Here, we report a type strain AST-10 representing a novel species Sulfurimonas hongkongensis within Epsilonproteobacteria, which is involved in marine sedimentary sulfur oxidation and denitrification. Strain AST-10(T) (= DSM 22096(T) = JCM 18418(T)) was isolated from the coastal sediment at the Kai Tak Approach Channel connected to Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. It grew chemolithoautotrophicall...

The discovery of hydrocarbons (mainly gas) in commercial quantities from Gondwanan sediments in the Mandapeta ®eld of Krishna-Godavari Basin, India, provided impetus for intensi®ed exploration in Mandapeta and the adjoining Kommugudem, Draksharama and Endamuru ®elds. Both oil and gas have been found in the reservoirs of Mandapeta (Triassic) and Golapalli (Early Cretaceous) formations. Mature, l...

The Critical Zone (CZ) incorporates all aspects of the earth’s environment from the vegetation canopy to the bottom of groundwater. CZ researchers target processes that cross timescales from that of water fluxes (milliseconds to decades) to that of the evolution of landforms (thousands to tens of millions of years). Conceptual and numerical models are used to investigate the important fluxes: w...

Heavy crude oil is known as oil that is highly viscous and of a higher density than that of conventional oil. Sand reservoirs containing heavy oil generally consist of unconsolidated sediments deposited at a shallow burial depth, with high porosity and permeability. In seismic exploration, acoustic impedance inversion is a commonly used tool in reservoir prediction. However, due to the unconsol...

Oilfield Review Winter 2014/2015: 26, no. 4. Copyright © 2015 Schlumberger. FMI is a mark of Schlumberger. Sediments undergo several modifications to become the source rocks, reservoirs and seals that generate and contain petroleum reserves. The changes that occur between deposition and lithification, collectively known as diagenesis, include the processes of compaction, cementation, dissolutio...

Life can persist under severe osmotic stress and low water activity in hypersaline environments. On Mars, evidence for the past presence of saline bodies of water is prevalent and resulted in the widespread deposition of sulfate and chloride salts. Here we investigate Spotted Lake (British Columbia, Canada), a hypersaline lake with extreme (>3 M) levels of sulfate salts as an exemplar of the co...

Biyad Formation is mainly made up of clastic sediments that contain substantial amount of proven crude oil in the eastern Yemen. The Byiad clastic is divided into Upper and Lower Biyad clastic units. Several vertical wells have been drilled and penetrated this formation. This study is concerned with the petrophysical evaluation by means of well log data of the Lower Cretaceous rocks at the East...

Black shales in the geologic record have long been considered to reflect deposition under anoxic or even euxinic conditions. Although bottom-water anoxia favors deposition of black shales, certain biological indicators, such as benthic fossils and bioturbation, suggest that bottom-water conditions may not have been as persistently anoxic as commonly presumed. Examination of twelve marine carbon...

The deep marine subsurface is a vast habitat for microbial life where cells may live on geologic timescales. Because DNA in sediments may be preserved on long timescales, ribosomal RNA (rRNA) is suggested to be a proxy for the active fraction of a microbial community in the subsurface. During an investigation of eukaryotic 18S rRNA by amplicon pyrosequencing, unique profiles of Fungi were found...

Introduction: Building on Bridges et al. [2003], we are currently studying the general geologic history and evolution of the Isidis basin based on topographic and imaging data obtained by orbiting spacecraft such as Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and Mars Odyssey. This study complements our recently completed analyses on Syrtis Major to the west [Hiesinger and Head, 2003] and the transition between...