Oman Forum

An answer to global warming might lie in the rocky outcrops of the desert in Oman. Imperial Magazine interviews Dr Cedric John.

I'm a geologist. I'm interested in rocks, so I tend to go where the rocks are. I go on about 10 trips a year, often to the Middle East as a large part of my activity is on Middle Eastern rocks that act as reservoirs for oil and gas.

We’re trying to understand how carbonate rocks, like those that store oil and gas, were formed, so that we can predict their characteristics under the surface. These rocks are deep underground in Qatar, but in Oman they’re at the surface where we can see them. They have tiny spaces inside, like a sponge, which can hold oil or gas. If you inject liquid carbon dioxide into them, that can also be trapped under the surface. We go to field locations, we measure things, we collect rock samples, we bring those samples back to London and we look at them in thin sections under a microscope. The composition of the rocks tells us something about their history. >>