EOR as sequestration: Geoscience perspective

CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) has a development and operational history several decades longer than geologic sequestration of CO2 designed to benefit the atmosphere and provides much of the experience on which confidence in the newer technology is based. With modest increases in surveillance and accounting, future CO2 EOR using anthropogenic CO2 (CO2-A) captured to decrease atmospheric emissions can be used as part of a sequestration program.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Operation of a Public Geologic Core and Sample Repository in Houston, Texas

In the spring of 2002, the Department of Energy (DOE) allocated an initial 1-year grant to the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). This grant covered the operational expenses for one year of a world-class core and cuttings facility located in Houston, Texas, which was generously donated to BEG by BP America. The DOE investment totaled $300,000, which was matched by a$75,000 contribution from UT. These funds provided crucial support in the first year, greatly supplemented by BP's donation of $7.0 million in facilities and cash. Additionally, the DOE granted a one-month extension and provided$30,000 for the month of May 2003. A 5-year plan is underway to establish a permanent endowment to sustain the facility indefinitely, and progress is on track according to schedule. Named the Houston Research Center, this facility serves as an exemplary model of collaboration between the Federal government, universities, and private entities to achieve national objectives. This report outlines the activities supported by the initial DOE grant during the first 13 months of operation and offers insights into the facility's activities and requirements for its second year of operation.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Economic analysis for a national ultra-deepwater and unconventional oil and gas supply research fund

This study provides an analysis of future incremental Federal lands and U.S. oil and gas production, and its associated economic benefits, that could be achieved through the establishment of a supply research fund. The supply research fund is based on H.R. 6, Subtitle E - Fossil Energy, Part 1, Sec. 21501(b) and Part 3 - Ultra-deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum Resources, submitted to the 108th U.S. Congress. The legislation provides for the establishment of a supply research fund from a percentage of the amount of royalties, rents, and bonuses derived from Federal onshore and offshore oil and gas leases issued under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Mineral Leasing Act for each of fiscal years 2003 through 2010. This report is an update to a previous report, "Benefit/cost analysis of GRI's gas supply research initiative" (Kim and others, 2000), which contains an analysis of the benefits and costs of a gas supply research fund. The value of technology developed and advanced through the supply research fund was examined in terms of resulting incremental production. Incremental production was expected to be greatest among complex and new resource areas such as the deepwater offshore and unconventionals. Federal lands' incremental oil and gas production forecast by technological advancements achieved by the supply research fund during the period from 2003 through 2025 was calculated as 4,202 million bbl and 28.79 Tcf, respectively. The resulting incremental production and royalty revenue were $204,233 million and$28,749 million, respectively.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Operation of a Public Geologic Core and Sample Repository in Houstion, Texas

The Bureau of Economic Geology's Houston Research Center (HRC) is well established as a premier regional research center for geologic research serving not only Houston, but geoscientists from around Texas, the US, and even the world. As reported in the 2004-2005 technical progress report to the DOE, the HRC provides a state-of-the-art core viewing facility, two fully equipped conference rooms, and a comprehensive technical library, all available for public use. In addition, the HRC currently now houses over 600,000 boxes of rock material, and has space to hold approximately 300,000 more boxes. Use of the facility has remained strong during this fourth year of operation; the number of patrons averaged nearly 150 per month from June 1, to 2005 May 31, 2006. This usage is a combination of individuals describing core, groups of geoscientists holding seminars and workshops, and various industry and government-funded groups holding short courses, workshops, and seminars. These numbers are in addition to the numerous daily requests from patrons desiring to have rock material shipped offsite to their own offices. The BEG/HRC secured several substantial donations of rock materials and cash totaling approximately $2.2 million during the 2005-2006 operating period. All of these funds went directly into an endowment that will, when complete, endow the HRC in perpetuity. Specific details regarding the funds in the endowment are addressed in a table later in this report. Outreach during 2005 and 2006 included many technical presentations and several publications on the HRC. Several field trips to the facility were held for geoscience professionals and grade school students alike. Goals for the upcoming year include securing donations of rock material and cash to approach full funding of the HRC endowment. Thanks to donations totaling$2.2 million from Shea Homes (heritage Unocal rock material), Chevron and others this operating year, the HRC endowment now totals $8,015,621. A major project underway for the HRC in FY2007 is improvement of the existing online core/log database into a Geoinformatics-compatible, GIS-driven online system. Usage of the HRC has gone up every year and is now very respectable. This year we will strive to raise awareness of the HRC's 100,000-volume geoscience technical library. Our original business model targeted$10 million in endowment; after several years of operation we realize we require an $11 million endowment. We are ''on plan'' and need only$3 million to fully fund the endowment. To meet these goals in the 2006-2007 operating year will require DOE support for the fifth and final year. DOE support will allow for {approx}$600k in endowment growth and save using the fund for operation; lack of support will result in a net negative spread of up to$1 million, and set the plan way back. We recognize that DOE budgets for oil and gas research, against best efforts, have been cut substantially this year. Any support available for HRC operation, during continuing resolution or otherwise, would have a very positive impact on this critical final year of the original business plan

Germinating the 2050 Cis-Lunar Econosphere

In early 2013, the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Director and MSFC's Office of Strategic Analysis and Communications (OSAC) chartered a diverse team for a six-week "sprint" to speculate (in a disciplined manner) and paint (with broad brush strokes) a picture of how earth, space, and public/private entities might be operating and relating to each other...in the year 2100. Two 12-person groups of civil servants, one with members having 15 years or less of NASA experience and the other with more senior members, worked independently and then compared and integrated their conclusions. In 2014, the "Space 2100" team, with some new team members and different group boundaries, ran a longer sprint to a) develop more detailed estimates of the operations and economics of space activities in the vicinity of the Earth and Moon in the 2050 time frame, b) identify evolutionary steps and viable paths needed to make that a reality, and c) recommend actions to enable and invigorate those steps. This paper explores Space 2100's first two sprints and their projections of NASA's role in what will likely be a highly networked international space industry and cis-lunar infrastructure

Dark Stars and Boosted Dark Matter Annihilation Rates

Dark Stars (DS) may constitute the first phase of stellar evolution, powered by dark matter (DM) annihilation. We will investigate here the properties of DS assuming the DM particle has the required properties to explain the excess positron and elec- tron signals in the cosmic rays detected by the PAMELA and FERMI satellites. Any possible DM interpretation of these signals requires exotic DM candidates, with an- nihilation cross sections a few orders of magnitude higher than the canonical value required for correct thermal relic abundance for Weakly Interacting Dark Matter can- didates; additionally in most models the annihilation must be preferentially to lep- tons. Secondly, we study the dependence of DS properties on the concentration pa- rameter of the initial DM density profile of the halos where the first stars are formed. We restrict our study to the DM in the star due to simple (vs. extended) adiabatic contraction and minimal (vs. extended) capture; this simple study is sufficient to illustrate dependence on the cross section and concentration parameter. Our basic results are that the final stellar properties, once the star enters the main sequence, are always roughly the same, regardless of the value of boosted annihilation or concentration parameter in the range between c=2 and c=5: stellar mass ~ 1000M\odot, luminosity ~ 10^7 L\odot, lifetime ~ 10^6 yrs (for the minimal DM models considered here; additional DM would lead to more massive dark stars). However, the lifetime, final mass, and final luminosity of the DS show some dependence on boost factor and concentration parameter as discussed in the paper.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figure

A Consensus Map in Cultivated Hexaploid Oat Reveals Conserved Grass Synteny with Substantial Subgenome Rearrangement

Hexaploid oat ( L., 2 = 6 = 42) is a member of the Poaceae family and has a large genome (∼12.5 Gb) containing 21 chromosome pairs from three ancestral genomes. Physical rearrangements among parental genomes have hindered the development of linkage maps in this species. The objective of this work was to develop a single high-density consensus linkage map that is representative of the majority of commonly grown oat varieties. Data from a cDNA-derived single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array and genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) were collected from the progeny of 12 biparental recombinant inbred line populations derived from 19 parents representing oat germplasm cultivated primarily in North America. Linkage groups from all mapping populations were compared to identify 21 clusters of conserved collinearity. Linkage groups within each cluster were then merged into 21 consensus chromosomes, generating a framework consensus map of 7202 markers spanning 2843 cM. An additional 9678 markers were placed on this map with a lower degree of certainty. Assignment to physical chromosomes with high confidence was made for nine chromosomes. Comparison of homeologous regions among oat chromosomes and matches to orthologous regions of rice ( L.) reveal that the hexaploid oat genome has been highly rearranged relative to its ancestral diploid genomes as a result of frequent translocations among chromosomes. Heterogeneous chromosome rearrangements among populations were also evident, probably accounting for the failure of some linkage groups to match the consensus. This work contributes to a further understanding of the organization and evolution of hexaploid grass genomes

The Ninth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) presents the first spectroscopic data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This ninth data release (DR9) of the SDSS project includes 535,995 new galaxy spectra (median z=0.52), 102,100 new quasar spectra (median z=2.32), and 90,897 new stellar spectra, along with the data presented in previous data releases. These spectra were obtained with the new BOSS spectrograph and were taken between 2009 December and 2011 July. In addition, the stellar parameters pipeline, which determines radial velocities, surface temperatures, surface gravities, and metallicities of stars, has been updated and refined with improvements in temperature estimates for stars with T_eff<5000 K and in metallicity estimates for stars with [Fe/H]>-0.5. DR9 includes new stellar parameters for all stars presented in DR8, including stars from SDSS-I and II, as well as those observed as part of the SDSS-III Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration-2 (SEGUE-2). The astrometry error introduced in the DR8 imaging catalogs has been corrected in the DR9 data products. The next data release for SDSS-III will be in Summer 2013, which will present the first data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) along with another year of data from BOSS, followed by the final SDSS-III data release in December 2014.Comment: 9 figures; 2 tables. Submitted to ApJS. DR9 is available at http://www.sdss3.org/dr

The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i=19.9 over 10,000 square degrees to measure BAO to redshifts z<0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Lyman alpha forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g<22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15<z<3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Lyman alpha forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance D_A to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z=0.3 and z=0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Lyman alpha forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D_A(z) and H^{-1}(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z~2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A