The 2nd edition of “Coal and Coalbed Gas: Future Directions and Opportunities” is in production and should be out in September of 2023 – this year! As many of you know the first edition was published in 2014 by Dr Romeo Flores and the second edition is authored by Romeo again as well as Tim […]
Of all the particles in a sedimentary basin, organics are arguably the most insightful. Think about it: they tell you how hot things got, millions and millions of years ago, and that is both within the basin at depth but also at the surface when they were deposited; they tell you what plants were evolving; […]
No, not a dinosaur. Not an asteroid. But some kind of climatic condition that was none-to-good for organic material. For a very very long time. Over the last year, my colleagues Prof Jian Shen and Prof Marvin Moroeng from China University of Mining and Technology (Xuzhou, China) and University of Johannesburg (South Africa), respectively, and […]
It was Ron Stanton (U.S. Geological Survey) who instilled in me the importance of proper representative sampling and John C. Ferm (University of Kentucky)* who drove home the concept of variability. In understanding the character of coal beds, these two concepts should mess seamlessly together. Or so you’d think … As it turns out there […]
The Indonesian Archipelago is vast, diverse and exciting. The culture is as deep and varied as it’s geology and history. It is a region at the nexus, or on the edge if you will, of almost everything; and that includes hydrocarbon generation. Indonesia has been exploiting petroleum for almost two hundred years and coal mining […]
Considering the impact that coal has on the world, there are surprisingly few technical books dedicated to the subject. Romeo Flores, recently retired from the US Geological Survey (but still a Cipher Associate [see: https://www.ciphercoal.com/the-team/dr-romeo-m-flores/ ]), has gone some way to remedy this situation. His book “Coal and Coalbed Gas: Fueling the Future” has just […]