Welcome to a new, occasional post where I will posit a question that’s bugging me either because I can’t find enough info on it, don’t know if I can trust what I’ve read, or am just too damn lazy to research myself, allowing you, my readers, to do the work for me. So, let’s get to the first question.
Several times on No Agenda I’ve heard Adam and John mention abiotic oil in passing. Having never heard of it before, I decided to look it up and found this rather wordy article from a couple of years ago. If true, it means the price of oil is far more inflated than we are led to believe because it is anything but a scarce resource. In fact, we will effectively never run out. I’ve always wondered how there could have been that many dinosaurs and plants to create that much oil that has been found, despite the time involved.
Is this theory real or crap? A scam or a diversion? What do you think?
Stalin’s team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a ‘fossil fuel’ but is a natural product of planet earth – the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide – two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth’s crust. This continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the ‘death’ of planet earth in millions of years’ time. The high pressure, as well as centrifugal acceleration from the earth’s rotation, causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the earth’s crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields. Oil is still being produced in great abundance, and is a sustainable resource – by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource. All we have to do is develop better geotechnical science to predict where it is and learn how to drill down deep enough to get to it. So far, the Russians have drilled to more than 13 km and found oil. In contrast, the deepest any Western oil company has drilled is around 4.5 km.
A team consisting of Russian scientists and Dr J. F. Kenney, of Gas Resources Corporation, Houston, USA, have actually built a reactor vessel and proven that oil is produced from calcium carbonate and iron oxide, as detailed on the Gas Resources website.
I always hope for “an expert” to stumble upon this blog while searching for some arcane related point and bored enough to drop a few lines. It does happen, just not enough.
Its not possible this type of issue doesn’t get discussed on some high tech blog/system? Are those not included in the WWW? Beneath their contempt are we?
The LOGIC that Ah Yea presents #2 sways me but I come to rest on the general consensus. Ever notice that funny things happen at the extremes. Both High and Low Heat, Both High and Low Temps and reality changes.
And to that the notion of time, LONG TIME, and reality changes again. Saw an article last week that a high temp/pressure container can produce electricity as the material gets compressed. Input/Output not detailed. High Temp/High Prssure transmutes many materials. Even now we can use relatively low temp/heat to destroy/crack/dissemble toxic waste.
Yes, maybe some basic science stimulus/jobs bucks could be spent on High Temp/Pressure Machines and see what they could do for us.
#3
Thomas Gold went to the alps, where there were no sedimentary layers containing dinosaurs, and found oil. Not much but it was there.
The basic idea is that methane does come from the earth. Methane is a hydrocarbon, and someplace down there a microorganism feeds on the methane, like ones near deep undersea vents, and poops out oil.
We don’t come in contact with these things because they live in a very high temperature and pressure environment.
Oil from dinosaurs is the biggest conventional wisdom fail since religion.
#5 Wrong.
If we got the microorganisms that make the oil it would still be uneconomic because of the energy required to make a high temp/pressure environment for them to operate in.
That is NOT the issue though. Oil exploration has been premised on a biological origin. If oil comes from another process oil deposits are going to be arrayed in an entirely different way.
The breakdown is that there is much, much more oil than is generally believed.
I have a client that’s in the oil drilling business and we had a serous convo about it. He says it’s all BS. Also, if it were real, it would be too big of a secret to hide.
Huh. Is anyone else getting a whole heap of spam links at the bottom of this page?
Perhaps if we heat and compress them, they’ll turn into some kind of self sustaining internet fuel.
http://tinyurl.com/spammy-oily-stuff
#23
There is no conspiracy. Everyone has a boss. If you follow the playbook and fail you keep your job, generally. If you put the company’s money in a play against the consensus and fail you are done.
When the credit crisis hit the people who made out like bandits were those who were too odd or rich to give a damn about what everybody else thought.
In this case a spectacular discovery in a non-consensus spot has a much smaller payoff. Once the concept is proven bigger players will move in and reap the rewards anyway.
Molecular markers show that the vast majority of oil is biogenic. There may be limited amounts produced abiogenically, but test wells that should have found it come up dry or with only trace amounts which test as biogenic. If you go hunting for oil using the assumption that it’s old carboniferous forests, you find oil. If you go hunting in areas that didn’t have old forests, you don’t (or you find very very limited amounts).
It’s not an either/or, as these people seem to claim. The theory is not insane, but simply cannot account for amount of oil we’ve found in areas where we would expect it if it were biogenic.
Here is a podcast that gets into this very thing…along with some other ineresting topics. But unlike AC and JCD, they look into the actual evidence, and don’t just riff on the headline until they can pattern-find it into a conspiracy.
http://therealitycheck.libsyn.com/trc_94_abiogenic_oil_homosexuality_and_evolution_koala_bears
I’m in the business of finding oil.
Bottom line is we’d be drilling in different places if oil was produced in any quantity through processes other than the ones we know about.
Not saying that it can’t be produced abiogenically or that microorganisms can’t produce some too, but not in anything like the quantities we need. Not even quantities that make it worth drilling for. The Russians tried, the Scandinavians tried, the Canadians tried, (and they are in just exactly the regions that should produce it)….they got a few dozen barrels. Better seismic imaging is not showing it either.
So it’s not crackpot to have looked for it, but we have and it’s not there.
#23 is right.
Hydrocarbons, which include gas, oil, and coal, come from layers of rock containing long dead animals and plants. Some of it is in the forms of oil shale, which contains oil, but that oil is only extracted by using a lot of energy to do the extraction. Same for tar sands or coal liquefaction.
Is it possible that other, easier to extract sources of hydrocarbons will be found? Yes, but chances are the new sources will be hard to extract also. If cheap oil is found, we’ll hear about it.
The last new sources of oil in the US and Canada I heard of (I lived in Minnesota at the time) were in western North Dakota and presumably nearby Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I don’t know how easy/hard this stuff is to extract, as I worked as a chemical engineer a long time ago and am out of the loop on oil extraction.
“Uncle Dave Wants 2 Know: Abiotic (Non-fossil Generated) Oil — Is It For Real?”
NO IT IS NOT!!!
Yes oil is created in an natural process, it is not a magical creation of God (sorry Fundies).
But, the amount of new oil created in a ground in a year is the amount of oil we use up in about an hour. If we can reduce our oil useage by about 99.99%, we can call oil a “renewable” resource. Ain’t going to happen.
Also, Mark Curry’s constant reliance on abiotic oil as proof against “peak oil” doesn’t make him a “crackpot”, it makes him sound like a complete idiot. (as are all the posts above saying it is for real)
Peak Oil is for real, and we have already passed the peak. Figure out how to deal with it fast instead of wishing for magical fantasies like abiotic oil to fix it for us.
Triple Point For Hydrocarbons?
50,000 atmospheres, a temperature of approximately 1500°C
Ouch!
#28. ArianeB. Thank you.
Uncle Dave, The Oil Drum blog/forum/discussion page is a great place to go for views from people in the business…learned more scary stuff about the current spill there than I wanted to.
Tried to add a link but the post never showed…probably got stopped by filtering that apparently does not stop the viagra spam spill at the bottom of the page.
Google it.
Uncle Dave: as a rational man with an open mind, I think many reading this thread would be interested in any initial/final/developing thoughts you may have as this thread becomes a day old or so and lost to active consideration?
Whats interesting is how many “general concepts” are demonstrated already in the discussion.
Not too different than so many other subjects other than idiot bloggers with an axe to grind.
In a word, no. Chemical analysis of oil indicates its how it was created through different plant and animal mass. If you want a good discussion regarding oil.
# 19 McCullough said, “I would like to know how all them critters got that deep into the earth though.”
And there must have been a constant parade of dinosaurs swimming out a few miles before drowning and sinking to the bottom of the sea.
Coal and petroleum are a lot alike and fossils of dearly departed plants and animals have been found in coal. Thus coal and petroleum must have been created by dead biomass. Bad logic whether true or not.
I have read three or four believable scenarios about the creation of abiotic oil. I have yet to read a believable theory about the mechanics of biological oil production. How did all those plants and animals collect in just the right place to get subsumed by the earth and pressured into oil? And, since it would take centuries to collect sufficient biomass, why didn’t it decay first?
I tend to believe the abiotic theories MAY be true. After all, we applied great heat to my Aunt Trudy when she died and, instead of a puddle of oil, we only got some ashes.
Darned good question.
Abiotic METHANE is clearly here (and on other planets/moons)
And who’s to say what reactions can take place with all the temperature/pressure/metals variation down below.
But that said, I suspect most petroleum discovered so far is algae swamps of old.
Oil is not scarce, there is no real shortage of oil. There is however a shortage of cheap easily accessible oil which will continue to get worse. Acceptable alternative energy source. Look down, if you can see past your belly those things down there are called feet start walking. I used to walk five miles to school, uphill both ways, in the snow. Gee I’m getting old.
Crap.
This idea originated with Thomas Gold in the 1950′s. He argued that earthquakes, large meteor strikes, and the like would cause deep abiologic oil to migrate nearer to the surface by creating a network of cracks. So far, so good, but science should be testable. He drilled in a large meteor crater in Sweden and didn’t find much other than the petroleum based drilling lubricant he pumped down there himself.
Oil didn’t come from dinosaurs and plants. Most of it came from algae, of which the Earth has always had a gracious plenty.
Plants became coal and dinosaurs became fossils.
There is some speculation that oil is abiotic in origin — generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead of an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless. All unrefined oil carries microscopic evidence of the organisms from which it was formed. These organisms can be traced through the fossil record to specific time periods when quantities of oil were formed.
Likewise, there are two primal energy forces operating on this planet, and all forms of energy descend from one of these two. The first is the internal form of energy heating the Earth’s interior. This primal energy comes from radioactive decay and from the heat energy originally generated during accretion of the planet some 4.6 billion years ago. There are no known mechanisms for transferring this internal energy into any secondary energy source. And the chemistry of magma does not compare to the chemistry of hydrocarbons. Magma is lacking in carbon compounds, and hydrocarbons are lacking in silicates. If hydrocarbons were generated from magma, then you would expect to see some closer kinship in their chemistry.
# 36 clancys_daddy said, “I used to walk five miles to school, uphill both ways, in the snow.”
Oh, we used to dream of peacefully walking to school in the snow. We had to climb the vertical ice face of a super glacier while fighting off pterodactyls the whole way…