Deep Sea Mining, Early Indus Farmers, Indus Basin Dams

Some readings over the past couple of weeks- 

1) The Promise and Risks of Deep-Sea Mining: In late 1988 I visited the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa for a job interview. The buzz in the marine geology labs was about the discovery of manganese nodules on the deep sea bed of the Indian continental shelf. At that time, exploration had just started and the technology was not advanced enough to mine these lumps which contained, besides manganese, other metals like cobalt, nickel, and copper.  The nodule deposits were being looked at as a future resource. 

That day is upon us. Many countries have expressed an interest in mining the deep-sea bed for metals required for the transition away from fossil fuels. Metals concentration of Mn, Co, Ni, and Cu also occurs around hydrothermal vents. Not much is known about the ecology and biodiversity of these remote sites. Most experts feel that mining will result in extensive damage to the sea floor ecosystems and to life in the surrounding water column.

Daisy Chung, Ernest Scheyder, and Clare Trainor describe what is at stake in this beautifully illustrated article published by Reuters. 

2) Indus Valley farming started later than thought, radiocarbon study shows:  Mehrgarh, in Balochistan, Pakistan, was thought to be South Asia's oldest farming settlement going back to around 8000 B.C. New carbon dating of grains using a more robust dating method called Accelerator Mass Spectrometry has revised the date of earliest occupation to around 5200 B.C. Subhra Priyadarshini writes about the implications of this new date with regards to the origins and spread of farming in South Asia and cultural linkages of Mehrgarh to the Indus Civilization. 

3) Water Towers of the Indus Basin: Last month's heinous terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, India, has refocused attention on the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan and the many hydropower projects that India is planning on the Indus and the Chenab rivers. These rivers provide water security to vast areas of India and Pakistan. 

Despite the importance of these rivers to local livelihoods, hydropower projects are being built without due  consideration being given to the impact dam construction and climate change will have on the Himalaya ecosystem..  

Parineeta Dandekar (story), Abhay Kanvinde (photos), and Michelle Hooper (story map) meticulously document the completed and planned hydropower projects along the Chenab river and point to the lapses in science and environmental governance that have taken place during the project planning process.

Oil Hunters Of India

At Independence in 1947, India had just a few operational oil wells situated in the northeastern region of the country. Most of the subcontinent's sedimentary basins remained unexplored for their hydrocarbon potential. The Oil Hunter: Journey of a Geologist for India's Oil Exploration by Dr. Shreekrishna Deshpande is a personal recollection of the immense effort undertaken by Indian geologists to re imagine these basins as hydrocarbon source and reservoir rocks. It is the story of the development of India's oil industry told with unconcealed pride.

Russia, France, and the U.S. offered personnel and technical help along the way, but the lion's share of the credit goes to geologists of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation for their perseverance and resilience in the face of immense challenges.

Dr. Deshpande joined the ONGC in its early days in 1961 and describes vividly his field experience in remote locales all across the country, from scorching Kutch, to steep Himalaya terrain, to facing personal danger during an insurgency in Assam. There were inevitable career challenges along the way due to changing institutional structure and unrealistic political expectations. Their impact on company work culture and productivity is described in honest and direct language.

One of my favorite passages comes towards the end of the book where he explains the divergence between geologists and management in their basic understanding of exploration and discovery.

"Subsurface discoveries of oil reserves cannot be projected with certainty. The inputs to the discoveries are always deterministic, but the result is never so, and there is a strong factor of probability. Exploration efforts are to reduce the risk factor and increase the probability of discovery. Methods for direct detection of  hydrocarbons from the surface, are  yet to be evolved. This contrasts with any other industry, where the output is more predictable and proportionate to the input. 

.... As a simplistic approach the management decides the cost of discovery of one tonne of oil by dividing the amount of discovered oil by the expenditure met. It is expected by them that similar expenditure should proportionately result in additional discoveries.

When a sedimentary basin turns old and mature, the addition to the existing stock of subsurface oil becomes increasingly difficult. Non-geoscientists then blame geologists for such uncertainty. Only the high profitability in the oil industry is visible; its probabilistic nature and the risks involved are not so obvious. The stochastic nature of oil discoveries is not appreciated by non-explorationists". 

My one complaint about this book is that there is very little geology in it! Dr. Deshpande describes the geology work he and others undertook in very broad strokes. I felt that a few examples of how specific types of geologic data is useful for petroleum exploration would be illuminating for the non specialist reader. 

Let me give an example. Early in his career he is sent to Osmania University, Hyderabad, to analyze some sedimentary rock samples using Differential Thermal Analysis. He simply mentions that the results were used by ONGC in their exploration efforts, but how so? DTA is a way to understand whether the sedimentary rock was baked during burial to temperatures that are conducive for hydrocarbon formation. 

Another example, and one that involves his specialization, could have been a brief passage describing his work on limestones. What is a carbonate sedimentologist looking for in these rocks? The main reservoir of Mumbai High, India's biggest oilfield, are Miocene age limestone beds which were deposited repeatedly during phases of oscillating sea level. Among other things, exploration geologists want to know how open spaces or porosity in these rocks has evolved over time and whether its occurrence can be predicted throughout the sedimentary section. There was a geological detective story waiting to be told there. 

But these are mere quibbles. Overall, this is a very readable account of the productive and remarkable career of a pioneer exploration geologist of India.  Popular accounts of Indian geology and industry are rare. Recently, Himalaya geology expert Dr. Om N. Bhargava released his memoir, Travails and Ecstasy of a Geologist Addicted to the Himalaya, on his experiences of working in the Himalaya. Indian earth scientists are beginning to share the good work they have done with a more general audience, bringing a much needed familiarity with a lesser appreciated but critical field of study. 

Deep Sea Mining, Indian Ocean, Infectious Diseases

Some readings for you:

1) Mining the bottom of the sea: The deep sea bed is considered the last frontier on earth for mining. Large patches of the sea bed are littered with metallic lumps or nodules rich in manganese, cobalt, zinc, and nickel. These elements are considered vital for powering the world's green economy. Nauru, a tiny Pacific Ocean island nation situated northeast of Papau New Guinea, along with a Canadian mining company, wants to start mining a region of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Scientists warn that a hurried push to mine the deep ocean bed will result in an irreversible loss to biodiversity, ecologic functioning, and ocean health. Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the complex legal and regulatory issues and conflicts of interest related to international deep sea mining.

As things stand in June 2024, a deep sea mining code is still being decided by the International Sea Bed Authority. Rohini Krishnamurthy of Down to Earth has the latest news on the progress made on this issue. Negotiations are hampered by a lack of basic science and divergence of views between member states.

2) Indian Ocean headed for a near-permanent state of marine heat wave:  Rapid fossil fuel emissions over the past century or so has changed the earth's energy balance. More energy is now coming in than is being radiated out to space. More than 90% of this excess energy is ending up in the ocean as heat. As a result, the world's oceans are warming up. The Indian Ocean is warming rapidly too. Recent studies have found that it may be heading towards a scary sounding situation known as 'permanent heatwave state' where the sea surface temperatures exceed a threshold value for 220-250 days a year.

Environment and climate journalist Nidhi Jamwal summarizes the findings of this research and a new book titled The Indian Ocean and its Role in the Global Climate System. The consequences are far reaching, impacting tropical cyclones, biodiversity, and fisher folk livelihood.

3) Probing the pathogens that afflicted ancient humanity: Pathogens and humans have been co-evolving for millennia. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks charts out the history of some of the common infectious diseases afflicting humanity. Infection patterns are not random. Rather, they follow networks of transmission shaped by ecology and culture. Very illuminating essay!

Links: Early Life, Critical Minerals, Net Zero Emissions

Some interesting readings over the past couple of weeks.

1) In a Fierce Desert, Microbe ‘Crusts’ Show How Life Tamed the Land. Zack Savitsky describes a fascinating research program underway to study microbial life in the fierce Atacama Desert in Chile. These organic communities are called 'grit crust'. They coat pebbles and large sand grains on the desert floor. A closer examination has showed that they are composed of hundreds of species of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, along with lichen combinations. These microbes play an important role in the biogeochemical fixation and cycling of elements and over millennia break down rock and enrich the soil in nutrients. They also give scientists a glimpse on how life may have first colonized land, perhaps as early as the Archean. 

2) Digging into India’s critical minerals dash. Recently, the Indian Ministry of Mines released the Critical Minerals for India report. India has also approved commercial mining for minerals containing the following elements —lithium, beryllium, titanium, niobium, tantalum and zirconium. These elements are raw materials for magnets used in wind turbines and EV motors. M Rajshekhar writes about the geological distribution of these elements and global supply chains, pointing out the challenges India faces in procuring a reliable supply of these materials necessary for its energy transition away from fossil fuels. 

3) Explainer: Will global warming ‘stop’ as soon as net-zero emissions are reached? Even if we stop emitting CO2 today, we are locked into hundreds of years of warming because of past emissions. I too have uttered these words, but it turns out that I, and many others, have been conflating two separate scenarios: constant concentrations versus zero emissions. Zeke Hausfather clarifies what these two different situations mean and how they will differently impact CO2 levels and future warming. 

Net zero CO2 scenario will very quickly stabilize temperatures or even slightly cool the earth, but that will also depend on emissions of  other confounding variables like aerosols and other greenhouse gases. Aerosols by blocking sun's energy have a cooling effect. On the other hand, achieving net zero too far in the future might still result in warming due to the feedback effects of other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide. Good explainer!

Kolar Gold Field

Geology and Livelihoods #19

I came across this excellent documentary on the Kolar Gold Field via Twitter. The film is directed by Basav Biradar and produced by Sahapedia.

Email subscribers who are unable to see the embedded video can watch it here- In Search of Gold.

Like many established mining towns, Kolar too saw generations of the same family work in the mines. Son followed father into the dark shafts. Mining provided employment, but it was dangerous back breaking work. The documentary highlights the lives of workers and their struggle for better work conditions. 

Kolar gold is late Archaean in age with mineralization taking place between 2700-2500 million years ago. There are two types of deposits. There is a "stratiform sulphide type", so called because the gold bodies are contained within iron sulphide rich volcanic and sedimentary layers. These deposits formed on the sea floor contemporaneous with volcanism and sedimentation. The second type is a hydrothermal deposit wherein mineralizing fluids mobilized and precipitated gold in veins along N-NE oriented fracture zones. This mineralization event occurred at a later stage when magmatism and metamorphism affected the host terrain.

But do watch this for the many personal stories of the people who worked the mines. 

Links: Indian Monsoon, Hominin Footprints, Copper Mining

 Few links from past few weeks:

1) Rethinking the Indian Monsoons - This is a cracking good talk on the Sandip Roy Show with Dr. Sulochana Gadgil, meteorologist and an authority on the Indian monsoons. Dr. Gadgil talks about her career researching the monsoons. She elegantly explains the common misconceptions about its origins, pointing out the changes in monsoon patterns that have taken place over the past couple of decades, the difficulties in constructing accurate computer models and in predicting the future behavior of this complex phenomenon. She also draws an intriguing connection between variation in rainfall and crop yields. Drought years have lower yields, but there are no commensurate gains with excessive rain. There is also some advice on making Indian agriculture more resilient to climate change. All this interesting science is mixed with some delightful vignettes of her personal life too. Dr. Sulochana Gadgil is married to the well known ecologist Dr. Madhav Gadgil.  Exceptional interview! 

2) Multiple Bipedal Hominin Species 3.6  million years ago- A good write up of a reassessment of long forgotten set of footprints, from Laetoli, Tanzania. Scientists made new casts, developed digital reconstructions and compared them with a range of creatures. It looks like besides the famous Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), another hominin species walking with a different gait coexisted in this area.

3) Copper Mining of the Future- Renewable energy infrastructure will require a lot of copper. Many times more than what we are mining now. Maybe, instead of blasting copper rich rock in giant open pit mines, we can suck out copper rich brines out of dormant volcanoes, like drilling for oil? Some speculation about this wild sounding idea. 

Readings: Erectus SE Asia, Devonian Fossil Forest, Archean Iron Formations

Some selected readings:

1) New dates of Homo erectus from Ngandong Java shows late surviving populations until 117,000 to 108,000 years ago. A short clean summary by Razib Khan on SE Asian hominin diversity.

Southeast Asia during the Eemian was a hominin paradise.

Paper: Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago.

2) Exquisite preservation of one of the earliest forests from the Mid Devonian ( ~385 million years ago) of New York containing a modern looking root system.

Paper - Mid-Devonian Archaeopteris Roots Signal Revolutionary Change in Earliest Fossil Forests.

Write up : The World’s Oldest Forest Has 385-Million-Year-Old Tree Roots.

3) Before around 2.3 billion years ago there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere. This was a time before the evolutionary invention of oxygenic photosynthesis wherein bacteria harvest electrons from H2O and release oxygen as a byproduct. Instead, during this time another photosynthesis pathway known as photoferrotrophy was prevalent. Here, bacteria use light and ferrous iron (Fe+2) to fix CO2 as biomass, releasing ferric iron (Fe+3) as byproduct. This ferric iron then accumulated to form large iron deposits. But these deposits lack organic matter. How to explain this if the iron was being produced from a biomass? Scientists point to a role of silica. At that time the oceans were saturated in free silica. Experimental work shows that in the presence of free silica cell surfaces repel iron hydroxides, thus creating a source of organic matter free iron deposits. This organic matter then was acted upon by methane producing microbes. The methane released kept the temperature of the earth warmer than it would have been under a dim early sun.

Fascinating story of the feedback between geology and evolution.

Photoferrotrophy, deposition of banded iron formations, and methane production in Archean oceans.

Links: Kimberlites, Ecosystem Recovery, Early Atmosphere, Carbonates

Some readings on assorted subjects.

Enigmatic origin of diamond-bearing rocks revealed

These are volcanic rocks which are the primary source of diamonds. Kimberlite magmas originate from deep in the earth's mantle. A recent geochemical survey has provided insights into the nature of that source. In India, the famous Panna diamonds are derived from the Majghawan Kimberlite which erupted about 1073 million years ago in the Proterozoic Vindhyan Basin.

Diversity decoupled from ecosystem function and resilience during mass extinction recovery

The mass extinction that took place 66 million years ago devastated both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. How long does post-extinction recovery take and exactly how do community structure and ecosystem functions reboot? A study using a 13 million year record of nannoplankton (unicellular protists) spanning the mass extinction has yielded some insights.

The study suggests that essential ecosystem functions such as geochemical cycling of nutrients was established by few hardy species very soon in the extinction aftermath. This recovery preceded by million of  years the reestablishment of species richness.

Did Bacterial Enzymes Cap the Oxygen in Early Earth’s Atmosphere?

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria that expelled oxygen evolved by 2.4 billion years ago. But oceanic and atmospheric oxygen levels remained quite low, about 10% of current levels, until about 400 million years ago.

The Pre-Salt Hydrocarbon Reservoirs of the South Atlantic

A superb example of how an understanding of the environments in which sediments are deposited helps petroleum exploration strategy.  Focus is on the unusual alkaline lake carbonate deposits of Brazil, formed during the Cretaceous when South America and Africa started splitting away from each other.

Porphyry Copper Deposits And Tectonic Plate Thickness

Just a follow up to my earlier post on porphyry copper deposits with an example from the Malanjkhand mines of Central India.

Nature Geoscience has a paper on the relationship between copper deposits and magmatic arc thickness. The full paper is behind a pay wall but the abstract is helpful enough:

Porphyry copper systems supply about 75% of the world’s copper. They form above subduction zones and are preferentially associated with calc-alkaline magmas. Such magmas result from continuous iron depletion during differentiation, in contrast to tholeiitic magmas that show initial iron enrichment during differentiation. The formation of calc-alkaline magmas is favoured by high water content and oxygen fugacity. These characteristics, as well as magmatic metal contents, are thought to be imparted in the mantle source by fluids of the subducted slab. Yet this process does not explain why porphyry copper systems preferentially occur in thicker arcs. Here I present a statistical assessment of more than 40,000 published geochemical analyses of magmatic rocks from 23 Quaternary-aged volcanic arcs worldwide. I find that magmas of thicker arcs are systematically more calc-alkaline and more depleted in copper than magmas of thinner arcs. This implies that the missing copper in the former accumulates as copper sulphides within or at the base of thicker arcs. Such copper accumulations are an essential step in forming porphyry systems. These results suggest that the thickness of the overriding plate provides a more important control on magma differentiation than the composition of the mantle source, and can explain the preferential association of porphyry copper systems with calc-alkaline magmas and thicker arcs.

Malanjkhand ores would have around 2.4 billion years ago been a copper enrichment at the base or at the deep levels of a magmatic arc system in a subduction zone setting as smaller cratonic blocks converged. The roots of this ancient magmatic arc mountain chain has since been exhumed due to subsequent tectonic movements and erosion to reveal its riches.

On The Source Of Orogenic Gold

Interesting!... In the Research Focus section of Geology Andrew G. Tomkins writes about  (open access) the current state of understanding on the sources of orogenic gold deposits. These are deposits formed in accretionary and collisional orogens where two tectonic plates are pushing against each other.

On the source of gold in such settings:

There are two plausible sources for the gold: (1) metamorphic rocks, from which fluids are generated as temperatures increase; and (2) felsic-intermediate magmas, which release fluids as they crystallize. Gold-bearing magmatic-hydrothermal deposits are enriched in many elements, including S, Cu, Mo, Sb, Bi, W, Pb, Zn, Te, Hg, As, and Ag (e.g., Goldfarb et al., 2005; Richards, 2009). Such deposits have been referred to as gold-plus deposits (e.g., Phillips, 2013), but most orogenic gold deposits fall into the alternative group of gold-only deposits, and are more enigmatic. These are characterized by elevated S and As, and have only minor enrichments in the other elements. The current dominant opinion is that metamorphic rocks are the source for these deposits (Goldfarb et al., 2005; Phillips and Powell, 2010). 

And on the major gold forming episodes in earth history, wherein several geological situations converged to create conditions suitable for orogenic gold deposition:

The vast majority of orogenic gold (excluding Witwatersrand, South Africa) is from three periods in geologic time: the Neoarchean (ca. 2700-2400 Ma), a second period in the Paleoproterozoic (ca. 2100-1800 Ma), and a third period from ca. 650 Ma continuing throughout the Phanerozoic (Goldfarb et al., 2001). Two explanations have been offered for this timing: (1) because orogenic gold deposit formation requires accretionary tectonics, the major periods of formation coincided with periods of continental growth (Goldfarb et al., 2001), and (2) during the Phanerozoic, increased ocean oxygenation facilitated uptake of gold in biogenic and diagenetic pyrite, which became the gold source during later accretion and metamorphism (Tomkins, 2013). The first explanation must be correct to some extent, but cannot explain the relative lack of gold during the formation of Rodinia; the second requires that gold can be sourced from carbonaceous metasedimentary rocks.

This open access commentary is written as an accompaniment to a paper by Gaboury 2013 in the same issue which identifies ethane C2H6 as a diagnostic geochemical tracer sourced from carbonaceous metasedimentary rocks, a common component in subduction accretionary settings.

In more local news from India, gold mining in the Kolar mines from Karnataka state is set to resume. The mines are located in the 2600 mya greenstone belts, which are composed of greenschist and lower amphibolite facies mafic and felsic volcanic rocks intruded by plutons. These Archean greenstone belts are thought to originate in either ocean spreading centers or island arc settings which later got accreted (plastered) on to continental nuclei during orogeny. The major metamorphic minerals are green colored chlorite and amphiboles, hence the name. Gold occurs in quartz veins and all the geological indicators point to them sourced from magmatic fluids derived predominantly from the crystallization of felsic magmas i.e. source (2) of the orogenic style deposits detailed in the article.

What A Porphyry Copper Ore Body Tells Us About How India Was Assembled

Nature Geoscience has some interesting articles on giant magmatic ore deposits  ( 1 , 2 ) with a focus on porphyry copper- molybdenum deposits which occur within magmatic arcs above subduction zones.

Ever since I found that copy of Tyrrell I've been reminiscing a bit about my early days in geology. These papers on copper ores started another chain of thought. We were preparing for our first year M.Sc. field trip which is really supposed to be a tour to learn field mapping. So the area selected is usually one where rock bodies are exposed clearly, have lateral continuity, where relations and contacts between geological units can be observed, basically an area where principles of field mapping are relatively easy to learn. As it happens our department at Pune University had gotten a big grant from ONGC to do a reconnaissance of Gondwana rift basin sediments of Carboniferous-Permian age just north of Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh. Our department chair organized our field trip to this area, reasoning that we could use this for training as well as contribute to the project.

Unfortunately, it was a disaster. The area was thickly forested, rock exposures limited to few stream cuttings and occasional road cuts, just not what you want for a rigorous training in mapping. The one bright spot was the copper mine we visited at Malanjkhand. This is an open pit mine.

Google Interactive Map of Malanjkhand Copper Mines:


View Larger Map

We were allowed to walk right up to the exposed walls of the pit and observed the stringers of copper and molybdenum sulphide ore embedded in networks of quartz veins. The host rock was a granodiorite. It was altered to various clay assemblages but you could make out blobs of relatively unaltered textures. Overall, after two weeks of tramping through forests it was great to be looking at massive walls of rock and glistening ore!

Ok, so what does this copper ore body have to do with ideas of how India was assembled and what does that even mean?

Reliance Cites Geological Surprises In Krishna Godavari Basin

My friend S.C.N Jatar, former CMD Oil India and ONGC Videsh writes about the suspicion that Reliance overstated reservoir potential in the KG -D6 field of the Krishna Godavari basin.

“Geological surprise” is cited as the cause of Reliance’s production shortfall. KG-D6 block commenced production in September 2008 with 0.58 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd) reaching a peak of 69.43 in March 2010 and then declined to 13 mmscmd currently. Reliance attributed the decline to substantial variance from prediction in reservoir behaviour, higher than envisaged pressure decline and unpredicted early water production in some wells. Was there a geological surprise? In an article published 10 years ago in Business Standard on January 13, 2003, I wrote, “Producing even 40 mmscmd for 10 years will need an unusually large number of wells....” The latest thinking on such reservoirs is that one can expect unpleasant surprises even after 3D surveys confirm the ‘structure’ because it cannot confirm the ‘reservoir’. I had then stressed: “There is a big question mark over the projected recoverable reserves of the Dhirubhai fields.”

Rest of the article here. 

India Energy Report- Some Rambling Thoughts

The latest from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. For those who follow the energy sector, nothing terribly new here, but it is a useful document to keep bookmarked for quick reference.

Meanwhile, Swaminathan Aiyar takes an optimistic look at the future of methane hydrate deposits which he thinks can provide significantly to India's energy needs. These deposits are formed when methane is trapped within a crystalline cage of water molecules. They occur in cold deep sea sediments and also onshore in permafrost settings.There are estimates that resources in sediments in India offshore basins on both the west and east coast may be around 1800-1900 trillion cubic meters.

My take is that whatever the estimates, we may be decades away from successfully exploiting them. Of more relevance over the short to medium term is onshore shale gas. Estimates for those vary wildly from an earlier EIA estimate of about 63 trillion cubic feet to a revised USGS estimate of only 6-7 trillion cubic feet to a figure often quoted in the India media of about 500 trillion cubic feet to 300-1200 trillion cubic meters! These disparate estimates only underscores the need for a more detailed exploration of Indian sedimentary basins.

Kaolinite And Chinese-Mexican Pottery In 1600's Mexico

 My Book Shelf # 25

As with a previous post which pointed to the role of silver as a catalyst for the movement of people across the oceans and a meeting of Asia with the America's in 1600's Mexico, geology in the form of clay deposits played a role in bringing full circle the story of Chinese (Ming) influence on Mexican ceramic art from the mid 1600's onwards.

The district of Puebla in Mexico has kaolin deposits of exceptional quality formed mostly by the hydrothermal alteration of a rhyolitic host rock from the Late Cenozoic Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt considered to part of the Circum-Pacific volcanic chain. This type of clay is used extensively in pottery.

By the late 1600's Puebla city had a tight knit Asian community:

One of the city's most important industries was ceramics - Puebla clay is of exceptional quality. Working with eye-straining attention to detail, skilled potters created pieces that imitated blue-and-white Ming dynasty porcelain. Guild regulations specified that "the coloring should be in imitation of Chinese ware, very blue, finished in the same style". Edward Slack, the Eastern Washington historian, points out that the manufacturers would hardly have ignored the skilled Asian craftspeople in their midst. More than likely, Puebla's fake Chinese pottery was created in part by real Chinese potters. If so, they did a splendid job: talavera ware, as it is known today, is now so highly prized that when I visited Puebla shopkeepers complained that the country was fighting an invasion of counterfeits from China - a Chinese imitation of a Chinese-made Mexican imitation of a Chinese original. 

From 1493: Uncovering The New World Columbus Created by Charles Mann.

Mexican Silver And Japanese Samurai

 My Book Shelf # 24

A post by Metageologist on tracking the source of silver in English coins from Medieval to early modern times caught my eye.

Silver formed by different geological processes may have distinct isotopic signatures. Metageologist points to a study which recognized English silver coins being sourced initially from silver taken from European mines and then later from the mid 1500's from Mexico via the Atlantic trade route. The silver from rich deposits in Peru primarily took the Pacific route and went to satisfy Chinese demand.

People too moved across continents along with silver. I came across this fascinating passage from 1493- Uncovering The New World Columbus Created by Charles Mann on the outsourcing of security for silver shipments-

Known collectively as chinos, Asian migrants spread slowly along the silver highway from Acapulco to Mexico City, Puebla, and Veracruz. Indeed, the road was patrolled by them- Japanese samurai perhaps in particular. Katana-swinging Japanese helped supress Chinese rebellions in Manila in 1603 and 1609. When Japan closed its borders to foreigners in the 1630's Japanese expatriates were stranded wherever they were. Scores, perhaps hundreds migrated to Mexico. Initially the viceroy had forbidden mestizos, mullatos, negros, zambaigos, and chinos to carry weapons. The Spaniards made an exception for samurai, allowing them to wield their katanas and tantos to protect the silver shipments against the escaped-slaves-turned-highwaymen in the hills.

Charles Mann is right when he calls the Mexico of this period a "crazy soup".

The Early History Of Coal Mining In India

India's coal reserves come from the Permian-Early Mesozoic continental rift basins situated in eastern India.

Coalgate is making headline news almost every day in India but Vikram Doctor on his blog On My Plate writes about the many shenanigans of early coal mining:

It was an American who first tried to develop systematic coal mining in India. Suetonius Grant Heatly was born in Newport, Rhode Island, but during the American Revolution his family was loyal to the British, and fled to Britain. Heatly joined the East India Company in 1766, possibly because Lord Cornwallis, the Governor-General of India, had earlier headed the losing British forces in America, and was expected to favour the British loyalists of that conflict. Heatly became Collector of Chotanagpur and Palamu (now part of Jharkhand). And it was while travelling here that he noticed local tribal people burning coal fires, Jha notes that the seams are found exposed on the surface in these areas. This was not far from the Damodar river and Grant, along with another East Indian man, John Sumner, realised that coal could be mined and floated down the river to Calcutta.

Grant and Sumner teamed up to get Company permission to mine coal. Yet their first application, in 1770, was rejected. Jha suggests this was because the Company was unsure of its rights of mineral extraction and, in any case, preferred to use its monopoly position to import minerals from Britain and sell them at high prices in India. Also, they were apprehensive about Indians learning how to use these minerals: “They even feared that once the natives acquired the art of smelting metals and the manner of casting them into cannon shot and shells that they would become masters of the latter.”

There were many early attempts in the late 1700's to early 1800's to mine coal but these ventures were never profitable due to hazardous mining conditions, legal disputes over land rights, poor transport and the better quality of imported English coal.  Then later in the 1800's demand reached a point whereby mining Indian coal became economic again. The East India Company backed English entrepreneurs who leased land from local rulers.  There were Indian businessman too. Among them who made a fortune in coal was Dwarkanath Tagore, grandfather of one of the most famous Indian poet writers Rabindranath Tagore. 

Tirthankar Roy in his book The East India Company describes the precarious balance the Company had to maintain between monopoly and allowing its agents and other merchants to conduct private trade in competition with the Company. Vikram Doctor's article brings out this aspect of  Company business life quite well along with the ruthless opportunism of these early coal entrepreneurs.

Read more here.

Gold And Metal Exploration In The Deep Sea

The recent interest in metal sulphide deposits localized around deep sea hydrothermal vents has been nicely summarized in an article in the New York Times.

Gold and copper are the main metals of interest along with silver, zinc and cobalt. The deposits are not randomly distributed on the sea floor but are near undersea volcanic activity with the Pacific areas along Papua New Guinea and Fiji being of special interest.

Years ago as a student I had visited the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, India. At that time the thrust of research was on the origin and distribution of manganese nodules which could be found in several zones in the Indian ocean. That never became a commercial venture due to probably the low concentration of the nodules and the high costs of extraction.

These new ventures though are going to be operating on a gigantic scale:

...Last year, Nautilus won a 20-year lease to mine a rich deposit in the Bismarck Sea, in the southwestern Pacific. The mounds are a mile down. The company says the site holds about 10 tons of gold and 125,000 tons of copper.

Nautilus plans to start mining next year but also cites possible delays. It is building robots up to 25 feet tall that are to collect sulfides and pump them to the surface. Barges are then to carry the seabed minerals to Rabaul, a Papua New Guinea port some 30 miles away.

Robots 25 feet tall and maybe even taller in the future.

Hollywood won't be far behind..

Estimating Coal Bed Methane Volume And Some Other Energy News

Via Geology.com I came across this short tutorial on estimating available coal bed methane. Gas is adsorbed in the micro-pores within the coal with smaller amounts available as free gas in fractures. The gas content available is estimated using a Langmuir isotherm:

Source: Baker Hughes Reservoir Blog

Short but effective presentation I thought.

In other energy news, India is ready to open up bidding for exploration of shale gas in six basins, namely Cambay, Assam-Arakan, Gondawana, KG onshore, Cauvery onshore and the Indo Gangetic basin by end of 2013. Early estimates suggest that four of these basins, Cambay, KG onshore, Cauvery and part of the Gondwana (Damodar valley basin) contain up to 63 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas. These numbers are sure to be modified as these and other basins are probed in more detail.

Finally, Amol Sharma at India Real Time takes a closer look at "Coalgate", a controversy over the Indian government allocating coal mining blocks to companies instead of auctioning them in an open bidding process. The loss to the exchequer according to the Comptroller and Auditor General calculation is about $200 billion.

What all the media hype though has missed is that the report has a lot to say about the shortfall in coal production:

The lion’s share of the report doesn’t deal with any of the issues above that have caused such an uproar, but rather India’s coal production shortfall. There’s plenty of blame for Coal India, which produces 81% of the coal in the country and is a lifeline for power generation firms. Between March 2008 and March 2011, Coal India failed to supply 54 million tons of coal it had promised companies. The report also asks why the private companies that have been “captive mines” – the so-called windfall gainers – have been so slow to get going with production. It says only 28 captive coal blocks are producing out of 194 allocated by the government. It is fair to ask why this is the case. Are there delays in getting government clearances, or are companies being inefficient?

Indian potential coal reserves are about 350 billion tons, making it the fourth largest reserves in the world, but according to coal market consultants Wood McKenzie, the future marketable reserve i.e. marketable production by 2030 is just 18 billion tons. That estimate might reflect a complex mix of conditions such as a lack of confidence in India sorting out issues related to regulatory clearances and land acquisition problems along with shortage in skilled manpower and advanced technology.  India has to import coal to meet shortfalls in domestic supply.

The Economic Times reports that coal imports could increase substantially in the future from 80 million tons per year in 2011 to 400 million tons per year by 2030, especially if domestic prices are raised to be on par with international prices.  Australia and Indonesia are major suppliers of coal to India.

The Lament Of An Indian Geologist

In Current Science K.S. Valdiya lets out an impassioned cry (open access) for recognition and a higher status for the field of geology in India:

The geologists, who toil hard for finding minerals for scientific research and industrial development,sources of water for multifarious needs, make sustained efforts to make India self-sufficient in energy and help select appropriate sites for dams, power plants, alignments of roads and tunnels, suggesting ways of overcoming problems of stability and natural hazards, go ‘unwept, un-honoured and unsung’. Even the mainstream scientists have poor opinion of geologists as scientists and geology as a science. In the matters related to the wellness of the earth, the use of its bounties and assets, and the preservation of its environmental health, their opinions are not sought and their voices not heard by the powerful science councils, commissions and academies, and by the powers-that-be. The domineering presence for decades of the sets of same persons with blinkers and biases in committees for awarding and rewarding individual endeavours is responsible for elbowing out or marginalization of those foot soldiers who work in the field for months on end – away from homes in harsh and often perilous terrains. Is it true that just because they have not spent or do not spend long hours in laboratories and tapped the internet data make them unworthy or recognition?

This is strong stuff and later he gives an example of myopia and a bureaucratic straitjacket which may have stifled many geological research programs:

The earthquake division (now placed under the MoES) de facto continues to be a subsidiary/subordinate unit of the India Meteorological Department. The head of the meteorologists has the say in the collection of seismic data. I strongly believe that it is time to establish and strengthen an independent National Institute of Seismology headed by an eminent and active earthquake specialist. Another national institute established ‘to undertake, aid, promote, guide, and coordinate research in the geology of the Himalayas’ and ‘to carry out research towards the development of new concepts and models, concerning earth structures and processes operating in the Himalayas’ (DST letter No. 2(2)8/-ST, dated 19 November 1985) has been functioning for the last five years under the strict control (chairmanship) of the Secretary to Government of India, at present a pre-eminent inorganic chemist specializing in leather technology; and the Director is a marine palaeontologist specializing in summer monsoon!

He gives more such examples of non-geological oversight on geological agencies and the misunderstandings "mainstream" scientists have about geology. The article then harshly criticizes "globalization" and the recent entry of multinational companies in oil and gas exploration and mining, accusing them of riding roughshod over environmental regulations, denying proper compensation and rehabilitation to displaced people and of unsustainable extraction of resources. All may be true, although the record of the government on these issues, especially the first two, is not that great either.

On the brighter side - and this is my opinion  -  multinational companies are bringing in benefits in the form of larger R & D programs and advanced technology.  Prof. Valdiya bemoans the loss of human capital. He writes that retired  government scientists are being hired by these firms for huge pay packets and they are taking with them government data that is denied to Indian academics and researchers. The lack of access to data is unfortunate, but not one restricted only to geological organizations. In India, it is the general problem of the fetish for secrecy that afflicts any government dealings with its citizens. To be fair though, there is not an organization in the world, government or otherwise, involved with oil and minerals that allows completely open access to its data.

Still, taking data when leaving for another job, if true will be an illegal act. More likely, what is being transferred is their experience. The other side of the coin is that ultimately these scientists are getting hired to work on Indian projects and the Indian energy sector will benefit from that. And it is not just retired geologists who are being attracted. I know several of my friends who have left  government companies in mid career to take up assignments with private energy companies. The reason given is money, plus better working conditions. I remember just after graduation a Ph.D friend returning from giving a job interview with ONGC, the government owned oil company. The interview board had been impressed but had remarked.."Aren't you graduates from Pune University too research oriented"?

The implication being that we consider candidates having a Ph.D a handicap!! That spoke volumes of the opportunities, or rather lack of, for research with a major energy company. No wonder many of my friends feel that their specialization has not been respected and utilized in government service and are jumping ship. Indian geologists in administrative positions are responsible for this and some introspection on incentives and opportunities is necessary to attract and keep better talent with the government.

But I am digressing from the main point of Prof. Valdiya's article and that is a plea to invite geologists to the high table of Indian science..... in positions that can influence policy.

I do agree with that.

Gold Boom Times In Elko Nevada

Geology and Livelihoods # 11

After Australia its time to go to Nevada. In a really engaging talk on Planet Money Robert Smith and Zoe Chace take a look at life in Elko, Nevada which is going through boom times due to the high demand for gold.

The motels are full, the brothels are full and high school girls want to start a truck repair business to support the mining community. Archaeologists are being hired to survey for ancient American Indian settlements before the machines start ripping the earth open. The town is cash rich.

and yet no money is being spent on long terms investments for the town. A history of busts seen all around Elko in numerous ghost towns is preventing that.

There is an Australian general manager of a mine who keeps hopping from one gold mine to another all over the world. For him its always been boom time. That's the difference between being undereducated and having a good education. The undereducated may well profit for a short time in local booms but when the mines run out they won't find high paying jobs elsewhere. For the better educated ..there is more flexibility in finding work.

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