Feb Luncheon - Tim McMahon PhD, Bureau of Economic Geology

Abstract

There has been a lot of press about the US and the world moving away from fossil fuels, but often with little supporting data. This talk explores the patterns of fuel consumption in the US and the world, looking at what changes have occurred and why certain fuels are more important in some regions than others. The environmental impacts of coal consumption are considered, as well as the emissions impact of switching power plants from coal to natural gas. The last section looks at oil and natural gas production and resources, including the impact of oil production an LNG export capacity on natural gas prices.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Timothy McMahon spent over 25 years in the oil and gas industry, including 10 years with ConocoPhillips, mostly as an exploration geoscientist. He has worked on projects around the world, and lived in Canada, Norway, and Malaysia. After leaving ConocoPhillips, he founded Cutlass Exploration where he participated in onshore US exploration wells and provided geoscience consulting around play-based exploration, resource assessment and application of machine learning to geological problems. He joined the BEG in 2022 as the project manager and principal investigator for the Tight Oil Resource Assessment (TORA) consortium. He is currently also acting as the interim principal investigator for the State of Texas Advanced Resource Recovery (STARR) program. He received a BA in Geology from Rutgers University, an MS in Geology from New Mexico State University, and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of SIPES and an AAPG Certified Petroleum Geologist.

Questions? Contact Alex Blizzard, DGS President: alex.blizzard@spglobal.com