Offshore drilling expert to open Science Forum series Tuesday

The timely subject of
offshore deep drilling
will be the topic of the Sept. 7 Science Forum Lecture when top oil engineer Iraj Ershaghi, Ph.D., gives a talk titled “Health, Safety and the Environment in Deepwater Drilling and Operations,” at noon, Tuesday, Sept. 7, in Leatherby Libraries, 3
^rd
floor, Malloy Performance Portico. Light refreshments will be served.

“Dr. Ershaghi is an expert in petroleum engineering and has agreed to give an overview of the deep drilling technology and also how the drilling rig exploded and the environmental impact due to huge oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Ramesh P. Singh, Ph.D. professor, Earth System Science and Remote Sensing School of Earth and Environmental Sciences,
Schmid College of Science
.

Ershaghi directs the
USC Petroleum Engineering Program
and is a professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and co-executive director of the Chevron–USC Center for Smart Oilfield Technologies.

Following the explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, Ershaghi was one of the most oft-quoted experts in media coverage of the disaster, including in this
Wall Street Journal video
, in which he uses soda bottles to demonstrate the mechanics of offshore drilling.