In March I had the pleasure of accompanying the PhD candidate Edafe Ominigbo (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Queensland University of Technology) to Kalimantan, which is the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. We were there to collect mafic rocks as part of his study. I know very little about igneous petrography (I […]
Colombia is an utterly magical place and the geology is awe-inspiring. If you haven’t visited yet, make a booking. Today. Especially if you are a geologist. We’ve recently published a paper* on the Late Cretaceous (possibly Paleocene) Guaduas Formation in the Eastern Cordillera Basin. The formation is consistently organic–rich and coal beds are common and […]
The speedboat skipped from wave to wave effortlessly; Tanjung Dewa was on our left and then it was gone. A head of us I could see the Senakin Peninsula, its dark forests tangled with cloud. The chill morning air made me smile. My three colleagues, Mr Mike Friederich, Prof Hendra Amijaya and Dr Ferian Anggara, […]
The Russian Far East has magical connotations. Perhaps no other place on Earth is so well known; yet so little visited. Most Westerners will be (or should be) enthralled by the word Siberia. The furthest part of Siberia is the Far East. Though remote, it nevertheless has had a tremendous amount of geological studies applied […]
The next morning we woke up in the Miocene. After two full days of living in the present, we found ourselves fossicking around in sediments that were 15 million years old. They say a lot can happen in an afternoon, and indeed a lot did happen in the previous 5 billion afternoons. The march of […]
Why does Indonesia have so much coal? This might be like asking why is the sky blue? – but, like that question, it is fundamental and few seem to have considered it. A new paper by Mike Friederich, Tim Moore and Romeo Flores (“A regional review and new insights into SE Asian Cenozoic coal-bearing sediments: […]
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 […]
Drilling has begun in South Sumatra and Cipher is there. We are working with local partners Sucofindo and Mantra Energy Services. Cipher is providing the expert management for gas desorption testing for an 11 well coalbed methane exploration program being conducted by Dart Energy Ltd along with their partners Medco Energy, P.T. Bukit Asam and […]