (presented by Lucy Ko); and “Subsurface Salt: Natural Seals and Storage for Past, Current, and Future Energy Systems” (presented by Ander Martínez-Doñate). The students were engaged and attentive, and were very appreciative of their hosts.

Bureau Director Lorena Moscardelli noted, “It’s important to reach these students early. You can move infrastructure, lend and borrow capital, and write or revise legislation—but you can’t move the subsurface!”