Coming soon: A new USGS resource assessment of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area that may hold the key to Alaska's exploration future.

A potentially controversial paper proposes a new category for oil and gas evaluation: “Viable resource."

3W EXPLORER Exclusive:
DOE Report in the Rocky Mountains reveals the challenges of accessing petroleum resources.

Geoscience projects and targets that are unconventional today can become commonplace tomorrow -- but only with a commitment by industry and government to research.

BULLETIN makes room for more science.

ANNUAL MEETING 2002 Recap

Awards
Photos
Speakers

Spring Student Expo Brings in 126 Companies

Coal Gas Big on EMD Agenda

STANDING ARTICLES:

President's Column:
Cairo Charmed, Cairo Bound

Business Side of Geology:
Bad Manners Are Bad for Business

Geophysical Corner:
Spectral Decomp Applied to 3-D

International Bulletin Board:
Sponsor Program a GEM of an Idea

What's the state of the geophysical industry today? Still breathing, but still hurting.

The geophysical industry is facing a host of environmental and safety issues that threaten all seismic operations.

Deeper targets? Deeper water? Maturing fields? Whatever the challenge, the geophysical technology needed for the most complex and demanding scenarios seems at hand.

And now, for something completely different: Seismic is being used in Belize to help archaeologists reconstruct the events that led to the disappearance of the Maya.

A view looking west along Alaska's Atigun River in Atigun Gorge, about 130 miles south of Prudhoe Bay and 100 miles southeast of Umiat (nearest corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska). The dark-colored slope behind the helicopter exposes the contact between shales of the Torok Formation (low on the slope) and overlying sandstones of the Fortress Mountain Formation, both Lower Cretaceous in age. The sandstones here are shallow marine to deltaic facies, and are lightly oil stained. Dark-colored rocks along river are intensely deformed Permian to Lower Cretaceous rocks of the Siksikpuk and Okpikruak formations. Mountains in background are mostly carbonates of Carboniferous-aged Lisburne Group. These exposures provide important constraints on stratigraphic and structural relations that are important to assessment of oil and gas potential in the NPR-A.

Photo by Dave Houseknecht.