It was like jumping off the end of a pier into unknown depths with unknown dangers – but a quick calculation (in actuality lots of deep reflection) indicated that it was safe…-ish; nevertheless it was exhilarating. Thus, Cipher was born. In early September 2010 Cipher started trading and by late September we had our first […]
Something Wicked This Way Comes* – in the Lower Cretaceous
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 […]
Fire and Brimstone in the Cretaceous
The Hailaer Basin in Inner Mongolia, China has a lot of coal, mostly of Cretaceous age; some beds are over 40 m in thickness. Setting aside any of its economic uses, the scale of peat accumulation is phenomenal. The basin itself is tectonically dissected into coal fields ranging in size distribution from 20×80 km to 40×120 […]
Cipher wins tender for CBM consultancy services in Botswana, Africa
Tim Moore and Chris Nelson traveled for Cipher to South Africa and Botswana this month to begin work on a CBM play in Botswana. In May this year Cipher won a substantial contract to provide consulting services to Exxaro Resources, which is a large South African-based coal company. As is well known, the Karoo and […]