Activity Held in West Texas and New Mexico, April 2-9
Each year, ExxonMobil organizes a field trip for some of the graduating undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students that they have interviewed for jobs during the previous fall interview period. The trip is taught by the company’s top experts and exposes the students to modern methods of petroleum exploration.
Sabrina Martinez, a senior, undergraduate geology student from the University of Houston’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was one of 26 undergraduate students who participated in the camp in April 2016. The other 25 students selected for the course area were undergraduate geology majors attending the University of Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Oregon.
The group of students and their ExxonMobil instructors spent one week visiting classic field localities in the Permian basin of west Texas and New Mexico where they learned about hydrocarbon play elements and how these elements are controlled by the principles of sequence stratigraphy. The group was divided into teams of four students who worked together in the field. Each team gave a group presentation on their interpretation of hydrocarbon play elements in the area at the end of the course.
Martinez is currently working on a senior research project using geomorphic indices to constrain tectonically active areas within the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. She plans to graduate from UH in May 2017 and attend graduate school in fall 2017 to pursue research interests in structural geology and sedimentology.