LifeItself

I just attended an SPE workshop, "Oil and Gas Technology for a Net-Zero World – Defining Our Grand Challenges for the Next Decade."  Of the 60 people in the audience, I knew 1/3, some very well.  It makes sense, because I have been an SPE member for 40 years, and a Distinguished Member for 20 years.  Last year, I received an SPE EOR/IOR Pioneer Award for my work at Shell and UC Berkeley on the thermal enhanced oil recovery processes that involved foams, and their upscaling to field operations. This was nice, because Shell recognized me as one of their best reservoir engineers, and in 1985 I received an internal Shell Recognition Award for the same work. But I am not a mere oil & gas reservoir engineer.  First and foremost, I am a chemical engineer and physicist, who has thought rigorously about the sustainability of human civilization , ecology and thermodynamics of industrial agriculture and large biofuel systems, as well as about the overall gross and net prima...

I am very proud of our UT Austin geoscience students and will let them speak to you directly.- TWP Scott Baker is a senior majoring in petroleum engineering at UT Austin. He has worked two internships for Devon Energy and will work for them as a full-time reservoir engineer upon graduation.   In a New York Times op-ed article, Erle C. Ellis, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, states that overpopulation is not the problem we tend to believe it is. Ellis’ main argument is that the technology will always be ahead of the population growth. In other words, new technology always has and always will be the solution we need to live in a society with exponential population growth. There is one fundamental error with this reasoning. Ellis acknowledges that “populations must have their limits and must ultimately reach a balance with their environments.” I agree with this statement. However, I believe that the same argument is valid for technology itself....