a publication of the wyoming geological association · nucor set up its mills near ... she is...

PRESIDENTIAL PERSPECTIVE Mark Milliken

Let Me Introduce Your 2008 Board of Directors In his book entitled "Good to Great", author Jim Collins researched factors causing companies and organizations to rise from being just good, to great. When discussing the value of people to an organiza-tion, Collins relates the experience of the Nucor Steel Corporation. Nucor set up its mills near farm towns, away from traditional steel communities. Their business plan was to attract the "right" people, as opposed to "good" people. The "right" people would have a work ethic developed on the farm, meaning up at 4 AM to milk the cows, and plowing the lower 40 until dark. The business model was successful, and the company flourished. Following the advice of Jim Collins, I set out to find the right people for the 2008 WGA Board of Directors. The job wasn't hard, because I didn’t need to look much further than the 2007 Field Conference Committee. As a volunteer, the downside of doing good work is the specter of being tagged in the future as the "right" person. But these folks stepped forward, and WGA can be very grateful. President-elect: Craig Smith. Craig has more than 25 years’ experience as a registered professional geologist working in the energy and environmental fields. Much of this experience has been in support of oil and natural gas production. Specific areas of expertise include evaluation of environmental liabilities for mergers and acquisitions, produced water management, and environmental permitting and compliance. Craig holds a B.S. in Geology from Bradley University and is a registered professional geologist in seven states. Prior WGA service includes Second Vice President, Program Chairman, First Vice President, and Field Trip Chairman for the 2007 Fall Field Conference. As President-elect, Craig will also assume the General Chairmanship position of the 2008 WGA Field Conference Commit-tee. In this position, Craig is moving forward quickly. He has formed a Committee and is conducting monthly meetings. (continued on page 2)

Volume Q, No. 01 January 2008

A Pub l i ca t i on o f the Wyoming Geo log i ca l Assoc ia t i on

CONT CT Table of Contents

Field Conference 3

Awards 5

Abstracts 4

GSA Meeting Report 6

Affiliations 8

January 4 Herb Waterman, retired geologist: “The Yellowstone Institute”

January 11 John Robitaille or Bruce Hinchey, Petroleum Association of Wyoming: “Musings on the Past Year and What Does the Future Hold?”

January 15 (Tuesday) SPE Distinguished Lecturer Hani Qutob, Weatherford International Ltd.: “Underbalanced Drilling; Remedy for Formation Damage, Lost Circulation, and Other Related Conventional Drilling Problems”

January 25 Bill Savage, NITED, LLC: “Oil Recovery with CO2 Injection, a Layman’s Guide”

Meetings are held at the Casper Petroleum Club unless noted. A lunch buffet ($9.25) is served from 11:15 a.m. to noon.

Speaker’s presentation begins at noon. For questions or reservations call the WGA office at (307) 237-0027. Guests are always welcome.

January 2008 WGA Luncheon Meetings

Volume Q, No. 01 January 2008

CONTACT January 2008

Presidential Perspective (continued from front page)

First Vice President: Al Thompson. Al has a B.S. in Geology from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania (1987) and an M.S. in Geology from New Mexico State University (1991). He has his PG certification for Wyoming (#3549) and has been working as a consulting geologist since 2001. His recent experience has been as a geologist for Goolsby, Finley, and Associ-ates in Casper. He’s married to Jennifer and is the proud Daddy of Amber (age seven) and Joshua (age one and a half). Second Vice President: Al Fraser. Allan has a B.S. in Engineering Science from Penn State and was a Graduate Fellow of the National Science Foundation leading to a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins. He worked primarily at the Johns Hopkins University where he was chief engineer of the Submarine Technology Department at the Applied Physics Laboratory and part-time faculty the Medical School. Allan started a consulting business with his wife, Laurie Fletcher, in 1998, and still consults intermittently. He has six U.S. Patents. He moved to Casper less than a year ago, but has been a WGA member for several years. He has a 25-year amateur interest in paleontology and geology, including many field trips and volunteer work at the National Museum of Natural History. Secretary-Treasurer: Melissa Connely. Melissa has an AA degree in Education from Casper College, a BS in Geology from the University of Wyoming and a MS in Geology from Utah State University (where she was awarded the Outstanding Student Teacher of the Year). After graduation, she started working full time as a Geology Instructor at Casper College and advisor to the Casper College Geology Club. In 2006, she was awarded the Rosenthal Award for teaching excellence. In 2007, she was the first to become the Klaenhammer Earth Science Chair at Casper College. In the 2007/2008 academic year, she agreed to be the Interim Director for the Tate Museum while still teaching half time. She has been an officer of WGA for 3 years, 2 as the editor and 1 as the treasurer. She is also a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the Geologi-cal Society of America where she has presented posters and talks at their annual conferences. On a personal note, she is married to Brian Connely of the Natrona County Weed and Pest, has three kids and one dog. She also owns Stratigraphic rex, LLC, a paleontological consulting company serving the petroleum and extractive resource com-munity. To quote Melissa, "Yes, I am busy but I love what I do". Newsletter Editor: Laurie Fletcher. Laurie Fletcher has a B.S. from the University of Maryland and a M.S. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Engineering in Technical Management; she later taught for five years in that curriculum. She worked primarily at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as a data manager and technical editor, and at Solipsys Corporation, where she was the manager of Corporate Communications, Data Management, and Proposal Develop-ment. Laurie started a consulting business with her husband, Al Fraser, in 1998 and was active until returning to Casper in 2006. Like her husband, Laurie has been a member of WGA for several years and has enjoyed a lifelong interest in geology and paleontology. She is a member of the Tate Museum Advisory Board. Past President: James Brown. Jim is ex-Conoco and currently connected with Medicine Bow Resources. Jim has been asso-ciated with WGA for several decades. His historical perspective has been and will continue to be of great value to the Board and the Field Conference Committee in 2008. I look forward to working with Jim as a senior advisor to the Board. President: Mark Milliken. Having grown up on my parents' fruit ranch, I sympathize fully with the people Nucor looks for, those that spend their summers working dawn to dark. My B.S. and M.S. in geology are from Central Washington and Eastern Washington Universities respectively. I have worked in these positions: an engineering geologist with engineering firms on the west coast and in Alaska, a private consulting engineering geologist, a federal oil and gas leasing specialist, and an E&P geologist for a major oil company and at Elk Hills in California. Currently I am a Certified Petroleum Geologist employed by Navarro Research and Engineering in Casper. I wish to acknowledge Mary England, whose hard work and diligence forms the glue that keeps WGA together. WGA is very fortunate to have these folks step up in 2008. Although they are "good" people in every sense of the word, they more importantly the "right" people for WGA. Mark Milliken

CONTACT January 2008 CONTACT January 2008 Page 3


Herb Waterman, retired geologist: “The Yellowstone Institute” The Yellowstone Institute was started by the Yellowstone Association in the 1970s. The Institute is an educational program offering short course, 1 to 5 days long, taught by ex-perts in their respective fields. Courses are offered the year around. The Institute is head-quartered at the old Buffalo ranger station in the Lamar River valley. John Robitaille or Bruce Hinchey, Petroleum Association of Wyoming: “Musings on the Past Year and What Does the Future Hold?” Major U.S. projects as well as Rocky Mountain CO2 injection projects will be discussed. What are the reservoir qualities that make for a good CO2 injection project? Both immis-cible and miscible displacement processes will be discussed. What Powder River Basin pro-jects are in the works? Hani Qutob, Weatherford International Ltd.: “Underbalanced Drilling; Remedy for Formation Damage, Lost Circulation, and Other Related Conventional Drilling Problems” In almost every drilling operation, there is a potential source of damage to well productiv-ity, lost circulation, differential sticking, and other related conventional drilling problems. The key damage mechanisms are re-visited providing a broad overview on how they occur during various oilfield operations, and their effect on well productivity. Bill Savage, NITED, LLC: “Oil Recovery with CO2 Injection, a Layman’s Guide” Points of lecture and discussion will include major U.S. CO2 projects, available oil re-sources (from 2006 DOE study), Rocky Mountain CO2 injection projects, CO2 reservoir quality analysis, displacement processes, miscibility, operational issues, et al.

From: the Editor To: WGA Membership and other Contact Contributors I’m delighted to have been asked to be the editor of the Contact for the coming year, and, as with Judith before me, I promise to do my best to publish a newsletter that will give you the information you need and perhaps a bit more than you expect. Judith is a tough act to follow but I hope to bring her dedication and professionalism to the task. I also have timeliness as one of my most important goals; I want to have the newsletter in your mailboxes by the first of the month. In order to accomplish this goal, however, all articles submitted for inclusion MUST be sent in by the 15th of the month deadline. Where the printer has tighter deadlines, I’ll try to have this information to you a month in advance, if possible. This allows time for me to accumulate all articles, arrange the layout, and allow time for printing and mailing. If you miss the submission date, your submittal cannot make it into that month's Contact, but I will include it in the next issue. Thanks...and keep those articles coming in! Laurie Fletcher

LUNCHEON MEETING ABSTRACTS


AwardsAwards

Russell Hawley from the Tate Geologi-cal Museum was named by the WGA as the 2006 Best Speaker and is shown getting his award from WGA President, Jim Brown. The title of Russell’s award-winning talk was “Fossil Foot-prints” and it was delivered in Febru-ary, 2006.

WGA President, Jim Brown, is shown presenting Martha Horn with a WGA Life Membership. Life Memberships are given oc-casionally and only then to members who have distin-guished themselves over the course of many years. Hearty c o n g r a t u l a t i o n s t o Martha!

WGA Life Membership

WGA Best Speaker


Notes from GSA Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, Oct. 2007 Tom C. Anderson, WGA Past President

I attended the Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting in Denver in late October. Usu-ally industry guys like me don’t go and mingle with all the academic types, but there are often top-ics of mutual interest. It is my opinion that among the professors crowd, geologists have a more practical perspective, and especially an appreciation for the earth and natural processes over long periods of time. For those climate scientists trying to model some of those earth processes, they would do well to listen more to what geologists have to say. On this point, I attended a session entitled “The Cause of Global Warming—Are We Facing Global Catastrophe in the Coming Century?” The last three papers presented some interesting conclusions. The large meeting room was standing room only, and the papers received enthusiastic rounds of applause. I thought the WGA membership might be interested in those three abstracts: Geologic Evidence of Recurring Climate Cycles and Their Implications for the Cause of Global Warming and Climate Changes in the Coming Century: Easterbrook, Don J., Dept. of Geology, Western Washington Univ, Bellingham, WA 98225, [email protected]

Synchronous, inter-hemispheric, Holocene and late Pleistocene climate changes are recorded by glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios, CO2, and dust in ice cores, historic observations, and tree rings. Recurring cycles of global climate change are apparent in these records over the past several centuries and millennia and clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions raised atmospheric CO2 levels. In addition to showing that climate changes can occur without human CO2 emissions, past climate changes follow cyclic decadal patterns that can be traced for 400-1000 years.

The Earth is now near the end of a 30-year warm cycle, which coincidently corresponds to high at-mospheric CO2 levels. However, the preceding 30-year global cooling cycle (1945-1977) occurred despite the dramatic rise in CO2 emissions that began about 1945, and about half of the global

warming of the past century occurred before 1945. Because ~80% of man-made CO2 emissions occurred after 1945, increased atmospheric CO2 clearly did not control climate in either case.

Similar warming and cooling cycles that have occurred over the past 400 to 1000 years have implications for un-derstanding present-day global warm-ing. The only time that global warming coincided with high atmospheric CO2 was from 1977 to 2007, but the pre-sent warm cycle is just what would be expected from the pattern of past cy-cles. If the cyclic pattern continues, the present warm cycle should soon end and global cooling should begin and continue until about 2040. The suc-

ceeding warm period (2040-2070) may be somewhat warmer than the present one, but well below temperatures predicted by the IPCC. The projected cool cycle from 2070 to 2100 would cool cli-mates slightly, so by 2100, the temperature increase above the present would amount to only ~0.5 C (1° F), compared to as much as 6° C (10° F) predicted by the IPCC. (continued on page 7)

Notes from GSA Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, Oct. 2007 (continued) The predicted IPCC temperature increase by 2011 is 1° F greater than that predicted by extrapola-tion of the climatic cycles and nearly 2° F greater by 2030. These differences are greater than warming of the entire past century, so should be easily detectible. Thus, the next few years may tell us whether we're heading for the global catastrophe predicted by IPCC or minor warming pre-dicted by climate cycles.

Variations of Total Solar Irradiance and Their Implications for Climate Change: Willson, Richard, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, 12 Bahama Bend, Coronado, CA 92118, [email protected]

Contiguous Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) observations have been made by overlapping satellite ex-periments since 1978 during solar activity cycles 21 - 23. A TSI composite time series constructed from these results demonstrates a 0.04 percent per decade upward trend between the minima dur-ing cycles 21 to 23. As the next solar minimum approaches it appears the trend will be smaller be-tween solar cycles 21 and 24. Yet even a smaller trend, sustained over climate time scales, could be a significant climate forcing. While the sensitivity of climate change to TSI variation has yet to be established quantitatively, recent phenomenological modeling has shown that TSI variation could have provided a significant component of the climate change during the industrial era and was the driving force behind the medieval climate optimum and the ensuing little ice age.

Exaggeration of Human-Induced Global Warming Predictions: Gray, William M., Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, [email protected]

The role of anthropogenic CO2 as a causal mechanism of the observed global warming over the past 30 years and last century has been exaggerated. Most of this warming is due to natural climatic cycles driven by changes in the mean rate of the ocean's Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). The numerical GCM (Global Climate Modeling) simulations of the influence of human-induced greenhouse gases are flawed due to their inability to realistically model upper-level water vapor. Most GCMs are programmed to cause increases in upper-level water vapor as global precipitation increases. However, observations over the last 40-50 years indicate that there has been a small decrease in upper-level water vapor associated with increased precipitation and global warming. Evidence will be presented to show that global atmospheric temperature warming over the last 30 years (and the last century) is primarily due to natural changes in salinity-driven deep ocean circu-lation. Atmospheric and oceanic proxies for the mean rate of meridional ocean circulation (MOC) will be presented that link variations in the mean rate of MOC (with a multi-year lag) to periods of global warming and cooling.

A discussion of the Atlantic and global variations of tropical cyclone activities over the last 50 years will also be presented. Evidence does not support an anthropogenic component.



AffiliationsAffiliationsGeowives

Orkney Islands with Liz and Bart Rea

Tate Museum Preparations are underway for the March 15 Tate Museum Fundraiser:

“Rendezvous with the Tate”

This will be a rollicking revisiting of the early Wyoming rendezvous and more in-formation will be forthcoming in the February Contact.

Next meeting: January 8, noon Location: Paradise Valley Country Club

Co-Chairs: Inge Kutchins, Sue Moore Hostesses: Margie Madden, Liz King, Hi Curry, Robin Brom-ley, Jean Gillum

Shown meeting after a re-cent WGA meeting are Tate Museum Fundraising Com-mittee members (l-r): Ann Pfaff, Laurie Fletcher, Lynne Swank, and Barb Bentzin Montgomery.


WGA MEMBERSHIP ANNUAL APPLICATION January 1 to December 31

www.wyogeo.org

New Scholarship!

The Dues/Renewal form shows a new scholarship that will be funded through your donations. The WGA Geologist Memorial Scholarship has been established by the WGA Boards in memory of geologic friends and colleagues.

This scholarship will be available to any WGA Member, Student Member or their children who are pursuing a degree program in the Geosciences.

Wyoming Geological Association P.O. Box 545 • Casper, WY 82602 • (307) 237-0027 • Fax (307) 234-4048 • E-mail [email protected]

CONTACT Submission deadline

for February’s issue is Tuesday, January 15.

All ads must be prepaid. Send ad and payment to:

WGA PO Box 545,

Casper WY 82602 [email protected]

CONTACT ADVERTISING RATES

Full Page 7.5 x 9.5 $100/month $1000/year

1/2 Page 7.5 x 4.5 $50/month $500/year

1/4 Page 3.5 x 4.5 $25/month $250/year

Business Card 3.5 x 2 $10/month $100/year

Various Sizes

Advertising space is also available in the membership directory and the annual field conference guidebook. Discounts are available for advertising in all three publications.

$3.50 per column inch per month ($10 minimum)


Membership & Directory Gary Winter 265-8888 Nomenclature Committee Carl Babb 234-7376 Don Cardinal 237-4245 Gary Winter 265-8888 Paleontological Resources Brent Breithaupt 766-2646 Publicity & Environmental Issues Rémelle Burton Olson 683-3011 Scholarship Kent Sundell 266-4760 SPE Liaison Dave Chase 261-7685 U.W. Liaison Jim Steidtman 766-3386

2008 OFFICERS

President Mark Milliken 233-4825 [email protected] Navarro Research & Engineering President-Elect Craig Smith 232-8091 [email protected] Trihydro 1st Vice President Alan Thompson 266-3199 [email protected] Goolsby, Finley & Associates LLC 2nd Vice President Allan Fraser 265-2729 [email protected] Fraser Technical Consulting Secretary/Treasurer Melissa Connely 268–2017 [email protected] Casper College Editor Laurie Fletcher 259-5721 [email protected] Fraser Technical Consulting

Past President Jim Brown 577-0586 [email protected] Medicine Bow Resources, Inc.

2008 COMMITTEES

AAPG Delegates John Kerns 237-9399 Mike Kozimko 303-572-3550 Chris Mullen 265-7252 Advertising & Office Adminis-trator Mary England 237-0027 Continuing Education Ralph Specht 237-7891 Dance Martha Horn 234-7147 Field Conference 2007 General Chair Alan Thompson 266-3199 Guidebook 2007 Jean Lawlor 265-9199 Arnold Woods 234-3231 Library Dean Stilwell 261-7620

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage

PAID Casper, Wyoming

Permit No. 299

Wyoming Geological Association P.O. Box 545

Casper, Wyoming 82602 Website: www.wyogeo.org

Calendar of Events January 2008

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1918171615Qutob @ Luncheon

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1211Robitaille@ Luncheon

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54 Waterman@ Luncheon

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1918171615Qutob @ Luncheon

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1211Robitaille@ Luncheon

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54 Waterman@ Luncheon

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a publication of the wyoming geological association · nucor set up its mills near ... she is...

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