Let this post serve to introduce Freaky Friday here on the blog.
FREAKY IDEA #1
Y’know how oil is made from decaying plant and/or animal matter rotting deep within the Earth, where it’s subjected to heat and pressure?
Maybe it’s not.
The theory that this is where oil comes from is known as the biogenic ("created from life") theory of the origin of petroleum.
But there’s this other theory, too: The abiogenic ("not created from life") theory.
This theory has been around for a while, but it seems to be attracting more attention of late, even though most western petroleum geologists totally diss it. (This is not the case in Russia, where the theory gets a lot more respect.)
Astronomy has found lots of hydrocarbons in space–on other planets in the solar system–and so it seems that there was a lot of hydrocarbon floating around the area where the solar system coalesced. It’s part of the planets. That would suggest that there’s a lot of hydrocarbons down in the Earth, too. Maybe some of those hydrocarbons take the form of . . . oil.
If so, what are the implications? According to one of the leading western exponents of the abiogenic origin of petroleum theory–the noted physicist Thomas Gold–it would mean that we’ve got a lot more oil on our hands than we thought. In other words, we ain’t nowhere close to running out. Here’s what he told WIRED magazine (link to come in a post later today):
WIRED: Perhaps there was little interest in your idea in the 1980s and ’90s because oil prices stayed low.
GOLD: But that made it clear that the geologists’ [biogenic] theory [which predicted a rapidly diminishing supply] and its predictions were wrong.
Maybe they were off by only a little – after all, the price is now rising steeply.But that’s only because of the OPEC cartel, which is held together still by the information that the oil is going to run out.
If it’s clear that the fields are refilling, then of course the cartel greatly weakens, and the individual nations will try to outsell the others. So it’s very important economically who is in the right.
How much more oil is there in your view of the world than in the view of traditional petroleum geology?
Oh, a few hundred times more.
A few hundred times more! Only he goes on to point out that it ain’t all accessible right now. The reason has to do with the refilling oil fields he mentioned.
On Gold’s theory, the near-surface reservoirs of oil–which we’re tapping into–are sitting on top of lower reserves, which are under pressure. By sucking the oil out of the top reservoirs, we’re creating a low-pressure area, and the oil down in the high-pressure reserves is siphoned up into the reservoirs we’ve been emptying, thus refilling the oil fields.
And there’s evidence that that’s happening, as even folks who disagree with Gold admit.
Gold cites other evidence for his theory, such as the fact that he was able to drill down through six kilometers of granite in Sweden and find oil. Granite is an igneous rock, so it shouldn’t have oil under it, especially at those depths, if the biogenic theory is correct. You’d expect to find oil on that model in sedimentary rock since sedimentary rock is made from compressed dirt (etc.) just as the biogenic theory of oil holds it to be made from compressed biomatter.
He also points to where in the world we find a lot of oil as evidence for his theory:
What led you to think the liquids holding open these pores [in rock way deep in the Earth] might be hydrocarbons left over from the Earth’s creation?
Probably reading Arthur Holmes, who had written so many things that were egocentric expressions of opinion. He was the great father of geology – and still is – but I found his work quite shocking.
Shocking in what way?Whenever he discussed some facts that were inconvenient, he would say that they should not be taken seriously, that it was purely due to chance. He far exceeded his information with the opinions that were mixed in – statements like, "Oil is not found in association with coal except accidentally, and not found in volcanic areas except accidentally." Look at the arc of Indonesia, from Burma to New Guinea: It’s far more earthquakey than any other place we know. It makes lots of small, deep earthquakes, it’s along exactly that belt that you have volcanoes – and you have petroleum along the whole of the line. "Never found in association with volcanoes except accidentally" – that’s a hell of an accident.
So I spent years having these problems with geological texts. And then in the 1970s I had some discussions with King Hubbert, the leading American petroleum geologist, whose word counted as God’s. I remember having lunch with him in Washington and saying, "Well, how can you account for the fact that we have oil-producing regions that are so large, that can go from Turkey to Iran to the Persian Gulf and under the plains of Saudi Arabia and on into the mountains of Oman, and the whole of that stretch is oil?"
Why would that be unlikely, given the traditional view of oil forming from organic matter in buried sediments?
Because the oil is all the same, while the sediments in that region are completely different: different ages, different materials. There’s no sedimentary material that is uniform throughout the region, that has any coherence. And this just never struck him. His response was, "In geology we don’t try and explain things – we just report what we see."
Hubbert’s views changed the wealth of nations. The belief that oil would run out, and that those with a source could always increase the price, caused the early-’70s oil crisis. That, to my mind, is a completely stupid attitude that shifted many billions of dollars away from some countries and toward others.
If Hubbert’s view is wrong, it may have bequeathed to us a significant chunk of the Middle East problem, which created super-wealthy corrupt Middle-Eastern states, which may not have ended up super-rich otherwise.
On the other hand, if Gold is correct then the influence of the Middle East may diminish–not because they run out of oil but because we’ve got a lot more oil available around the globe than we thought.
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Now, one operations note: I’ve gotten a bit tired of late putting disclaimers into posts only to have folks not register them and fire off criticisms based on their assumption that I was advocating something I wasn’t. For example, I didn’t claim that Newsweek literally lied, I didn’t say RealID was a good idea, and I most certainly didn’t say that the needs of an employee should be ignored in determining his wages. In fact, I had disclaimers of varying sorts in each of the posts to indicate that I wasn’t saying these things. But some folks apparently didn’t attend to the disclaimers and got bent out of shape, so allow me to add a big red disclaimer to this post. It also applies to the other Freaky Friday posts I’m about to make.
THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: I have no idea if the abiogenic theory of the origin of petroleum is correct. I’m not advocating this theory or any of Gold’s theories. I’m presenting interesting ideas for consideration. Nothing more.
Time will tell whether or not it is correct.
More to follow.
Hi Jimmy!
My father likes this theory as well as many of the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky .
Well, the debate is sorta beside the point, because we need to address the problems with our current use of hydrocarbon fuels for their continued use to be sustainable over the long term. Oil companies have not shown much appetite for anything that might dampen demand. That’s a problem with private enterprise, rather than gum’mint — and energy enterprises tend to be highly short-term in strategy in our current marketplace.
Jimmy, I think you should let the old matters drop, but since you didn’t—
You wrote: “For example, I didn’t claim that [1] Newsweek literally lied, [2] I didn’t say RealID was a good idea, and [3] I most certainly didn’t say that the needs of an employee should be ignored in determining his wages.”
re 1: Your headline read: “Newsweek Lied, People Died.” Intelligent people will read YOUR headline as YOUR saying that Newsweek lied.
re 2: I didn’t read 2, or if I did, I don’t remember what it was about.
re 3: I, and some others, did not claim that you did that, rather, what we complained about was the unfairness of the comparison you drew between hypothetical nut-case demands for money and the real needs of actual families to make living salaries.
Sometimes, it seeems, bloggers can caricature the criticism they receive, even though I WELL recognize that it is usually the other way around in cases such as yours.
“THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER” — afraid of getting the Rober Sungennis treatment?
Fascinating theory. I’ve heard of it before, but always in tandem with some “Chariots of The Gods”/Atlantis/end-times nonsense.
Having vastly more oil might be a negative in the long run, if it causes interest in efficient technologies to wane.
I find this to be fascinating. Even if we discovered that there was 10 times the amount of oil we previously thought, I do think that we should continue to look into alternate sources of fuel. There is a ridiculous amount of energy in the ground outside of petroleum. I think our best future has to be in hydrogen. If we can work to make it less volatile and reasonable in price we have the perfect source of energy.
Hydrogen can be gathered from a number of sources but the best would most likely be water. Once burned of course the byproduct would be the return to pure water. It would be a perfect cycle and one that would actually not only produce less pollutants than gasoline but the byproduct would actually lead to a cleaner water and oxygen supply.
Does it take a considerable amount of energy to break up water into oxygen and water, sure but one could do this with a hydro electric dam or what not designated for only that purpose. One need not put a hydroelectric dam in the car.
Jimmy,
Is Ed your friend? He sure is critical.
Of course, there is also the dual-source theory. Which maybe nobody but myself thinks is possilbe, which states that some oil is biogenic and some abiogenic.
I also think we need to determine other sources of energy, if only because of polution issues. Oh, and the pure persuit of science. And because I want flying cars.
>>Having vastly more oil might be a negative in the long run, if it causes interest in efficient technologies to wane.
I don’t understand this? If the premise that oil isn’t in short supply is driving this effort, and the premise turns out to be false, then why would the waning of interest in unnecessary technology be negative? It seems that the reallocation of the dollars and effort to other more needed areas would be wholly positive.
S: Your post was not directed to me, but I’m happy to reply (I’ve nothing else going on today).
1. Jimmy and I have been friends a long time.
2. I am not infallible. I admire those who are.
3. My friends, however, (so far, anyway) are not infallible (their friendship with me being proof of that, eh?)
4. My friends and I understand that our public utterances are susceptible to public counter-utterances, friendship being no bar to that. In fact, friednship’s not even relevant to that (an attitude that admittedly might suppress my friends’ numbers.)
5. If one can read my post above and describe it as “sure is critical” in the common way that expression is taken today, I don’t know what to say.
Are you related to Thomas Peters?
Never mind I figured out who you are… so of course the answer is yes.
Whether biogenic or abiogenic, we are NOT running out of oil. You can calculate the amount of oil (in barrels) consumed in one year by the entire world, then liberally extrapolate that same amount over 100 years, then do the proper measurement conversion… and come out to an entire historical world consumption of oil at approx. 100 cubic miles. Conservative numbers would make that number evenm smaller than that. In comparison, the Pacific Ocean alone is 100,000 cubic miles of water. The entire surface water volume of the planet is much more than that. I think it can be safely assumed that amount of underground petroleum is much more prevalent than this miniscule fraction of a percentage of surface water…. biogenic or abiogenic. IMHO.
Hi Shib: Well, I am related to a Thomas Peters, but I imagine a lot of Ed Peters-s could that about a lot of Thomas Peters-s…best, edp.
Catholic Gunslinger –
Consuming oil is a fairly inefficient process that has a lot of unpleasant side effects. Even if oil was limitless and free, in the long term we should develop alternatives.
“If one can read my post above and describe it as “sure is critical” in the common way that expression is taken today, I don’t know what to say.”
No, I am taking EVERY post I have read of yours into account when I say that;)
“I think it can be safely assumed that amount of underground petroleum is much more prevalent than this miniscule fraction of a percentage of surface water…. biogenic or abiogenic.” — What makes you say this? Earth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles, slightly less than a perfect ball with a diameter of 7913.5 miles. If the water of the Pacific (given your figures) were spread out across this ball, the depth would be 2.68 feet. Are you saying that if all the oil was pumped to the surface there would be more than that? I don’t think so.
Not at all. Re-read my post. The total amount of global consumption of petroleum (for it’s history) is less than 100 CUBIC miles of oil. The Pacific Ocean alone as a body of water (for comparison purposes) is 100 THOUSAND cubic miles of water. The amount of oil consumed (as a fluid) is less than one-tenth of one percent of an equivalent amount of Pacific salt water. Add ALL of the surface water on this planet, and that percentage drops significantly. One begins to then understand just how large this planet really is.
It’s the same thing with global population. You run the numbers per acre or square mile in relation to liveable land area and you quickly realize that that world is nowhere near being “overpopulated”. You can take the population of the USA, give a family of four an entire acre of land to live on, build a home, grow a garden, etc… and what you get is the entire USA living comfortably in an area less than the size of Texas, with room to spare… and that leaves the other 49 states completely void of humans. And, just for comparison purposes, you can take all 6 BILLION people on the planet and place them in rows and columns into that same small geographical area and each person would be standing imore than 35 feet away from each other…. again, with the rest of the planet completed empty of human beings.
The point I’m making is that this place called Earth is one frelling big planet. One that can hold, contain, withstand a heck of a lot more than we give it credit for.
I do agree that we should continually look for the MOST efficient and the LEAST polluting uses of energy that will also provide all the energy we need (not as easy as it sounds). Even postulating an infinite supply of oil, if we find something more efficient, obviously, we should use it (“efficient” also means no more expensive overall than what we already use).
I find it kind of funny that some people rave over electric cars as if electricity were simply pulled out of the air.