Big quake off Baja continental shelf

A magnitude 6.3 earthquake that occurred early Friday morning about 160 miles offshore of Baja California was the largest event in that region in 40 years, according to a report by the USGS.   The quake was off the edge of the continental shelf, away from the tectonic plate margin where earthquakes are common.  [Right, record of the quake from the AZGS seismic station in Douglas, AZ]

The USGS explained the tectonic setting:

The December 14, 2012 M 6.3 earthquake 250 km southwest of Avalon, California occurred as a result of shallow normal faulting within the oceanic lithosphere of the Pacific plate. This event is located some 400-450 km west-southwest of the plate boundary between the Pacific and North America plates – the San Andreas fault system in southern California – and is not associated with that fault system. Instead, this earthquake represents intraplate faulting along northeast-southwest trending normal faults within the crust of the Pacific plate, just to the west of California’s continental shelf. The causative fault is not known at this time. At the location of this event, the Pacific plate moves to the northwest with respect to the North America plate at a velocity of approximately 54 mm/yr.

While the broad region surrounding the December 14, 2012 event experiences frequent earthquakes along the San Andreas and associated faults in southern California, the area offshore and within 250 km of this earthquake has not hosted any events greater than M 6 over the past 40 years.

Setting priorities for international e-infrastructure to respond to extreme natural hazards events

Two dozen of us from 13 countries are hunkered down in San Franciso for the next two days to develop a strategy for implementing an e-infrastructure to better deal with environmental changes and extreme hazardous events, worldwide.

The workshop is organized and hosted by the National Science Foundation as part of the Belmont Forum initiative.   The Forum is a relatively new agreement among 13 countries so far, through their national science and environmental funding agencies, to carry out collaborative research projects.


A mission of the Belmont Forum is to "deliver knowledge needed for action to avoid and adapt to detrimental environmental change including extreme hazardous events."

According to the group's charter, this requires:
     Assessments of risks, impacts and vulnerabilities, through regional and decadal-scale analysis and prediction
    Information on the state of the environment, through advanced observing systems
    Interaction of natural and social sciences
    Enhanced environmental information service providers to users
    Effective international coordination mechanisms

Current members of the Belmont Forum are: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, European Commission, Germany, Japan, India, Norway, South Africa, UK, USA, International Council for Science (ICSU), and International Social Sciences Council (ISSC).

My role here is as chair of the NSF EarthCube Governance Steering Committee and co-chair of the US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN), among other responsibilities.

Analysts downgrade Freeport over oil acquisition debt

According to a story on Mineweb, "Freeport was downgraded by Deutsche Bank from 'Buy' to 'Hold', while BMO Capital downgraded FCX to 'Market Perform.' Both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs downgraded FCX from 'Buy' to 'Neutral.' However, Standard & Poor’s affirmed its rating on Freeport-McMoRan, but revised the company outlook to 'negative' " as a consequence of Freeport's acquisition of Plains Exploration & Production Company and McMoRan Exploration Company for a total cost of $20 billion in cash and stock.

Freeport's stock price dropped sharply after the merger announcement [right, Mineweb].

 But an analysis on posted by Reuters argues that "Freeport may have had few alternatives: there simply are not many known "Tier 1" copper assets left to gobble up, particularly in accessible locations."

The Reuters story concludes that "it is becoming very difficult for companies to justify the development of many copper projects" due to ballooning costs, access to talented professionals, and difficulties in getting projects approved.   

Freeport acquiring two oil & gas companies in $20 billion deal

Phoenix-based Freeport McMoRan is acquiring Plains Exploration & Production Company for $6.9 billion in cash and stock and McMoRan Exploration Co. for approximately $3.4 billion in cash.  In addition, Freeport will also assume about $11 billion in debt. 

Freeport says the mergers will create a "premier U.S. based natural resources company."  They said Plains  major assets include"its established strong oil production facilities in California, a growing production profile in the onshore Eagle Ford trend in Texas, significant production facilities and growth potential in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico and large onshore resources in the Haynesville natural gas trend in Louisiana."

They said McMoRan Exploration "is an industry leader in the emerging shallow water ultra-deep gas trend with sizeable potential, located offshore in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in South Louisiana."

Freeport ran a webcast today about the merger and is making it available for replay at www.fcx.com

through Friday, January 4, 2013.

 

Drake acquires four aggregate operations in Phoenix region

Drake Companies announced today the acquisition of four major aggregate reserves in the metropolitan Phoenix area.  The company said they have added "long term aggregate holdings with reserves in excess of 70 million tons."  “This addition solidifies our long term position as a major construction materials supplier in a region with great growth potential.  With our new state-of-the-art cement plant and growing ready mix enterprise, the Drake Companies are uniquely positioned to provide our customers and the Arizona markets a full line of cement, concrete and aggregate products.”  CEO Marco Gomez said that the Drake Companies will begin aggregate operations immediately with full integration of assets being complete before the end of 2012. [Right, Drake Materials locations in ]Maricopa and Pinal counties.  Credit, Drake Materials]

From our research, we've deduced:

• Drake’s Avondale 158 Plant was previously operated by IMix Group LLC
• Drake’s Maricopa Plant 157 was previously operated by Gila River Sand and Gravel
• Drake’s Sun City Plant 151 may have been either Salt River Sand & Rock or SanMan
• Drake’s Queen Creek Plant 161 is located at a cluster of operations so we can't tell if it was one previously operated by Cemex, Southwest Rock Products, Arizona Materials LLC, Arizona Metro Mix or Bebout Concrete

This makes Drake one of the biggest players in the rock products business in Arizona.

Drake also runs Gila Bend Plant 121 location near Sisson Road near Gila Bend.

The company notes that "The Drake Companies operate in the markets of Arizona and the Southwestern U.S. as Drake Cement, Drake Materials, and Drake Aggregates.  Drake Cement unveiled one of North America’s newest and cleanest cement plants in 2011.  Drake Materials operates multiple ready mix concrete plants in central Arizona, with additional holdings in the northwest part of the State and the Las Vegas, Nevada area."

[Thanks to Nyal Niemuth in our Phoenix branch for tracking down the likely acquisitions]

Posters and meetings and booths, oh my!

Tuesday was a busy day for us at the AGU Fall Meeting - both our exhibit booths (EarthCube and the National Geothermal Data System) opened to a steady stream of visitors, we had four poster sessions, also with non-stop discussions [right, our two EarthCube posters] - plus business and committee meetings and town hall discussions starting before 7 a.m. and running until after 7 p.m. when we finally called it a day.

We're getting attendees to take brief surveys on what cyber capabilities they want, to be able to do their science better or do things that are difficult or impossible to do now. These are being compiled to held guide the National Science Foundation on what cyber tools need to be designed and built.

Down the aisle, we are running demo's of the full National Geothermal Data System for the first time. Previously, we focused on the data from the State Geological Surveys.  But since this Fall, AZGS is running the NGDS Web site and taken on more duties on the collaborative project.

Both of these projects are garnering a lot of attention and we are engaged in discussions about new partnerships and linkages with other systems and projects.

Steve Richard is heading over to set up two more technical posters on system architecture, and we are restocking the booths with brochures and fliers.

Public hearing on Florence copper project

Advocates and opponents of the Florence copper project are rallying their supporters to a public hearing by the Arizona Dept. of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) tomorrow (Wed) evening.


The hearing will focus on efforts to ensure that the community groundwater will not be adversely affected by the copper recovery demonstration project.

The formal public hearing is set for 6:00 pm, Wednesday, Dec. 5, at Florence High School Gymnasium, 1000 S. Main St, in Florence.  [Right, injection wells at project site.  Credit, Curis Resources]

The AMIGOS mining industry group sent out an email today inviting supporters to join Florence Copper at a pre-hearing gathering:

Florence Copper Community Office
130 N. Main Street in Florence
4:00 PM with food and refreshments

An intense week for AZGS at AGU fall meeting

The American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting is underway in San Francisco with well over 20,000 attendees expected.  AZGS is here in a big way - 7 scientific presentations (putting up a poster now, a talk later this morning), setting up two exhibit booths (one for National Geothermal Data System and one for EarthCube), chairing an EarthCube workshop this afternoon, co-convening two sessions, presentations at multiple town halls, a seemingly endless number of committee and board meetings, plus a few planning meetings for project development.  It's been a busy couple weeks pulling together all the presentation materials, handouts, demos, and displays, but the AZGS team has done a fantastic job and we're excited about showing off our latest results.

One million wells online

State Geological Surveys have put data from over 1.25 million wells (oil & gas, water, geothermal) online for free viewing and downloading, discoverable and accessible through the National Geothermal Data System (www.geothermaldata.org), as part of the AZGS-led project, funded by the US Department of Energy.    

We are announcing this milestone that was only reached in the past week, at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco this morning during a formal presentation in a session on geothermal energy.

The current well data sets are coming from only a small number of states.  As the rest get their data sets finalized, we expect to see this number double or triple over the next year.

How old is the Grand Canyon?

A new study arguing that Grand Canyon is 60 million years old, in contrast to the widely accepted age of 6 million years, is drawing a lot of news media attention.  It made the front page of the Arizona (Tucson) Daily Star yesterday, and I heard a report about it on NPR this morning but it's also been picked up by the New York Times et al.

The article was published Thursday in the online version of Science, and concludes "[Rebecca] Flowers and [Kenneth] Farley analyzed four rock samples from the western portions of the Grand Canyon and four from the eastern reaches of the gorge. The pattern of helium concentrations in the samples suggests that substantial parts of the western portion of the Grand Canyon were already carved to within a few hundred meters of their current depth by about 70 million years ago and that erosion hasn't increased dramatically in recent eras, the researchers report. That's a far cry from the 5-million-to 6-million-year-old age suggested by previous research, and is about quadruple the oldest previous estimate from other teams for the canyon's age."

Meanwhile, the Geological Society of America published a new book, "Grand Canyon Geology: Two Billion Years of Earth’s History," edited by  Michael Timmons and Karl E. Karlstrom. The summary notes "Carved in the last 6 million years by the Colorado River and its tributaries, Grand Canyon is one of the premier geologic landscapes in the world."

Karl and UA geologist Bill Dickinson are quoted in Science expressing some skepticism over the new 'old' results.   Previous work by AZGS geologists supports the younger age for the canyon.  We need to take a hard look at these new dates.

Resolution Copper scaling back mine development

Resolution Copper's announcement yesterday that they are cutting funding in 2013 by 75% for development of their proposed deep underground copper mine near Superior, is not that surprising.  The company attributed it to "uncertainty in legislative and regulatory environment" which refers mostly to stalled federal legislation to make the land transfers the company needs to start mining.  The company had repeatedly stated they needed a decision by year-end to justify them continuing to invest so much money in the operation. The $200 million project is being cut back to $50 million in 2013.

The news release says "The company will suspend all shaft development and drilling activities after current work assignments are completed in the first quarter of 2013. Resolution Copper intends to continue its current level of work activity through the end of 2012, with most of the ramp-­‐down starting in 2013 when rehabilitation and shaft-­‐sinking work is suspended on the #9 shaft and progressing through the end of the first quarter when sinking of the #10 shaft [right, photo credit Nyal Niemuth] is expected to be completed. Resolution Copper will reduce its workforce by approximately 175 workers by the close of 2012 as work  is suspended on the #9 shaft and the  balance of the reductions will occur at the end of the first quarter of 2013 when the #10 shaft is expected to be completed and all drilling activity suspended.  The reductions largely affect the project’s contractor workforce."

Resolution is a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton, the world's biggest mining companies.   Both companies are cutting back operations worldwide.

The day before, a story on Mineweb said Rio "is aiming to cut more than $5 billion of operating and support costs by the end of 2014, and would cut spending on exploration and evaluation projects by $1 billion over the rest of 2012 and 2013."

BHP sold its Canadian diamond operations to Harry Winston Corp. two weeks ago. It has cancelled or cutback major investments in coal and iron recently.   BHP recently failed to complete the sale of Pinto Valley copper mine in Arizona.