Petroleum Geology

Our petroleum geology program is rich in terms of faculty expertise as well as in facilities such as industry-standard software and data files on thousands of southern California wells.

Two professors, Dr. R.D. Francis, and Dr. R. Behl, have had extensive experience in the petroleum industry, including prospect generation and evaluation, analysis of seismic and well logs, and mud logging.

The Los Angeles Basin Subsurface Data Center, housed here at CSULB and directed by Dr. Francis, is a repository of well files of over 14,000 wells donated by Chevron, as well as microfiche files on more than 30,000 wells in southern California. The Center also has detailed maps and associated well files of numerous fields in the LA Basin compiled and used by Dr. Robert Yeats of Oregon State. These materials were donated by Dr. Yeats to foster continued research at the Center. The Center also has maps and files donated by Russ Simonson, an accomplished southern California petroleum geologist. Other holdings include paleontological data and reports, and offshore southern California seismic and echo sounder data.

Software include Kingdom Suite, a 2D-3D seismic and well log visualization and analysis package, and Neuralog, a system for scanning, digitizing, interperting and correlating well logs and maps. Both of these are well-known programs used extensively in the petroleum industry. Hardware includes a lab with 20 up-to-date windows machines, a double-head workstation, 42 inch plotter, 42 inch scanner, and a log printer.

Many opportunities exist for students to do petroleum-related master's projects with Dr. Behl or Dr. Francis, and/or with the participation of petroleum geologists in the local community.

Courses include Geol 471, Petroleum Geology and Well Log Analysis; Geol 524, Sedimentary Petrology; Geol 556, Organic Geochemistry; Geol 537, California Geology; Geol 530, Seminar in Structural Geology and Tectonics, and Geol 570, Special Topics in Geology (used for topics such as advanced seismics, isotope geochemistry, and others.).