Syllabus GEOL 4320/6320 Petroleum Geology Fall 2011 – 12:30 to 1:45 Tu-Th – Room 142 GG – University of Georgia Instructor: L. Bruce Railsback 133/202 GG [email protected] 706-542-3453 Office Hours: Anytime except 8:00 am to 12:30 pm Tu-Th. Course web page: www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/4320main.html. The course schedule will be maintained on the course webpage, and many exercises, lecture presentations, and other important resources will be available from it. Textbook: The textbook is an electronic resource available through the UGA Libraries. It is Knut Bjørlykke’s Petroleum Geoscience, (Springer, 2010, 508 pp.) with the call number Ebook TN870.5. UGA Course Descrption: Geological understanding of petroleum, including its origin, its migration, the reservoir rocks in which it is found, the mechanisms by which it is trapped in the subsurface, the techniques by which it is found and extracted, and its geochemical and physical properties. UGA Course Objectives: By the end of this course, students should understand the current scientific understanding of: 1) the physical and chemical properties of petroleum, 2) the origin of petroleum, and 3) how petroleum comes to reside in the accumulations from which humans extract it; and they should know 1) how exploration for petroleum is conducted and 2) how wells are drilled and managed so as to extract petroleum from the Earth. Students should thus be prepared to enter the petroleum industry acquainted with the fundamentals of petroleum geology, and/or prepared to use geological data acquired in petroleum exploration and production. Performance in hands-on projects, in in-class presentations, and on examinations will evaluate their progress. UGA Honor Code statement: Every student must abide by UGA's academic honesty policy and procedures, which are collectively known as "A Culture of Honesty". UGA's student honor code requires of students that "I will be academically honest in all of my academic work and will not tolerate academic dishonesty of others." Further information can be found at www.uga.edu/honesty/. Students in this class are of course expected to abide by these policies, procedures, and code. Classroom etiquette: Class meetings are intended for lecture on and discussion of the subject matter, and for students to ask questions about that material. Students are strongly encouraged to ask questions and to remember that there are no stupid questions. To allow the students to hear all the lectures and participate in all the discussions for which they are paying, no private personal conversations can take place during class. Failure to adhere to this basic maxim of civilized behavior, or repeated disruption of the class by some other means, will result in removal from the class. Seating may be assigned as needed. Closing notebooks, putting on coats, and talking while the lecture or discussion ends are rude behaviors. Many students will still be trying to follow the lecture or discussion that they have paid to attend. Pagers and cellular telephones should be deactivated during class time to avoid disturbing students who are trying to listen to class activities. Make-up exams: Make-up exams are usually essay exams, because essay exams can be much more easily prepared on short notice. Exams can be made up in the documented event of illness, death in family, or jury duty. Car trouble, visits by friends and relatives, weddings, travel plans, and other exigencies beyond serious illness or death in family will not be treated as reasonable excuses for missing exams. The meeting to schedule a make-up exam typically takes place at the end of the next class meeting after the exam, and any student wishing to take the make-up exam must justify doing so at least two hours before that class meeting and must be present at that scheduling meeting unless absent for reasons that justify missing an exam.Determination of course score: % of course score Item (see below for more about each) Date Grads & Adv Ugrads Early Ugrads Quizzes See below 30 35 Lecture Exam Thursday, November 10, 2011 12:20-1:45 pm 15 25 Progress toward presentation See below 5 5 Field Presentation Last meetings of semester 10 10 Exercises See below 20 10 Presentation of exercise(s) See below 5 5 Final Exam Tuesday, December 13, 2011 Noon - 3 pm 15 10 All grades will be recorded as numbers, and each student's final course score will be calculated using the weightings shown above. Percentages used to divide letter course grades will be at or below the following values: A 92%, A- 90%, B+ 87%, B 83%, B- 80%, C+ 77%, C 73%, C- 70%, D+ 67%, D 63%, D- 60%. Railsback has never taught a course in which there was not a least one A, and there are usually several. Students wishing to opt in to the “Early Undergrad” grading scheme, which puts less emphasis on exercises, should inform the professor by email by August 25. Quizzes will be given at any time. Any particular quiz can cover any material covered in lecture prior to the day of that quiz. The total number of quizzes cannot be accurately predicted. Each student's smallest quiz grade will not be used in calculating that student's course score. A lecture exam on November 10 will examine students’ knowledge of material covered in lecture or in readings to that point. Use of computers, cell phones, and other communications or information-storage devices during that exam, or any quiz or exam, is prohibited. Field presentations: Each individual graduate student, and groups of undergraduate students, will give a presentation to the class characterizing a large oil or gas field. The presentation will include electronic illustrations using presentation software, such as Powerpoint. Each presentation will be accompanied by a one-page paper handout distributed to the class. The presentation and outline should include at least the field's name, location, date of discovery, reservoir type, age of reservoir, trap type, range of depths, and type of petroleum. Other useful information would include, but not be limited to, the type of seal, age and/or type of source, detailed nature of reservoirs, migration pathways, recoverably and in-place reserves, etc. Representative logs, cross-sections, and maps taken from publications will add much to a preparation. Preparation of a presentation will require a