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 […]
Cipher would like to welcome three new Associates to the team: Mr Ryan Morris, Mr Peter Roles and Mr Tan Ee. All three have extensive experience in the petroleum business, and the addition of their skills significantly widens the scope of Cipher’s expertise to include hydrogeology (Ryan Morris), conventional and unconventional petroleum engineering (Peter Roles) […]
China is a big place. The resources are large. The scale of everything is outsized. And as has been well documented, its up and coming middle class is energy depended. Commendably, the Chinese government has prioritized renewable energy and it seems they are well on the way to leading the world. Still, conventional energy is […]
If your idea of heaven is noodles, then when you die, you will come to Taiyuan. In case you didn’t know, the Shanxi Province in China is the noodle capital of the world and the capital of Shanxi is the city of Taiyuan (at least in terms of noodles). I had come to Taiyuan to […]
It was springtime in Xuzhou and the flowers were blossoming. Although not a small city by any measure – other than in China – the 8.5 million people seem a quieter type than elsewhere. Populated by parks, wide streets and relatively low buildings, the overall feeling one gets of Xuzhou is balance, politeness and a […]
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 […]
The lyrics of Neil Young* were going through my head as we trundled down the decline of a mineshaft at 3000 m elevation. We had left the brilliant blue skies of the Andean cordillera moments before, plunging into the darkened tunnel; we were headed for the Guaduas Formation (Late Cretaceous – Paleocene), which contains some […]
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 […]
We are nearly there! – The 32nd Annual Conference of The Society for Organic Petrology will be held in a few days time. The Organising Committee wishes to thank all the speakers and poster presenters for all their hard work and for all attending participants for their presence. We know that during this current economic […]
Internationally refereed articles on coalbed methane in Indonesia are rare. However, an article addressing heat flow effects on a coalbed methane reservoir in East Kalimantan, Indonesia has recently been published*. You may well ask, so what? Indeed a good question; here is the context. There are many of us who have been sitting at the […]