Abiogenic Gas DebateThis paper, written by J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corp. in Houston and three Russian co-authors... present an evaluation of the chemical potentials and related thermodynamic affinities for n-alkanes... They also briefly describe the experimental production of petroleum hydrocarbons using only wetted marble (CaCO3) and solid iron oxide (FeO), in an apparatus allowing investigation at pressures up to 50 kbar and temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius. Kenney said there is no real debate about petroleum origination. "There has not been any 'debate' about the origin of hydrocarbons for over a century," he stated. "Competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological material since the last quarter of the 19th century." ...No one in the United States has been more associated with the theory of abiogenic petroleum than Thomas Gold, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, now retired. "The only real opponents to this story (of abiogenic origin) are in Western Europe and in the United States, and they are the professional petroleum geologists," he said.
by David Brown
November 2002
Dismissal of the Claims of a Biological Connection for Natural Petroleum.
J. F. Kenney
Joint Institute of The Physics of the Earth - Russian Academy of Sciences
Gas Resources Corporation, 11811 North Freeway, Houston, TX 77060, U.S.A.
Ac. Ye. F. Shnyukov
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Vladimirskaya Street 56, 252.601 Kiev, Ukraine
V. A. Krayushkin
Institute of Geological Sciences
O. Gonchara Street 55-B, 01054 Kiev, Ukraine
I. K. Karpov
Institute of Geochemistry - Russian Academy of Sciences
Favorskii Street 1a, 664.033 Irkutsk, RUSSIA
V. G. Kutcherov
Russian State University of Oil and Gas
Leninskii Prospect 65, 117.917 Moscow, Russia
I. N. Plotnikova
National Petroleum Company of Tatarstan (TatNeft S.A.)
Butlerov Street 45-54, 423.020 Kazan, Tatarstan, RUSSIA
excerpt
The claims which have traditionally been put forward to argue a connection between natural petroleum and biological matter have been subjected to scientific scrutiny and have been established to be baseless. The outcome of such scrutiny comes hardly as a surprise, given recognition of the constraints of thermodynamics upon the genesis of hydrocarbons.
If liquid hydrocarbons might evolve from biological detritus in the thermodynamic regime of the crust of the Earth, we could all expect to go to bed at night in our dotage, with white hair (or, at least, whatever might remain of same), a spreading waistline, and all the undesirable decrepitude of age, and to awake in the morning, clear eyed, with our hair returned of the color of our youth, with a slim waistline, a strong, flexible body, and with our sexual vigor restored. Alas, such is not to be. The merciless laws of thermodynamics do not accommodate folklore fables. Natural petroleum has no connection with biological matter.
http://www.gasresources.net/DisposalBioClaims.htm