God bless 'em...
Between their oil drilling & ethanol development, America & Americans could learn a lot from Brazil & Brazilians!
Being independent of foreign oil appears to only be an American dream.
This kind of simplistic, almost deliberately ignorant treatment of the theory of fossil origins of petroleum don't do anything to sway me to the author's point of view. There are plenty of fossil organic sources, many of which are plantktonic.
The writer does not understand Peak Oil Theory.
I read a week or so ago that Mexico had a big find off their coast also. I wish we were allowed to drill somewhere.
The author apparently got his petroleum education from looking at the dinosaur pictures on Sinclair filling station signs. No competent petroleum scientist has believed oil came from dinosaurs for ages -- well before I joined the industry more than 40 years ago.
None of this will impress peak-oil or fossil-fuel theorists, who expectedly will argue that the Brazil's offshore oil fields, regardless how large they might be, are doomed to deplete sooner or later.
He's right. Doesn't impress me. Petrobras is finding some moderately large reservoirs in areas that haven't been drilled before. The problem is that there aren't all that many areas like that left -- most have been explored.
Is oil still forming? Yes, of course. As long as the buried organic matter in the source rocks has reached the right temperature conditions. You can even form oil in source rock samples in the laboratory if you heat them.
The abiotic theory of oil seems more consistent with the geology, arguing that this type of deposit was sufficiently porous for upward-seeping hydrocarbons naturally formed in the Earth's mantle to pool in reservoirs.
Abiotic? Do these turbidite reservoirs sit on basement rocks? Apparently not. The USGS has concluded that the source rocks off the Brazilian coast are of Cretaceous age (145 - 65 million years ago).
Oil formed from organic matter in deeper sediments (i.e., source rocks) is typically found trapped in porous formations (in this case turbidites) shallower than the source rock. Oil is lighter than water and moves upward through the strata until trapped by impermeable layers. Then it pools in porous rock. That porous rock can be quite a bit younger than the source rocks where the oil comes from.
What geochemical molecular evidence does author have to suggest the oil is abiotic? None apparently.
bump
Here's part of the author's problem. The Oliocene dates from about 34 to 23 million years and the Miocene from 23 to 5.5 milllion years.
Here's a lecture by a Petrobras employee: Link. He describes the age of these sand-rich Brazilian turbidite reservoirs as 32.9 to 23 million years.
" ... The geological description of the Campos Basin suggests that the rock formations in which oil is being found are in Upper Oligocene to Lower Micocene deposits – in other words, deposits from the Cenozoic Era, dating back only some 24,000 years. ..."
Ummm, is the "Micocene" something new that this group has made up to ascribe to some imaginary paleontologic era, or their own whatever it is? And I know for a fact that the Oligocene which usually borders the "Miocene" (very similar in spelling, note) was well over 2 million years ago - so is this some kind of huge anomaly that only a handful of people know about?
OK, I'll keep reading.
Addendum to my last post - I can't read any more of this tripe - who is this author, Corsi? This is ridiculous.