How are we doing?

We'd like to know what you think! Email me your comments on this Petroleum Geology Website, and we'll post them here. Tell us how you use the site, and what you like best about it. This is also a good place to suggest things you would like to see us do differently, or ways you feel things could be improved.

Don't forget to let us know who you are, your age, and where you are writing from. The more comments we get, the better idea we have of exactly who is checking us out. This makes it easier to structure the pages more effectively for our audience. So let us know - the floor is yours!

Send an email to me, Jane Picconi, at picconi@museumoftheearth.org

Message received April 2nd, 2003
The other night some friends & I were arguing about what exactly oil is...needless-to-say, after too much wine, someone believing it was dead dinosaurs won out. I thought he had to be wrong. How could there been enough dinosaurs to fuel every automobile, lawn mower, and airplane in the world since the advent of the combustible engine? Anyways, I just passed along the link to your wonderful website. That puts that one to rest! LOL!

-Jonathan

Message received March 3rd, 2003
I am a 10th grade prime science (general science) teacher and one of our units is called "Making use of oil". Your website has helped my students understand some of the basic concepts on oil formation and where oil is located. Thanks - you have done an excellent job.

Message received September 30, 2002
The year before the Drake well came in, Canadians were already pumping oil from the oil well in Petrolia, Ontario. Try reading this page: http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/earth/waton/s937.html

Message received August 1st, 2002
As an educator for 20 years, and as a board member of the Louisiana Oil and Gas museum, let me say that your site is amazing. I have searched the internet and other media for oil information that would be easily understood by students as well as museum visitors and yours is far and away the best!!! I would love to see you put together an educational handbook in the style of "Project WET" (water education for teachers), "Project Wild", and "Project Learning Tree".
- Kristina Hardwick

Message received June 23rd, 2002
Let me first say what an excellent educational site, it is fast and informative whilst not being overly complex. The hot button diagram in the first part of the Oil Systems area is excellent. Perhaps a valuable addition would be a similar diagram for Gas prone reservoirs sourced from deltas such as the Gas in the Southern N. Sea UK. This is sourced from the Carboniferous deltaic and marsh sediments with reservoirs in Carboniferous channel/delta sandstones and aeolian Rotleigend Sandstones (Permian).
-computer application support consultant, UK

Message received January 1st, 2002
This is not a question but a comment on the veracity of a very small part of your oil web page. ÊPart of the rock cycle is not valid - in spite if this error being repeated in all intro geology textbooks. In fact we call it the rock non-cycle here. Metamorphic rocks DO NOT melt to form igneous rocks. Sure, a little metamorphic rock may be included in a magma blob that is rising through the continental crust. But the origin of all magma is the partial melting - via decompression and hydration - of the oceanic crust, be it at mid-ocean ridges, hot spots, AND volcanic arcs at subduction margins. Ê As a teacher of middle and high school sciences teachers it is important that this be corrected.

P.S.
I just sent a email calling you to task for your rock cycle depiction. But I omitted to tell you how much I love the rest of the pages. It is so very very difficult to find material on the web relating to sediments and stratigrpahy that is usable for teachers - this is a terrific help for me and I will use it in the next science teachers workshop. Thank you!
-Liz Nesbitt, Curator, Burke Museum, and Department of Earth and Space Sciences University of Washington

Message received December 17th, 2001
You might have to adjust your map a little. Gas is a natural adjunct of oil, Or I was always taught. Though not commercially feasible oil production. They have been pumping gas for quite some time in Auburn, New York, and now they are getting ready to drill for gas in the Skaneateles-Marcellus area. They expect to begin drilling for gas early next year after doing the seismographic studies during late summer.
-Bob Keil

Bob - Thanks for the tips. Maybe we need to make it more clear that, as you said, oil is always found in conjunction with natural gas, although often it goes "unproduced" if the quantity is small and not economically feasible. And thanks for the info on natural gas in New York State.

Message received November 29th, 2001
I love the site! The text on the page that discusses why there is oil in Pennsylvania is a bit over my head, though. Great job otherwise!
-Mary Saltros, Earth Science Educator, Roanoke, Virginia

Mary - Duly noted. It's a fine line between quality information and complicated information, but we'll keep working on it!