Muscat: The mountains around Muscat are full of fractures and some of these may lead to landslides if road construction destabilises them, according to Dr. Janos Urai, Inaugural Dean of the Faculty of Sciences and Head of the Department of Applied Geosciences at the German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech).
Fractures are all around us. "When you drop a glass of water on the floor it will break and the water will flow to the floor through the fractures," he added.
On almost every trip to a wadi of the Omani Hajar mountains you will see beautiful patterns of white lines in grey rocks, these are so called fractures, explained the German professor.
To study fractures in rocks, GUtech will host an international field workshop on Saturday (February 27) at GUtech.
The workshop is financially sponsored by German Oil Industry Consortium DGMK.
"The results of this workshop are highly relevant for the oil industry," according to a statement issued by the university on Friday.
Dr. Urai and Professor Bas den Brok of the Department of Applied Geosciences at GUtech will represent GUtech in this group.
"Fractures are a beautiful part of Oman's Natural heritage but also very important for the evolution of oil and gas fields and groundwater," said Professor Bas den Brok.
"Fractures are not only on the surface. They occur at great depth in rocks of the Earth and can even form caves," he explained. "But the most important feature of fractures in the rocks of the earth is that they can contain oil or gas or groundwater," believes the GuTech professor.
The springs in the Oman mountains from which the water flows into the Afalaj systems flows through fractures in the mountain. Many wells producing Oman's oil and gas are pumping the oil from fractures.
"It is very important to understand the development of fractures better. For this reason, GUtech's Department of Applied Geoscience collaborates with a multi-disciplinary group of researchers at four Universities in Europe to study the dynamics of fractures and mineral vein systems in the Earth's Crust," said Dr. Urai.
"We are looking forward to hosting this internationally recognised group of experts for a workshop at GUtech, and a field project in Jebel Akhdar after the workshop. These projects will bring benefit to the Oil Industry by allowing better exploration and production of oil and gas, and to the Omani people by allowing better management of groundwater resources".
This internationally-recognised group of experts will study the fractures and veins in Jebel Akhdar in field studies using different modelling techniques.
The results will be integrated into models for the fracture systems in the rocks of Jebel Akhdar, which is a world-class natural laboratory, studied by a range of state-of-the-art analytical techniques.
