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Russian discovery blows gas theory
out of the oil window
Russian microbiologists have proved that methane is evolved by archaebacteria living in the hot salt solutions circulating deep in the crust. The research, by Nadezhda Verkhovtseva of Lomonosov Moscow State University, implies that organic-rich sediment may not be the only source for useful hydrocarbon reserves. The samples were obtained from the Vorotilovskaya Deep Well (70km north of Nizhny Novgorod). The implication of this is that many areas, formerly rejected as hydrocarbon plays should now be looked at with renewed interest.
Gas (Methane) Hydrates B
A New Frontier
Recent mapping conducted by the USGS off North Carolina and South Carolina shows large accumulations of methane hydrates. A pair of relatively small areas, each about the size of the State of Rhode Island, shows intense concentrations of gas hydrates. USGS scientists estimate that these areas contain more than 1,300 trillion cubic feet of methane gas, an amount representing more than 70 times the 1989 gas consumption of the United States. Some of the gas was formed by bacteria in the sediments, but some may be derived from deep strata of the Carolina Trough. The Carolina Trough is a significant offshore oil and gas frontier area where no wells have been drilled.
Life After Death in the Deep Sea
by Richard A. Lutz,
Timothy M. Shank,
and Robert Evans
Abstract: The first examples of life forms not dependent on solar energy were discovered by scientists using towed cameras and the submersible Alvin in 1977 along hydrothermal vents of the Galapagos Rift. Since then, investigators have made hundreds of dives aboard Alvin to learn more about these unusual ecological communities. In the spring of 1991, Alvin and its tender, Atlantis II, happened to be on station above the East Pacific Rise between 9 and 10 degrees north latitude only a few days after the axial summit trough 2,550 meters below the surface erupted, obliterating a thriving vent community. The authors made numerous dives on the 9N Biotransect over the ensuing 10 years. Their article describes the return of life to the vents and the ecological succession they witnessed.
Life on other Planets
by Thomas Gold
May 1997
Highly oxidized iron is abundant on Mars, and very small-grained magnetite can then be expected to be one of the accumulated residues of microbial processes; so can iron sulfide and methane-derived carbonates. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are the large molecules that might remain in a rock that originally contained crude oil but then was exposed for millions of years to the high vacuum of space. All these substances have been found in the discovery meteorite, closely packaged to each other, and this by itself would make a strong case for the microbial interpretation. In addition, there are small objects seen under scanning electron microscopy that may well be fossils of microbes. While the last item by itself would not be conclusive evidence, the combination of this together with oil and the three residue products make a strong case for the microbial explanation. It is true that each step can occur without biological intervention, but the chance of finding by chance the evidence for all three solids in a small volume, together with hydrocarbons, seems to be very low. Many terrestrial oil and gas wells show just such an association (but an association with helium also, which the meteorite could not have transported through space).

There was also a recent FR thread about Thomas Gold's death. For the time being (dunno how long -- I've found some of these emeritus' web pages are left up for years by various universities) a number of Gold's papers related to this are still online, besides the one linked and quoted above.

Recharging of oil and gas fields
by Thomas Gold
September 1999
Vertically stacked domains of hydrocarbons have been found in all cases where drilling was sufficient to display them. The consistent tendency to find hydrocarbons below any producing region has been given the name of "Koudyavtsev's Rule", after the important Russian petroleum investigator who discovered this effect and collected a very large number of examples of it from all parts of the world. This rule would be the consequence of a deep origin of hydrocarbons and a steady process of outgassing... [In Kuwait] [t]he extraction of g[r]oundwater at the shallow levels results in the disintegration of the barrier to the oil levels just below, and the water in the wells is suddenly replaced by oil. The delicate pressure balance that had established itself, just up to the level that the strength of the rock could bear, had been upset. Similarly in stacked domains of hydrocarbons, the lower domains will be opened quickly, once the upper ones had been depleted and the fluid pressure thereby reduced sufficiently. This process can be fast, just as it is in Kuwait, where we had the advantage that a different liquid (water) filled the upper domain, so that one could identify the rupture to the oil filled domain below.

This only works in foreign countries. In the US -- uniquely in the world -- drilling for oil results in the mass extinction of all species and earthquakes. ;')

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent