Check out the story by The Advocate here.  

CES Part of NSF Gulf Coast Manufacturing Resiliency Center Award

The Center for Energy Study is part of a team led by Texas A&M University that was recently awarded a National Science Foundation planning grant to establish an Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Resiliency Enhancement and Disaster-Impact Interception (READII). The new center will address the critical need for examining the Gulf Coast's manufacturing sector and its supply chains to become more resilient to natural disasters, specifically hurricanes and floods.

David Dismukes, CES executive director, and a professor in the College of the Coast and Environment, will be part of this multidisciplinary team that includes representatives from institutions along the Gulf Coast who will provide expertise in system integration, disaster mitigation, economics, infrastructure, supply chain, system modeling, and optimization. Participants include the TEES Gas and Fuels Research Center at Texas A&M University. In addition to LSU and Texas A&M, participating universities include the University of Texas at Austin, Mississippi State University, Tuskegee University in Alabama, and Florida Atlantic University.

The ERC READII will address a number of key critical topics including the impact of natural disasters on manufacturing facilities and their respective supply chains, the root causes of manufacturing vulnerabilities, estimating the dynamic relationships between manufacturing industries and their local communities, and identifying novel and proactive strategies and decision tools to facilitate manufacturing resiliency.

"The resiliency of the manufacturing sector along the Gulf Coast is becoming more important as the industry expands with billions in new investments," said Dismukes. "This NSF award represents an excellent opportunity for CES to leverage over a decade's worth of research on the role of critical energy infrastructure in this manufacturing resiliency process."

LGS, BRGS Host Baton Rouge Flood Symposium

On Monday, August 13, the Louisiana Geological Survey, with co-sponsor Baton Rouge Geological Society, presented a symposium on the August 2016 flood that devastated much of the Baton Rouge area. The well-attended event featured presentations by geologists, meteorologists, engineers, a hydrologist and an economist and included a group panel discussion and a public Q&A session. John E. Johnston III of the Louisiana Geological Survey served as symposium chair.

Central topics included the need for better weather forecasting models, more accurate weather warning terminology, concerns about development within known floodplains, the changing size and locations of floodplains, and new tools for carrying out evacuation and relief efforts.

Read The Advocate's recap of the symposium here.

Dismukes Named to National Petroleum Council Committee on CCUS

In November, CES Executive Director David Dismukes was named to the National Petroleum Council's (NPC's) Committee on Carbon Capture, Use, and Storage (CCUS). CCUS is a process that captures carbon-dioxide emissions from sources such as coal-fired power plants to prevent it from entering Earth's atmosphere. Former BP America Inc. Chairman and President John C. Mingé chairs the committee, with Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette serving as government co-chair.

The committee's goal is to oversee CCUS's integration into the energy marketplace, specifically the petroleum industry, in an effort to meet the goal of reducing worldwide carbon emissions. Dismukes attended his first meeting of the CCUS Committee during a meeting of the NPC in Washington in early December.

Upton Contributes Chapter in La. Tax System Text

Assistant Professor Greg Upton contributed the chapter "Mineral Revenues" in the recently published book Exploring Long-Term Solutions for Louisiana's Tax System, by LSU Professor James Richardson, Tulane Economics Professors Steven M. Sheffrin and James Alm.

The book focuses on the economic status of the state, outlines its current tax structure and provides recommendations for reforming the state's use of sales tax, how its income tax is applied, and corporate and mineral revenue taxation.

The book is available for sale online.

Kaiser, Narra Coauthor Recent Publications

Earlier this year, CES Professor Mark Kaiser and Research Associate Sid Narra published "U.S. Gulf of Mexico pipeline activity statistics, trends and correlations" in Ships and Offshore Structures, 14(1): 1-22. The paper describes pipeline installation and decommissioning activity in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico circa 2016 and discusses active and out-of-service inventory trends.

Kaiser and Narra also published "A hybrid scenario-based decommissioning forecast for the shallow water U.S. Gulf of Mexico, 2018-2038" in Energy, 163(November): 1150-1177. The paper presents a model framework to estimate decommissioning activity in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico in water depth of less than 400 feet, a challenging problem due to the sheer number of structures, as well as their diverse types and uses.

View faculty research publications on the CES Bibliographies page.

Dismukes Facilitates MISO Regulators Meeting in NOLA

On December 11, CES Executive Director David Dismukes facilitated a meeting of public service commissioners from several states within the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) footprint. The senior level, policymaker-only meeting included a robust discussion about the long-term vision for the transmission grid serving the central portion of North America. Some of the detailed topics discussed in the meeting included accommodating future load growth, how to address expansive renewable energy development, and maximizing transmission grid benefits.

Radiation Safety News

 

Along with developing and implementing policies and procedures to protect LSU researchers who use radioactive materials, Radiation Safety Office (RSO) faculty and staff participate in numerous research, teaching and clinical activities throughout the year. Their work and honors from  this past summer and fall include the following:

Wei-Hsung Wang, RSO director and Center for Energy Studies professor, was appointed Chair of the Health Physics Society's Academic Education Committee. The committee works to assure that the quality and number of people entering the health physics profession meet the projected demand and also maintains the Health Physics Academic Education Resource Information website, where the education institution listing as well as other related information are provided. His term ends in July, 2022.

	RSO Radiation Specialist Amin M. Hamideh presents at the Health Physics Society annual meeting in July.

In July, Amin M. Hamideh, radiation specialist, gave an oral presentation on "Using Ba-133 as a calibration surrogate for simulation of gaseous I-131 in a silver zeolite cartridge" at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society in Cleveland, Ohio. The goal of the research project is to evaluate the calibration protocols for airborne radioactivity released during nuclear incidents. The study was co-investigated by Charles A. Wilson IV and Wei-Hsung Wang.

Also in July, Wang gave a lecture on "Radiation Awareness for Hospital Clinicians" at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center for the LSU Health Sciences Center Emergency Medicine Residency Program in Baton Rouge. More than 40 emergency physicians attended the event.
 

In October, Hamideh and Wang presented "Investigation of counting variations for point and planar radioactive sources inside a silver zeolite cartridge" at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Air Monitoring Users Group in Las Vegas.

Hamideh, Wang, and Charlie Wilson, radiation safety officer with the LSU Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices, coauthored the paper "Visualizing high-order decay after disequilibria," with Katherine R. Hendrickson and KennethL. Matthews II. The paper was published in the December 2018 issue of Health Physics, Volume 115.

Upton on LPB News Program

In November, Assistant Professor Greg Upton was interviewed by Louisiana Public Broadcasting for its news program Louisiana the State We're In for a segment on the changing roles of the state's upstream and downstream oil and gas sectors. Upton explains why the upstream has fallen off while downstream has thrived and addresses the issue of employment as it relates to the activity in the downstream sector as well as energy exports, which open up the market to volatility.

View the segment here.

Goddard Publishes Memoir on Early Career in Venezuela

Don Goddard, retired CES associate professor and former director of the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council, recently published a memoir recounting the early days of his career as a geologist in his native Venezuela. In the book, titled Exploring for Minerals and Oil among Gentlemen and Scoundrels, Goddard describes encounters with corrupt government officials, as well as memorable coworkers and colorful locals who worked as guides and hosts in Venezuela's jungles and mountains.

Goddard said the book, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Alan Irureta," "explains how corrupt politicians from the 1950s up until 2018 are responsible for the destruction of the country's social and economic well-being and especially of its once flourishing oil industry."  

The book is available for purchase here.