Petroleum geologist Kurt Rudolph will give talk at KU colloquium

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Department of Geology will host a 2024 Distinguished Lecturer with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists this week for its ongoing scientific lecture series.

Kurt Rudolph will present “Assembly of Pangea, a View from Laurentia: Paleozoic Orogenies and their Impact on Basin Evolution and Petroleum Systems” at noon Feb. 8 in G192 Slawson Hall. The presentation is open to the public and will be available over Zoom; register to attend online. Evan Franseen, professor of geology, will host the event.

Paleozoic North America has experienced multiple mountain building events, from Ordovician to Permian, on all margins of the continent, Rudolph noted in his abstract for this presentation. These have had a profound effect on the resulting complex basins and their associated petroleum systems. Subsequent uplift, erosion and overprinting of these ancient systems impedes the direct observation of their tectonic history. However, the basin sedimentary records are more complete and provide additional insights into the timing and style of the mountain building events. In his study, Rudolph employed ~90 1D basin models, ~30 inverse flexural models, isopachs, and paleogeographic maps to better understand the Paleozoic history of North America.

About Kurt Rudolph

Rudolph received a bachelor’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree from the University of Texas. He began his career as an exploration geologist with Unocal in 1978 until he joined Exxon Production Research in 1981. He held a variety of positions at Exxon/ExxonMobil, including research geologist, chief interpreter in Kuala Lumpur, technical adviser for the Africa and Middle East region, and hydrocarbon systems resource manager. From 2002 until his retirement in 2015, he was chief geoscientist with ExxonMobil Exploration Company in Houston. Since then, Rudolph has been an adjunct professor at the University of Houston and Rice University.  

Rudolph has won Wallace Pratt Awards for the best AAPG Bulletin paper in 1994 and 2017, was an AAPG-SEG Distinguished Lecturer for 2001-2002 and 2023-24, was the AAPG Michael Halbouty Lecturer for 2007 and won the best paper award for the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) in 2015.