The discovery of of the world's first major underground oilfield in Pennsylvania, USA in 1859 sparked the continuing era of the world's reliance on cheap energy from oil and gas. This unit begins by examining the geological characteristics of petroleum and the key ingredients necessary to form oil and gas accumulations. Then there is a brief description of industrial operations during the life cycle of an oilfield, starting with subsurface analysis and exploration drilling. The unit also highlights the role of safety and environmental management as an integral part of the petroleum business and concludes with a short review of global resources and non-conventional petroleum.

Geoscience: the Earth and its Resources is a series of lecture videos with downloadable slides and video transcripts. The lectures explore the earth's interior and the processes forming mountains and sedimentary basins; how the sediments are formed, transported, deposited and deformed; and the behavior of petroleum and water resources. The course focuses on key fundamental processes, exploring their nature and quantitative interactions, and how this acquired knowledge is used to predict the nature and behavior of the Earth subsurface.

Students will learn about the basics of plate tectonics; processes that control the formation of mountains and sedimentary basins; how sediments are formed, transported and deposited; how rocks are deformed, and how knowledge of deformation increases the reliability of subsurface predictions; petroleum geology; and water geology.

Lecture subjects:
1. The rocks, the earth and plate tectonics
2. The lithosphere: horizontal deformations, upward and downward vertical movements, and mountains and sedimentary basins
3. Climate, sediment production, and deposition in the continental domain
4. Sediments in the marine domain
5. Hydrocarbon geology
6. Hydrogeology

Teach the Earth is a portal to thousands of open educational resources from dozens of earth education websites. Teach the Earth supports teaching and learning about the Earth by providing online resources for educators in the geosciences and related fields. Resources include classroom activities, course descriptions and syllabi, information about pedagogical strategies, topical collections, and more.

Topics include atmospheric science, biogeoscience, climate change, earthquakes, ecology, energy, environmental geology, environmental science, geochemistry, geodesy, geomorphology, geophysics, GIS/remote sensing, hydrology/hydrogeology, minerals and mineralogy, oceanography, paleontology, petrology, planetary science, plate tectonics, rock cycle, sedimentary geology, soil, structural geology, water, and volcanoes.