Abiotic oil?

A few years ago, Rod mentioned Dr. Gold of Cornell and I followed the oil game with him in mind, though oil was not his forte. His theory, if I have the time line right, which only echoes Russian experts, is that natural forces of heat and pressure, coupled with methane, create oil, not dead dinosaurs and ferns. Rather, the oil is contaminated, more or less, as it sits around in pockets near the top levels of the earth. A reference HERE and
Here
A counter paper, HERE, sort of nit picking about scientific method and silly conclusory nay saying. Sounds a lot like, sorry, global warming arguments: there are thousands of modern proofs, now, better than the an old contrary inability to prove the organic basis. It would have been nice to have been referred to one of the thousands.

The abiotic (no dead things) theory says in stable areas the pressures and forces will get trapped, with huge pressure building. In unstable areas, the pressure just gets out in volcanoes.

It is an interesting theory, especially because of Dr. Golds' remarkable history. I recall reading a few years back, the Russians found oil in a formerly dried out well. They were taking the theory seriously. The Ruskies also dug the deepest oil well ever, way lower than any life forms could contribute to (40,000 feet.) Here are some notes for your interest

1. Eugene Island's reservoir is refilled after being pumped to 4,000 bbls a day. Here

A sample:

Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods
Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.

Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.

Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.

Fill 'er Up

All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility that oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be.

"It kind of blew me away," says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Connected to Woods Hole since 1973, Dr. Whelan says she considered herself a traditional thinker until she encountered the phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, she says, "I believe there is a huge system of oil just migrating" deep underground.

Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that it was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that took millions of years. Since the economies of entire countries ride on the fundamental notion that oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence "would change the way people see the game, turn the world view upside down," says Daniel Yergin, a petroleum futurist and industry consultant in Cambridge, Mass. "Oil and renewable resource are not words that often appear in the same sentence."....

2. Jerome Corsi has co-authored a book taking on the subject of a false oil scare, a strangle hold, and feels the oil is finite argument is "Maltusian." The authors have decided Gold was correct. You may remember Corsi as putting together the Swift Bioad book. He is lawyer, so must be accepted as truly wise.

...Still, Aramco insists that Saudi oil reserves are underestimated, not overestimated, as outside experts such as Simmons contend. Simmons typically sees more rapid depletion rates and a higher "water cut" than the Saudis report. Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi now maintains that the kingdom's proven oil reserves are more properly estimated at 1.2 trillion barrels, hugely more than the 261 billion barrels of reserves previously estimated. "Saudi Arabia now has 1.2 trillion barrels of estimated reserve," Al-Naimi told an international conference in April 2004. "This estimate is very conservative. Our analysis gives us reason to be very optimistic. We are continuing to discover new resources, and we are using new technologies to extract even more oil from existing reserves."....

His point was that the increase, perhaps, involved replenishment. At lease, that is my second hand reporting. Of course, there is more.

3. On Russia

"Russians started drilling Kola SG-3, an exploration well which finally reached a staggering world record depth of 40,230 feet. Since then, Russian oil majors including Yukos have quietly drilled more than 310 successful super-deep oil wells, and put them into production. Last year Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest single oil producer, and is now set to completely dominate global oil production and sales for the next century."[11]
{see: an odd cite filled with conspiracy facts. These dopey people actually exist I guess Israel has all the wells: Russia Proves 'Peak Oil' is a Misleading Zionist Scam).

4. Dr. Gold's hydrocarbon view is substantiated, in space, some report. You don't need dead things to produce hydrocarbons. (Which I don't think was really in question by scientists.) This obviates the logic of oil source. Wired article here

Titan's Organic Hydrocarbons Dwarf Earth's Oil Reserves
By John Borland EmailFebruary 13, 2008 | 2:54:40 PMCategories: Space

Titan_rings Before we get too excited here, let's remember. There's still an energy problem. Global warming, too. Nobody's going to be importing oil substitutes from Titan anytime soon.

That said, data from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn has shown that the ringed planet's moon has "hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth," according to research reported in the Geophysical Research Letters. The stuff is literally falling from the sky.

Lakes are scattered across the moon, with each of several dozen holding more hydrocarbon liquid – largely in the form of methane and ethane -- than all of Earth's oil and gas reserves....

5. An article on how Stalin pushed for research into abiotic oil going back to the 1940s.

... The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not the work of any one single man -- nor of a few men. The modern theory was developed by hundreds of scientists in the (now former) U.S.S.R., including many of the finest geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, and thermodynamicists of that country. There have now been more than two generations of geologists, geophysicists, chemists, and other scientists in the U.S.S.R. who have worked upon and contributed to the development of the modern theory. (Kropotkin 1956; Anisimov, Vasilyev et al. 1959; Kudryavtsev 1959; Porfir'yev 1959; Kudryavtsev 1963; Raznitsyn 1963; Krayushkin 1965; Markevich 1966; Dolenko 1968; Dolenko 1971; Linetskii 1974; Letnikov, Karpov et al. 1977; Porfir'yev and Klochko 1981; Krayushkin 1984)

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not untested or speculative. On the contrary, the modern theory was severely challenged by many traditionally-minded geologists at the time of its introduction; and during the first decade thenafter, the modern theory was thoroughly examined, extensively reviewed, powerfully debated, and rigorously tested. Every year following 1951, there were important scientific conferences organized in the U.S.S.R. to debate and evaluate the modern theory, its development, and its predictions. The All-Union conferences in petroleum and petroleum geology in the years 1952-1964/5 dealt particularly with this subject. (During the period when the modern theory was being subjected to extensive critical challenge and testing, a number of the men pointed out that there had never been any similar critical review or testing of the traditional hypothesis that petroleum might somehow have evolved spontaneously from biological detritus.)....

6. A cite from a former believer in the "unprovable" fossil fuel, peak energy club, F William Engdahl:

......In 1956, Prof. Vladimir Porfir’yev announced their (some Ruskie academy of bla bla bla) conclusions: ‘Crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths.’ The Soviet geologists had turned Western orthodox geology on its head. They called their theory of oil origin the ‘a-biotic’ theory—non-biological—to distinguish from the Western biological theory of origins...

Up to the 1960’s supposed US scientists such as Dr Frank Press, White House science advisor referred to Wegener as “lunatic.” Geologists at the end of the 1960’s were forced to eat their words as Wegener offered the only interpretation that allowed them to discover the vast oil resources of the North Sea. Perhaps in some decades Western geologists will rethink their mythology of fossil origins and realize what the Russians have known since the 1950’s. In the meantime Moscow holds a massive energy trump card.

7. The folks at Oxford distrust a finding that oil may be much older than life, repeated from above. Both sides: Here

The certainty of many professionals is intriguing, while many of the fossil fuel group are just mouthing what they have heard and calling others "lunatic," a sure sign of no argument. Apparently, no one has proved, nor thought it necessary, oil is organic in its genesis.

The current panic, it is suggested, is fine with the oil producers and a product of the peak oil certainty. Indeed, you would have to go further an suspect that professionals either don't want to rock the boat, like those who do not proclaim they can't see "global warming," or are part of the intentional quiet conspiracy. The money coming in will give anyone pause.

If you assume the abiotic genesis is correct, then eventually the cat will be out of the bag. Prices will drop, even just on the news, and we will hear a collective sigh, but....then what? The producers will have a wind fall, but that will be at an end.

The Arab nations have to think ahead a long way, if they suspect his is true. There is extreme profit being generated there, but the nations have extreme costs. They are "oil rich" which is often derogatorily. Their people are just clipping coupon, so to speak. They do not have other resources to sell and may have to think up an economy (or sell solar power.)

Then, what do the rest of us do? We need to move on to alternative energy, I submit, for various reason, but will we just stop the metamorphosis being driven by fear. Hope not, but it may happen. If oil drops to a low price, will people demand new cars, distributed energy, etc. I think our nature is such that the great leap forward will take a step backward.

If planners know this and continue to instill fear, like those who say that they promote global warming even if it does not exist so our societies change, are somewhere between stupid and evil. I thought we learned that social engineering does not work, other than create war. There is always the great fear of CO2 to fall back on, but that is nothing like $5 gallon of gas to spark changes.

In the meantime, button up for a bad winter.