Exploration and Production of Oil in Deep Water: A talk by Justin Revenaugh October 27, 2010

Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico accounts for roughly a third of domestic crude output. Most of that comes from shallow water wells developed over the course of decades. New wells, needed to continue that level of production into the future, are almost entirely in deep water. The move to deeper water required significant advances in exploration and in drilling, most of which has taken place in the last 10 to 15 years. This lecture will discuss the history of exploration and production in the Gulf, including the culture of oil companies, the offshore leasing process, the developing technologies and the difficulties of operating in very deep water.

Justin Revenaugh is a seismologist and a professor of Geology at the University of Minnesota. His research uses earthquake waves to image deep Earth structure. His tools are derived from techniques pioneered in the oil industry and designed to detect and characterize abrupt variations in material properties, examples of which include discontinuities associated with phase changes, scatterers created by faulting and jointing of the crust, and slab dregs near the core-mantle boundary. By imaging these small-scale structures, we learn about the larger questions of Earth's composition, state and dynamics.

Official Website: http://z.umn.edu/OilandWater