Scientific Insights and Economic Value from State-of-the-Art Organic Geochemistry

This meeting will cover a wide range of topics addressing currently emerging organic geochemistry research in areas relevant to the energy industry (particularly unconventional resources), modern and recent sediments and sedimentary process and also aspects of organic matter in the environment. Presentations will range from the initial biosynthesis of organic compounds through sedimentary deposition, microbially mediated diagenesis and thermo-chemical degradation processes to the generation and production of oil and gas. A keynote of the conference will be the consideration of a range of different stable isotopes highlighted as tools useful in tracking organic matter through this continuum. Again this will cover a wide range from understanding fundamental cellular processes through to abiogenic impacts.

Highlighting exciting new results from current or very recent PhD research has been highly successful at previous meetings and this tradition will be continued with an unspecified "emerging research" theme. Understanding carbon mass balance within the geosphere and the environmental implications of moving carbon from one reservoir to another is the underlying motivation for considering both anthropogenic and geogenic processes in a temporal context. The biomarker theme will focus on the biosynthesis aspect of these compounds. New approaches to unlocking information preserved in the high molecular weight and polar fractions of organic matter will be considered in a session dealing with asphaltenes and kerogen. Applications of these tools range from characterizing unconventional resources to determining dominant microbiological inputs to organic rich sediments.