Joseph Silvi is a graduate of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a graduate research assistant. His research focuses on California's oil production, refining and fuel supply, and their environmental, economic and security implications. He is a co-author of several studies with researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California on California's growing dependence on imported crude oil and refined fuels. His peer-reviewed work in Environmental Research Communications found that emissions from natural seeps and orphaned wells in Southern California are orders of magnitude greater than fugitive emissions from oil production equipment.