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Hydrocarbons Could Form Deep In the Earth From Methane, Not Animal Remains
Popular Science ^

Posted on 04/16/2011 3:24:54 PM PDT by Perdogg

A new study demonstrates how high hydrocarbons could be formed from methane deep within the Earth, aside from the compression and heating of ancient animal remains over the eons. Fused-methane oil would be far less common than your typical petroleum, of course, but the study shows abiogenic hydrocarbons could conceivably occur in some of the planet’s high-pressure and high-temperature zones.

(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Science
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; oil; thomasgold
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To: newfreep
Call me crazy but if oil comes from fossils, why do we drill in the ocean and gulf?

Oil tends to be found in geologic basins.

21 posted on 04/16/2011 4:36:08 PM PDT by fso301
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To: Perdogg

One kind of oil is organic and the other is inorganic, one has C13 isotope and the other has C14 isotope. This has been going around for a long time.


22 posted on 04/16/2011 4:38:26 PM PDT by mountainlion (America land of the free because of the Brave.)
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To: saltus

Haha!

Nothing pushes oil down multiple kilometers.

It’s a naturally-occuring mineral.


23 posted on 04/16/2011 4:39:26 PM PDT by Christian Engineer Mass (25ish Cambridge MA grad student. Many conservative Christians my age out there? __ Click my name)
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To: Pearls Before Swine
"Most men can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their lives."

Dr. Thomas Gold, author of The Deep Hot Biosphere

24 posted on 04/16/2011 4:41:58 PM PDT by Noumenon ("How do we know when the Government is like that guy with the van and the handcuffs?" --Henry Bowman)
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To: fso301; newfreep

“Call me crazy but if oil comes from fossils, why do we drill in the ocean and gulf?
Oil tends to be found in geologic basins.”

The ocean floor crust is much thinner than the crust on land. They aren’t just low spots on a uniformly-thick surface. The oceans floors are all thinner.


25 posted on 04/16/2011 4:42:40 PM PDT by Christian Engineer Mass (25ish Cambridge MA grad student. Many conservative Christians my age out there? __ Click my name)
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To: Christian Engineer Mass
“There are literally oceans of oil deep underground, far below where life has EVER existed.

What examples of such oceans can you offer up?

For sake of discussion, assume an old Earth. Let's also assume a buildup of organic sediment at a rate of one sixteenth of an inch per year. Over a billion years, that would be 986 miles of accumulated sediment. This in part explains how microorganisms can be found so deep into the crust.

26 posted on 04/16/2011 4:44:49 PM PDT by fso301
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To: Perdogg
But the theory fell out of favor, in part because no one ever found any abiogenic oil deposits.

This statement is flat-out false.

Oil was found deep in Sweden's Siljan ring, 6 kilometers deep in granite basement rock. This oil was clearly of abiogenic origin.

27 posted on 04/16/2011 4:44:58 PM PDT by John Valentine
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To: Christian Engineer Mass; newfreep
The ocean floor crust is much thinner than the crust on land. They aren’t just low spots on a uniformly-thick surface. The oceans floors are all thinner.

Yes the crust is definitely thinner in deep ocean. However, even in deep ocean fields, I believe paydirt is still almost always if not always found in sedimentary strata.

28 posted on 04/16/2011 4:48:55 PM PDT by fso301
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To: fso301

1/16th of an inch per year is hugely overstated, and does not take into account oxidative processes.

The REAL rate of organic accumulation is probably more like NIL.

And your hypothesis does NOT explain how this stuff would get buried miles deep. Nor does it explain how oil would be found beneath granitic basement rock.


29 posted on 04/16/2011 4:50:02 PM PDT by John Valentine
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To: fso301; newfreep
"I believe paydirt is still almost always if not always found in sedimentary strata." Sure. If I were oil, I'd find it pretty hard to penetrate igneous rock too
30 posted on 04/16/2011 4:52:28 PM PDT by Christian Engineer Mass (25ish Cambridge MA grad student. Many conservative Christians my age out there? __ Click my name)
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To: fso301

Microorganisms are found deep within the crust because most likely that is where life on Earth evolved, not because they were carried down from the surface.

Read The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold.


31 posted on 04/16/2011 4:54:03 PM PDT by John Valentine
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thanks Perdogg.

Hydrocarbons in the deep earth (abiogenic)
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | April 14, 2011 | Anne M Stark
Posted on 04/15/2011 7:32:28 PM PDT by decimon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2705619/posts


32 posted on 04/16/2011 4:54:29 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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Catastrophism
 
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·
 

33 posted on 04/16/2011 4:55:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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To: Perdogg

Its documented deep mines in non-carboniferous ore bodies still have to deal with methane buildup far in excess from what is expected from human presence. Funny why no one has ever asked the obvious......>PS


34 posted on 04/16/2011 5:01:32 PM PDT by PiperShade
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Couple points to make:
1. i agree that most hydrocarbons is formed deep in the earth and not from zooplankton or Phytoplankton

2. We are presently still in quaternary ice age which means the earth average temperatures are a great deal warmer for the last hundreds of millions of years. Which means a great deal more life existed on the earth then it does today.

Here is an interesting observation few people think about. Dinosaurs lived for hundreds of millions of years yet they would have all died in one typical winter season we see today.

35 posted on 04/16/2011 5:13:28 PM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric cartman voice* 'I love you guys')
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To: Perdogg
blow to peak oil theory

It doesn't matter how oil was formed. What matters is the current rate of extraction is FAR greater any any likely rate of replenishment, and is eventually going to exhaust available supplies.

We have been extracting oil in significant quantities for only the last 70 years or so, and are spending more and more time and effort finding oil and a LOT more effort extracting it from hard-to-reach places.

Yes, if oil is being continually replenished, we may find all the reservoirs refilled in a few hundred million years -- but by then we will have moved on to other fuel sources.

36 posted on 04/16/2011 5:25:06 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 ("It is only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything" -- Fight Club)
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To: newfreep

Offshore drilling is done because no one owns the subsoil rights. Same reason for drilling on federal lands — no patchwork of private owners to haggle with just to drill one freakin’ well.


37 posted on 04/16/2011 5:27:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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Dead link, saved from Thomas Gold's online papers archive on the Cornell servers:
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. ;')


38 posted on 04/16/2011 5:31:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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To: fso301

“Let’s also assume a buildup of organic sediment at a rate of one sixteenth of an inch per year”

Lol. That’s like the assumption they had about moon dust. A fraction of an inch * billions of years = OMG!! The lunar lander will sink out of sight! Hence duck feet & too-short ladder on the lunar lander.

Except no - the world isn’t like that.


39 posted on 04/16/2011 5:32:26 PM PDT by Christian Engineer Mass (25ish Cambridge MA grad student. Many conservative Christians my age out there? __ Click my name)
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To: John Valentine
The REAL rate of organic accumulation is probably more like NIL.

OK. Let's assume an accumulation rate of .00025 inches per year. After a billion years, you would have 4 miles of buildup.

And your hypothesis does NOT explain how this stuff would get buried miles deep.

I thought I addressed this above and in the prior post?

Nor does it explain how oil would be found beneath granitic basement rock.

I'm no geoloogist but my first guess might be folding and faulting

40 posted on 04/16/2011 5:56:47 PM PDT by fso301
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