Economics and Business are also STEM fields

Being a scientist, married to a scientist, affiliated with a college with a strong engineering program, having a sister and father with engineering backgrounds and other relatives in health fields and computing, and being a follower of science Twitter, my bias is I perceive people studying or with careers in STEM fields as those working in science, medicine, computing/IT, technology, and engineering. However, it became clear to me at my recent high school reunion that areas of business and economics are very quantitative and should not be forgotten in considering what is a STEM discipline or career. 

At the reunion, I saw for the first time in decades, a classmate who sat next to me in AP Calculus senior year in high school. This brilliant young man would sometimes flatter me by asking to borrow my homework to copy right before class, not because he wasn’t smart, but because he just hadn’t done it. He went to MIT, majoring in Math, and then got a Master’s in Finance and Information Systems from MIT’s Sloan School of Business. He has had a very successful career in finance.

Likewise, my engineering-major, accounting-minor sister used her accounting training at major business consulting firms and Fortune 500 companies, notably working in 1998-99 on Y2K issues of amending accounting and inventory code from two-digit-year designators to four-digit. My hairdresser’s college-math-major daughter has gone into market analysis, a job the hairdresser says was predicated on having a math degree. Have these individuals left science or math behind, “leaked” out of the STEM pipeline post-graduation? Certainly not.

Quantitative analysis of price futures: US crude oil commodity price forecast (West Texas Intermediate benchmark) with confidence intervals (Energy Information Administration).

In my field of Earth Sciences, there is a variety of mathematical applications, including statistics, used among subdisciplines. Especially, but not exclusively, geophysics, climate modeling, and hydrology, have practitioners who are mathematicians applying their skills to earth problems. These mathematicians can easily move between topics and careers where math is a tool. During a conference on large meteorite impacts in 2008, one conference attendee who did modeling of effects of impacts on planetary surfaces mentioned to me that he was considering getting a job in business rather than academia. From my doctoral alma mater, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, it has been noted that being “highly skilled at analyzing complex data, they [Lamont geophysicists] had figured out they could make a lot more money crunching stock prices for Wall Street than plotting earthquakes.” Tragically, Weibin Wang (Ph.D. 1994), who had studied earthquake mechanics, was working as a senior program analyst for financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center when he lost his life on September 11, 2001. 

Right now we are in another long season of US electoral obsessiveness with daily reporting of statistics in the form of polling data. The fine print at the bottom of some polling result graphics on television include the sample size (number of people surveyed) and the margin of error in the form of the standard deviation. We should be reminded that “pollster” can be another STEM career, many pollsters having either a psychology or statistics background.

MSNBC Iowa polling data graphic from June 2019, showing at bottom the sample size (people polled) and MOE (margin of error).

SYRIAN OIL: How much, where is it, and political setting as of late October 2019

Sections:

• BACKGROUND EVENTS …
• SPOILS OF WAR?
• SYRIAN PRODUCTION & RESERVES AND GLOBAL COMPARISONS
• GENERAL GEOLOGY OF MAJOR OIL-PRODUCING AREAS
• Selected Bibliography

BACKGROUND EVENTS RELATIVE TO SYRIAN US TROOP WITHDRAWAL: On October 18, 2019, US President Trump tweeted, regarding the withdrawal of US troops from northern parts of Syria, “The U.S. has secured the Oil“. I, probably like many, wondered what he meant since Syria does not pop immediately into my head as an oil power, despite the fact that it borders Iraq, a major petroleum producer. Oilprice.com did report on October 21, that US military forces “will keep hold of oil and gas fields in eastern Syria and the Al Tanf base in the south [Al Tanf near Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian border] under the plans to withdraw troops from the country”, citing Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. Continued deployments at Al Tanf will include “keeping a special forces unit to help the Syrian opposition with intelligence support.”

That Oilprice.com article continues that also being retained are “contractors from private military firms near oil wells and gas plants in the region east of the Euphrates river, which holds 90 percent of Syria’s oil. . .” Most of the oil is under the control of Kurdish SDF forces, and the plan then was to prevent eastern Syrian wells from being taken over by Syrian President Assad. US special forces also “will continue to be in control of oil and gas fields in Deir Ezzor” [also romanized Deir Ez-Zour, Dayr az Zawr] along the Euphrates River (Figure 1). Even as of October 23, after the October 22 agreement between Turkey and Russia “that allowed Syrian troops to move back into a large part” of the northern Syrian frontier border with Turkey (Figure 2), Kurdish-led forces still retained control of the eastern Syrian oil fields. The largest oil field in Syria is Al-Oman near Deir Ez-Zour. 

FIGURE 1: Energy Information Agency (EIA) map from 2015 showing Syrian oil fields and pipelines. Most of Syria’s liquid petroleum is from around Deir Ez-Zour and to the SE/NW in the Euphrates Fault System. The oldest exploited fields in the very northeast of Syria are in a different structural unit, the east-trending Mesopotamian Foredeep. Base map from https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.php?iso=SYR . Tectonic provinces, superimposed in purple, are based on Aldahik and others (2017) and Brew and others (2001) (full citations at end of post*).

FIGURE 2: Map of recently imposed “safe zone” in northern Syria along border with Turkey. From BBC.com.

Then, on October 25, 2019, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper stated that, despite the early October US troop withdrawal, the US may deploy “mechanized forces [tanks] . . . to strengthen our position at Deir ez-Zor” and deny ISIS access to the oil fields, which they had held at one time and used as a source of income (Figure 3). The Washington Post reported this change in plans occurred when President Trump was persuaded to maintain a force in order to lower any potential threat to oil fields. This pleased the US Department of Defense and other officials, frustrated with the initial withdrawal announcement, since it would allow “counterterrorism operations and airspace control to continue.” (Just a note that Deir Ez-Zor is about 280 km east of Idlib in NW Syria near where ISIS leader Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed on October 27.) 

FIGURE 3: Map of Syria and Iraq in mid-2014 showing areas of ISIS control, relative to major oil fields. From https://www.oilandgas360.com/iraq-update/ .

SPOILS OF WAR?: However, who may eventually exploit and profit from that oil, now produced by Kurdish SDF forces, is a legal quagmire since the oil and natural gas, like in any country with nationalized or government oil companies, is owned by the Syrian government. The Trump idea of “take the oil” had been previously examined and rejected while Rex Tillerson, former ExxonMobil CEO, was Secretary of State, according to Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL until December 2018. 

A good analysis on what may or may not be internationally legal under the concept of “spoils of war” can be found at https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2016/09/25/dont-conflate-illegal-pillage-with-spoils-of-war-and-other-lawful-takings/. It addresses movable vs immovable assets, private vs. state property, peace settlements, wrongful acts, reparations, and was written in response to 2016 remarks by President Trump referencing Iraq: “Now, there was no victor there, believe me…But I always said: Take the oil.”

SYRIAN PRODUCTION & RESERVES AND GLOBAL COMPARISONS: Before the Syrian civil war, in 2011, according to the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) Country Analysis Sheet on Syria, Syria produced just under 400,000 barrels of oil per day (b/d) and 316 million cubic feet (Mmcf/d) natural gas per day. At this capacity, it would rank 31^st on the 2018 international production rankings. This was down from a peak of 582,000 b/d in 1996. However, by 2015, production, according to EIA notes, had decreased to less than 25,000 b/d. International sanctions, withdrawal of international petroleum partners, war, oil theft, and damage to infrastructure has hindered all aspects of hydrocarbon resource development and delivery of energy services to the population. By 2018, EIA had Syria 75^th in country rankings producing 28,000 barrels per day of oil and other liquids.

So, is the amount of oil in Syria “massive”, as described by President Trump on October 27, either in terms of production or proved reserves? (Answer = No) Compared to Syrian peak daily production of 582,000 b/d (1996), in 2018, the US, at number 1, produced 18 million barrels/day (b/d), Saudi Arabia (#2) 12.4 million, Canada (#4) 5.3 million, and Iraq (#6) 4.5 million b/d. Syria’s proved oil reserves, as of 2015, were 2.5 billion barrels; natural gas reserves were 8.5 billion cubic feet. In 2017, US proved reserves were 39.2 billion barrels crude oil, 464 trillion cubic feet natural gas; Saudi Arabian reserves were 266 billion barrels oil, 303 trillion cubic feet natural gas; Iraq reserves 149 billion barrels oil, 135 trillion cubic feet natural gas.

In 2011, 60% of Syria’s oil production was heavy (low gravity or ‘thicker’) and high sulfur (EIA 2015). Souedie or Syrian Heavy crude, API gravity 24˚, is a blend of oils from northeastern-most Syria, which does make it less desirable on the world market and requires specific refinery configurations. Syrian Light, a blend of oil with API gravity 36˚ (the higher the API number the lower the viscosity),  is primarily produced from the southern Euphrates Graben including the Deir Ez-Zour city/ Al-Omar field area.

GENERAL GEOLOGY OF MAJOR OIL-PRODUCING AREAS: Geologically, the large oil field Al-Omar and other production in the area of Deir Ez-Zour City in eastern Syria along the Euphrates River is in the Euphrates Graben AKA Euphrates Fault System, Euphrates Graben System (Figure 1). Oil and gas in the graben was not discovered until the 1980’s. The oldest production is in the very northeast in the Mesopotamian Foredeep, where an American oil producer discovered the first fields immediately after World War II. However, in 1958, his concessions and equipment were confiscated and nationalized by Syrian government with no compensation. Other comparatively minor production areas are the Palmyrides and the Abd el Aziz/Sinjar uplifts.

FIGURE 4: Northeast-southwest cross-section across southern Euphrates Graben showing distributed extensional faulting. From Brew and others, The Leading Edge, 1997. 

An excellent synopsis of the geology of Syria, including hydrocarbon habitat is by Graham Brew and others (2001, GeoArabia)*. This publication includes a large tectonic map, time slice figures of structure and formation thickness, a tectonic evolution chart, and a chart of time vs petroleum system elements of various Syrian hydrocarbon provinces. It is based on Brew’s dissertation at Cornell University. Other citations also used in this post’s geologic summary are listed below*.

The Euphrates Graben is a highly-faulted rift zone. Rather than having major border faults enclosing the structure like many rifts, the Upper Cretaceous extension is distributed among many faults (Figure 4). The major reservoir unit from which oil and gas are produced is a highly-permeable Lower Cretaceous sandstone. (For a geologic time scale, see https://www.geosociety.org/documents/gsa/timescale/timescl.pdf.) Aldahik and others (2017) described the petroleum geochemistry of Euphrates Graben oil and used geochemical correlations to determine that the source rocks from which Euphrates hydrocarbons were generated include the pre-rift Lower Silurian Tanf Formation (marine shale) and two Upper Cretaceous limestone formations, one syn-rift, one post-rift. The Tanf Formation is the equivalent of the extensive Lower Silurian Hot Shales that source much of the prolific fields of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, and northern Africa. Hydrocarbons from younger Upper Cretaceous limestones of the Euphrates Fault System migrated up into older Lower Cretaceous formations since extensional faulting and block rotation placed younger formations against older formations across faults (Figure 4).

The Mesopotamian Foredeep in northeastern-most Syria is a flexural basin, with minor folding, formed during the Cenozoic collision of the Arabian Plate and Eurasia. This tectonic event also created the adjacent Zagros Fold Belt which trends east-west just north of Syria, turning southeast through eastern Iraq/western Iran where it houses world-class oil fields. The source rocks for the Mesopotamian Foredeep are Triassic and Late Cretaceous in age, while the main reservoir rocks are Upper Cretaceous/Lower Paleocene limestones and dolomites. A map of oil fields of countries on the Arabian plate, including Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia is in Figure 5). 

FIGURE 5: Map of oil fields of the Arabian Plate from Syria in the northwest to Oman in the southeast (American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1991). Although data on this map is from 1990, these are still the major oil fields of the region and illustrate the relative size of fields in various countries.

*SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PAPERS ON GEOLOGY OF SYRIA (some not used in text):

Aldahik, A., Schulz, H-M., Horsfield, B., Wilkes, H., Dominik, W., Nederlof, P., 2017, Crude oil families in the Euphrates Graben (Syria): Marine and Petroleum Geology, v. 86, p. 325-342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2017.05.030 (not open access); Abstract at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264817217301897

Barrier, E., Machhour, L., Blaizot, M., 2014, Petroleum systems of Syria (Chapter 11): in Marlow, L., Kendall, C. C. G., and Yose, L. A. (eds.): Petroleum Systems of the Tethyan Region: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Memoir 106. p. 335-378. Abstract only: http://archives.datapages.com/data/specpubs/memoir106/data/335_aapg-sp1960335.htm

Brew, G. E., litak, R. K., Seber, D., Barazangi, M., Sawaf, T., Al-Imam, 1997, Summary of the geological evolution of Syria through geophysical interpretation: Implications for hydrocarbon exploration: The Leading Edge, v. 16, no. 10, p. 1473-1486.   https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/266f/5637420befb73af435d94d47ffb70919c9a0.pdf

Brew, G. E., 2001, Tectonic evolution of Syria interpreted from integrated geophysical and geological analysis [Ph.D. thesis]: Ithaca, Cornell University, 322 p. http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/people/brew/documents/Brew_dissertation_01.pdf

Brew, G., Barazangi, M., Al-Maleh, A., K., Sawaf, T., (2001) Tectonic and geological evolution of Syria: GeoArabia, v. 6, no. 4, p. 573-616. http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/syria/brew2.pdf (This pdf includes the large tectonic map which is a separate pdf in the issue of GeoArabia at https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geoarabia/issue/6/4; both map and article are open access).

Litak, R.K., Barazangi, M., Brew, G., Sawaf, T., Al-Imam, A., Al- Youssef, W., 1998, Structure and evolution of the petroliferous Euphrates graben system, southeast Syria: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 82, p. 1173-1190. Abstract: http://archives.datapages.com/data/bulletns/1998/06jun/1173/1173.htm?q=%2BtextStrip%3Abrew

LINKS TO EIA (Energy Information Agency of US Dept. of Energy) REPORTS AND NOTES ON SYRIA:

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis_includes/countries_long/Syria/archive/pdf/syria_2011.pdf 2011

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.php?iso=SYR 2015 notes

2018 INTERNATIONAL RANKINGS OF TOTAL PETROLEUM AND OTHER LIQUIDS PER DAY (EIA):

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/rankings/#?prodact=53-1&cy=2018

"Their Eyes Were Watching God": Zora Neale Hurston, the "Forgotten Hurricane", and Everglades muck soil

Inspired by hearing Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, talk about reading poetry by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes to his son’s school class during this year’s Black History Month (February 2019), I finally completed this blogpost discussing some earth science aspects of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Hurston was a friend and collaborator of Langston Hughes.

As I usually embarrassingly do, on Tuesday, September 19, 2017, I finally finished our monthly book club selection, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by African-American author, Zora Neale Hurston, half an hour before the meeting. The book’s climatic events took place during the “Forgotten Hurricane” (AKA Great Okeechobee Hurricane or San Felipe Segundo Hurricane) that made landfall at West Palm Beach, Florida, on September 17, 1928. The subsequent breeching of the southeastern 5-foot-high muck dike of Lake Okeechobee resulted in catastrophic flooding from central Florida to Palm Beach on the east coast; more than 2500 people drowned, most of them African-American migrant farm workers. Tea Cake, third husband of Hurston’s main character, Janie Crawford, was a fictional victim. Coincidently with my finishing this book, Category 5 Hurricane Maria was devastating Puerto Rico, the most intense hurricane to hit that island since the Okeechobee Hurricane almost exactly 89 years before. Maria was initially on the same path as the 1928 “Forgotten Hurricane”, but after passing over Puerto Rico, it turned north, missing Florida.

FIGURE 1:
Path of the Forgotten Hurricane of 1928

FIGURE 2:
Path of Hurricane Maria, 2017

The muck dike gave way around 9 PM, September 17, 1928, near the town of Belle Glade, on the south-southeastern edge of Lake Okeechobee: “it only took an hour after the dike gave way for floodwaters to peak at a fatal 12 feet”, according to a 1988 Sun Sentinel article. In Hurston’s novel, Janie and Tea Cake lived in a migrant shack where “only the dyke separated them from great, sprawling Okechobee” [sic]. The storm became generally forgotten due to the early onset of the Depression in the affected area, poor documentation of the destruction, downplaying the tragedy to avoid loss of tourism, and the sad fact that most of the dead were African-American.


Is there any connection in the novel to the geologic-carbon theme of this blog? Answer= Yes, muck. “We goin’on de muck.”
“Whut’s de muck, and where is it at?”
“Oh down in de Everglades round Clewiston and Belle Glade where dey raise all dat cane and string-beans and tomatuhs…
 . . . Dirt road so rich and black that a half mile of it would have fertilized a Kansas wheat field. .
. . .Yuh can’t live on de muck ‘thout yuh take uh bath every day. Do dat muck’ll itch yuh lak ants.
. . .Work all day for money, fight all night for love. The rich black earth clinging to bodies and biting the skin like ants."

According to Wikipedia, “muck is a sapric soil that is naturally waterlogged or is artificially drained... a sapric is a subtype of a histosol where virtually all of the organic material has undergone sufficient decomposition to prevent the identification of plant parts. . . The World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) defines ‘sapric’ as a histosol having less than one-sixth (by volume) of the organic material consisting of recognizable plant tissue within 100 cm of the soil surface. . . Muck soils are defined by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service as sapric organic soils that are saturated more than 30 cumulative days in normal years or are artificially drained. In other words, it is a soil made up primarily of humus from drained swampland.”

In Chapter 1, Section 2, of his 1947 University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) dissertation on “A History of the Everglades of Florida", Junius Elmore Dovell described the soils (mucks and peats) of the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee area and the various surveys and classifications done in the early half of the 20th century as interest in regional agricultural development grew. He writes that the best land, where Janie and Tea Cake picked beans, was custard apple muck; the names of Florida mucks derived from the primary vegetation initially growing at each location. Dovell reported the custard apple muck, in a 1915 survey, was found to be 40-75 inches thick over a peat that then extended down to limestone bedrock at 122-150 inches depth.

FIGURE 3: “Major landscape types in the Everglades before human action.” The area described by Tea Cake “round Clewiston and Belle Glade” is under the words “Custard Apple and” at the SW edge of Lake Okeechobee. By US Geological Survey through Wikipedia.

Peat is usually associated with muck. Muck by definition is more decomposed than peat, not having any visible plant parts remaining, although I assume by “visible” they mean with the naked eye since, even in coal, plant parts can be recognized under the microscope. Muck also has a higher sediment volume (sand, mud) than peat (Dovell). However, just because the muck is more decomposed than peat that does not mean that muck, in the Everglades and southern rim of Lake Okeechobee, is always found under, more deeply buried than the associated peat. Both Dovell and Marjory Stoneman Douglass (in The Everglades, River of Grass) describe the custard apple muck as sitting on top of peat, while in other locations, muck is stratigraphically under peat. A USDA report from 1929 does state “Peatlands pass more or less slowly from the natural state of well-preserved plant remains, through the muck stage, to the final transformation into humified organic matter.”

*********************
Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, anthropologist, anthologist, was a major author of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s. She was born in Alabama, but raised in Florida. Her work was, like the Great Okeechobee Hurricane, forgotten for about four decades due to politics (she was more conservative than some in her literary circle) and to her use of dialect being viewed not as preservation of culture and linguistics, but promoting pejorative stereotypes of African-American vernacular. Her career fortunately has had its own posthumous Renaissance since 1975 with the publication of Alice Walker’s article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”, in Ms. Magazine. Hurston’s works, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, have been rediscovered, reissued, and Hurston is now rightly recognized as a “pre-eminent writer” of the 20th century.

https://www.allisonbolah.com/site_resources/reading_list/Walker_In_Search_of_Zora.pdf Alice Walker’s 1975 Ms. Magazine article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston".
https://www.zoranealehurston.com/about/ Biography on Hurston official website
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/02/17/a-society-of-one New Yorker article on Hurston’s life and her writing
https://barnard.edu/news/archaeology-classic-celebrating-zora-neale-hurston-28 Description of Alice Walker’s search for Hurston