Black Smoker

A black smoker is a hydrothermal vent on the sea bed, often found around constructive plate margins.  Superheated water is erupted into very cold seawater causing dissolved sulphide minerals to be precipitated (thereby creating the 'smoke').  Finding ancient deposits that were formed this way can be very lucrative as they can be rich in metal ore minerals.  You can find out more by watching this YouTube video.

The Paradox of Plenty

It is a hidden secret of our increasing desire for and use of electronic gadgets that many of the minerals essential to their manufacture are both the product of, and the finance for, war.  

Mineral resources are distributed by geological accident rather than geopolitical convenience.  This can create the potential for enormous geological wealth in places that do not have the political and financial stability for their exploitation to benefit the communities in which they are located the 'Resource Curse'.  You may be familiar with the concept of 'Blood Diamonds' from the film, but less well known is how gold, tin, tungsten and coltan can also be produced in situations of conflict and terrorism.

Apple produce an annual report to detail the source of the mineral resources that go into their iPhones, iPads and Macs showing how many of their suppliers meet international standards of human rights and environmental protection.  It makes for interesting reading and it does how the importance of geological exploration to locate the resources we need in a wider variety of places.  Do you think about where the minerals in your gadgets started out as rocks in the ground?

Work experience opportunity

An opportunity for a week's work experience is being offered to Year 12 geology students who are intending to study geology at university level.  The placement will be during the week allocated for work experience in July.

If you are interested in this opportunity you should write a letter of application, addressed to Ms Bethan Gallimore setting out your previous experience in geology, your interests and future plans in the subject.  You should also consider the work that SRK do.

Application letters must be emailed to Mr Walsh by 3.15 on Friday 31st January.  The final decision about the placement will be made by the staff at SRK. 

If you have any questions, please speak to Mr Walsh.

SRK

The end of the rainbow?

The luck of the Irish may have struck!  Geologists working for the Geological Survey of Ireland and the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland have identified a gold deposit that may be worth £11,000,000,000.  The potential is huge, but so are the costs.  Should the Irish develop this resource and help to pay their debts?

A Green land?

Greenland is a strange place.  It has a population a little bit bigger than the population of Barry in an area over 100 times greater than that of Wales.  It is still linked to Denmark, relying on a large financial subsidy from the Danish government to pay for essential services which is being reduced as Greenland gradually becomes more independent.  This does mean that the Greenlanders will need an alternative source of income to replace the £378,345,000 that the Danes give each year (£6,712 for every Greenlander).

The only way that such a small population with such an inhospitable climate is going to make that amount of money is to exploit its natural resources.  This creates a huge dilemma for the people who live there.  Geologists from an Australian mining company, Tanbreez, have found a potentially huge deposit of rare earth minerals but the people who live around the site are conflicted.  The money and the jobs that the mine will bring will resolve many of the economic and social problems that remote communites suffer, however new social and environmental problems will be caused.

Do you think it's possible to balance the positive and negative impacts of this development?  The geology of Greenland means that there are plenty of geological resources in the rocks, this could be the first step in a long period of economic growth or the start of the destruction of communities.  

There is an alternative view of these resources here.

Subsiding away

Just outside the village of Foolow (yes there really is a place called that) in Derbyshire one of the consequences of old mining activity has been revealed in the landscape.  A 50 metre wide sinkhole has opened up with the subsidence of some old fluorite mines.  The limestone of the south of Derbyshire was heaviliy mineralised with hydrothermal veins of lead and copper ores and with fluorite (including the famous and rare variety of Blue John).  The legacy of this mining can still clearly be seen in the landscape and it continues to throw up surprising events such as this.  It does show the importance of engineering modern mines to prevent such problems in the future.

There clearly wasn't much going on in Derbyshire over the Christmas holidays though as the Police had to warn people to stay away as crowds were gathering to watch a big hole in the ground.

Half the UK

The investigation into shale gas continues with an intial assessment of the potential of Britain's geology for shale gas exploitation.  A report produced for the Department of Energy and Climate Change estimates that up to half of the UK could have suitable geology.  This isn't too much of a surprise, as shale is the most common sedimentary rock and hasn't featured as a strategiec resource for the country in the past.

The resource is there, the question remains whether the economics, energy security and environmental demands can all be made to balance.  What do you think?

A new source of energy

The American Geophysical Union conference continues to throw up exciting developments in geological research including the possibility of extracting hydrogen from olivine.  By speeding up the natural geochemical process of serpentinisation hydrogen can be liberated from olivine crystals giving a potential source of carbon-free energy.

All you need is a pressure cooker (to give a pressure 2,000 times that of the atmosphere and a few hundred degrees of heat) made with some diamonds and some ruby to speed up the reaction and you can make your own hydrogen.

This could make Iceland rich again.  Can you work out why?

The energy conundrum

There's no denying it, we all want and expect energy in abundance.  However as Ted Nield (editor of Geoscientist) put it "Everybody wants energy, as much of it as possible, and cheap. And nobody wants it to be generated - or its feedstocks extracted - by any method whatever, anywhere at all, and certainly not near where they live - unless they become rich in the process, in which case it’s fine, because they can move somewhere else."

Two stories have highlighted the dilemma that energy poses.  Planning permission for an open cast coal mine in the Valleys has been refused because of competing local interests.  Do we want the jobs and the energy security that this will bring or are we happy to import the coal that we all use and need from "somewhere else"?  The BBC's Environment Editor has summed it up quite succinctly - "Why is everyone so angry about generating electricity?"

As a society we need to accept the geological, georgaphical and scientific realities of energy generation because we simply cannot have it all. 

How do you think we should resolve these issues?

Poland or Coaland?

It is a complicated relationship that, to an extent, we share.  Poland relies on coal to generate its own electricity, as a major employer and as a source of export income (which is where we have some interest - the UK imported 549,900 tonnes of Polish coal in the first half of 2013).  However this isn't without cost - coal is an undeniably "dirty" fuel in terms of carbon dioxide, sulphur gases and particulates.  To the point where people in coal mining areas in Poland don't want the industry that they rely on - as I said it is a complicated relationship.

It isn't just the Poles who need to make decisions about our future sources of energy, we too are facing some serious choices in the short term to balance our energy security and independence with the need to protect the environment.  Whatever decisions are made, geologists will have to be involved in the science that must be the basis for any choice we make.

What do you think we should do?

An expensive piece of rock

A rare pink diamond has sold for £52,000,000 which, it has to be said, is quite a lot of money for soething that started out its existence as organic material on the sea bed.  A trip down a subduction zone and back again via a volcano turned some carbon into an object that is worth the price of 2 new schools or would pay over 1,600 teachers for a year.

Looking at the specimen close up shows that it is flawless and vivid pink in colour.  Perhaps that explain why someone would pay £4,362,416.11 per gramme, over 170,000 times more than gold.

Money grows on trees

Well almost....

Research on Eucalyptus trees in Australia has shown that the trees' leaves can contain a very small trace amount of gold if there is gold in the rocks below.  This isn't enough to extract useful quantities of the metal from the tree; far more usefully it can indicate the presence of gold in the rocks which may be worth investigating.  This gives geologists another tool with which to find resources, particularly ones lile gold that are found in such low concentrations.

It has been known for a long time that particular plants can indicate the geology under the surface, but this is the first time that these elements have been able to be located in the living tissue of the plants.

Thanks to Rosie for spotting this story.

Ozocerite

Ozocerite (or Earth Wax) is a naturally forming type of paraffin wax that is found in veins, similar to minerals.  It has been found in several places around the world, including Wales.  It is formed from the  evaporation of petroleum and is notable for its smell (the name means "stench wax" in Greek) though this is removed when it is processed.

It has been mined comercially in a few places in the past, though the only active mine now is in Turkey.  It has a number of applications including cosmetics like the lipstick shown above...

Before I receive any emails, there are different spellings for this word.  I have used the spelling from the DoG.

The big controversy

One of the most topical issues in geology at the moment is hydraulic fracturing of shale to extract hydrocarbons that are trapped in the sediment.  Shale is largely impermeable so gas and oil that has matured from organic material within the shale cannot migrate (flow) into a rock from where the gas and oil can be pumped.  The technique is used already to increase the recovery of oil from North Sea oil fields and also to make geothermal energy schemes work.

To make the rocks more permeable water is pumped into the shale at high pressure to break the rock to create pathways for oil and gas to flow out of the rock.  Ceramic beads or sand is pumped with the water to stop the fractures closing as illustrated here.  The water can lubricate pre-exisiting faults and cause earthquakes (though these might better be described as minor tremors).

The issue inspires passionate debate on both sides of the argument.  Organisations such as Greenpeace are concerned about both the direct and indirect environmental consequences of extracting hydrocarbons in this way.  The Government have endorsed the technique as a way of increasing our energy supply, thus decreasing the cost of energy and also to boost our energy security - we are currently dependent on buying gas from Qatar to keep our houses warm.

To see the science behind fracking, have a look at the British Geological Survey's You Tube channel.

The UK is not the only country to be trying to decide about the economic and environmental viability of fracking.

Do you think that we should frack for the gas that we need?

A strange business

As you may know I am not very impressed with gemstones; with the fuss,expense and particularly the violence that seems to accompany them.  However the development of a possibly ethical emerald business based in London but operating in Africa reveals some of the strangeness of the gem industry and some of its possibilities.  The oddest thing for me though, is how many people are swayed by the marketing of these shiny and sparkly bits of rock.

Mapping the elements

The British Geological Survey have beeen mapping the chemistry of Britain's geology using a technique called geochemical sampling.  By taking samples of soil, sediment and stream water elements from the bedrock can be measured and mapped.  The BGS have been doing this for 40 years and have just finished. 

The results from this research (called G-BASE) show an interesting pattern that does reveal some interesting patterns and could show the location of hidden geological resources.

The end for carbon capture?

 
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) could be a way for us to extract fossil fuels from rocks and to put the waste products back there, safely removed from our atmosphere.  One of the biggest supporters of this technology has been the Norwegian Government, though this is about to change.
 
Norway finds itself in a dilemma; its oil industry has made it one of the richest countries in the world yet the Norwegians take their environmental responsibilitiies seriously.  One way they have been addressing this is to invest in developing the technology needed to make CCS viable.  However, in the light of increased costs and delays and a general election, the project has been abandonded.  The geology of CCS does work and the engineering to support it could be developed, the question is whether the economics and political will are in place to make it happen.

Do you think that we should persevere with developing CCS?  More importantly, would you be willing to pay for it as part of your energy costs?

Skills, skills, skills

You may wonder why teachers keep going on about developing your skills all the time.  The reason is that they are important if you are going to be able to choose where you work in the future. It is your skills that give you more to "sell" to an employer than just your time. 

The skills that a geologist requires are very broad.  A geologist needs a good understanding of all aspects of science; they need to be able to interpret data from: specimens, graphs, maps, cross-sections, diagrams, photo-micrographs, satellite images, mathematical models and more.  They have to be numerate and literate as they have to interpret data and then communicate their interpretation to a variety of audiences.

If you can master these skills (by working hard and practising them) there are rewards out there.  There are skill shortages in several fields of geology at present such as in the North Sea Oil Field that are leading to higher wages being offered, though the importance of having a range of skills is apparent from the fallout from the drop in coal prices that is affecting parts of Australia.

How are you going to make sure that you have the skills to acheive your dreams?

A leap forward?

Norway's biggest oil company, Statoil, are developing an old gas field in an area 125 km form the Norwegian coast.  This doesn't seem to be a "leap forward" until we look at the technology they are using to exploit the resource.  The company have built a series of compressors to extract the gass from the hydrocarbon trap, compress it and pump it to a plant onshore, but these installations are sunk and placed on the sea bed - there is no platform at the sea surface and they are operated remotely.  This does give the possibility of exploiting hydrocarbon reserves in deep water or in places like the Arctic Ocean that are very challenging places to put conventional rigs or to develop smaller traps.

The controversy comes from the tension between the undoubted commercial benefit from extracting and selling the gas - Norway os one of the richest countries in the world because if geological resources like this - and the environmental impact of producing an using the hydrocarbons.  

It is a hugely impressive engineering achievement (and it does present on opportunity to further the development of carbon capture and storage) but is it worth the environmental cost?

Diamonds are forever?

As some of you know, I really don't like diamonds.  There are several reasons for this that I would be happy to share with anyone that asks me; but it seems that I am not alone in this.  The price of rubies and sapphires has increased more quickly than the price of diamonds over the last few years  indicating a rise in the demand for these precious gemstones.

Ruby and Sapphire are both varieties of a mineral largely made up of aluminium oxide called Corundum.  The different colours are caused by different trace elements of Chromium (which gives ruby its red colour) and Iron, Titanium, Magnesium or Copper (which give Sapphires their colour varieties).

Perhaps this change in demand is caused by fashion or by increasing numbers of women choosing their own jewellery (men tend to go for the "safe" option of diamond if they are choosing).  Regardless of the reason, the increasing price will lead to more geological exploration to discover new sources of these minerals.

BBC News story

In case you are wondering, my favourite decorative mineral has to be one that has a relatively low price (though it is useful as an ore of copper) but is beautiful with its botryoidal, banded shade of green. Can you find out what it is?