Hydrocarbons in the deep Earth? (Oil comes from non-plant sources)

Physorg.com ^ | July 26, 2009 | Carnegie Institution

[Smokin' Joe]

But little if any fossils in oil.

No, instead, oil is often found in fossils (Carbonate reservoir primary porosity is often fossil related).

[Teotwawki]

In "Black Gold Stranglehold," Jerome Corsi and Craig Smith expose the fraudulent science that has made America so vulnerable: the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and that it is a finite resource. This book reveals the conclusions reached by Dr. Thomas Gold, a professor at Cornell University, in his seminal book "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels" (Copernicus Books, 1998) and accepted by many in the scientific community that oil is not a product of fossils and prehistoric forests but rather the bio-product of a continuing biochemical reaction below the earth's surface that is brought to attainable depths by the centrifugal forces of the earth's rotation.

[Smokin' Joe]

1- The easy to get to oil has already been exploited.

2- A lot of the locations where the oil is located are not friendly to the US.

3- We have more oil here in the US, but the “Green” lobby seems to be dead set against any exploitation of any fossil fuel, or even expansion of our refinement capabilities.

The kid has always been pretty level headed and smart. He seems to think if we don’t start getting some kind of rational energy policy - we are going to keep getting bit. He said we need to try to move away from petroleum - it would be better for us if we didn’t use so much - but for the foreseeable future we are going to need all of it we can get, and we better exploit every available resource we have. Is the young man off base?-—

Sounds pretty much spot-on. I am also a geologist, and have been in the oil industry 30 years.

[Islander7]

"...Is the young man off base?-...."

No, he is exactly right. There is no substitute for oil.

My experience in the oil patch was a lot of years ago! Even then, there were fields which were not economically feasible to develop. They are now, or are marginal, based on current crude prices. The US has abundant oil reserves, some are difficult to get to, others are in areas the leftists...er...enviornmentalists do not want developed.

It would be great to 'get off' oil, but there is nothing else out there for decades that offers what oil does.

[Straight Vermonter]

Ping

[mc5cents]

We have more oil here in the US, but the “Green” lobby seems to be dead set against any exploitation of any fossil fuel, or even expansion of our refinement capabilities.

Just where or when did the "green lobby" become a branch of government. And why is is so powerful?

[SVTCobra03]

Yada, yada, yada. See post #60.

[mysterio]

In that case, I hope the earth starts producing oil abiogenically under the United States. Additionally, I hope to grow a tree in my back yard that produces gold coins instead of fruit.

[Ann Archy]

DUH!! I have said that Oil doesn’t come from dead plants and animals....it MUST come from PRESSURE on ROCKS and SAND.

[Ann Archy]

AMEN! AMEN! All one has to do is stop and think for one minute about the AMOUNT of dead plants and animals there would have to have been for all those barrels to be taken out......just one minute of thinking time.

[Smokin' Joe]

There are also oil fields, which were depleted decades ago, that are now partially replenished

Oil generally does not exist by itself in a reservoir, but with varying amounts of natural gas and water.

If the well is produced too rapidly, the well will 'cone in' as the lower viscosity water invades the oil saturated porosity near the wellbore and the well will produce water, without producing nearly as much of the oil in the formation as is possible.

Temporarily abandon that wellbore, and over time, the density stratification in the reservoir will be reestablished and the well may be produced, albeit at a slower rate.

Acid fracs or inappropriate hydrofracing will also change reservoir characteristics and can render the well unproductive, but a new wellbore into the same formation can produce that oil if it is outside the radius of the improper frac.

To some that may appear to be a reservoir 'recharging' when in reality it is just oil that was not produced.

Similar results have been noted in anisotropic reservoirs where unproduced oil remains in the reservoir due to differential permeability or permeability barriers and is later tapped by drilling horizontally into the unproduced portion of the reservoir. This may mean 'new' oil from old wells, but it is not a recharging of the reservoir, only recovery of oil which had not been produced.

In some geological situations, it is possible for oil to migrate from a deeper reservoir into a shallower one via fractures or along a fault, and these fractures can be opened up by hydrofracing or other events. This may have the appearance of recharging a reservoir, but is attributable to natural petroleum migration and conventionally accepted as such.

In every intance I know of (not saying I know everything, which is why I have asked for sources to the contrary), petroleum containing reservoir strata are either accompanied by source rock, or in some instances, are self-sourcing. That is to say, they contain the organic rich layers or more disseminated deposits which contribute to the formation of the hydrocarbons we produce. Keep in mind that thirty to fifty feet of highly carbonaceous shale may only produce a few feet of oil, and that exceedingly thick oil columns in strata are more the exception than the norm. Those are often the result of oil migrating into a structural trap, and while they may be fairly extensive in area, the area and thickness of the rock which was the source are multiples of the thickness and areal extent of the 'layer' of oil present. Note that that oil is not in a layer by itself, but is contained in void space which is usually anywhere from three percent to twenty percent of the of the producing rock layer. Thirty feet of pay at 15% porosity, with (an unheard-of) 100% oil saturation would be only 4.5 feet of oil, some of which will remain unrecoverable because it will, even in a water/CO2 flood situation (secondary/tertiary recovery), remain and coat the surfaces it was in contact with, or be unable to be pushed through pore throats.

Consider, too, that the organic matter involved includes not just the organisms themselves, but any biomass-derived byproducts which were deposited at the time, and consider the mass of plankton which have lived in a cubic mile of seawater in the course of only a year (with all their 'byproducts', and the biogenic concept (one which has led to the discovery of every viable reservoir on the planet) works just fine.

The are several, circular oil fields, which appear to have been created by ancient meteor strikes.

There are, but the 'creation' of the oil field is the result of the meteor/bolide disrupting the local geological structure and providing an ejecta rim for oil to accumulate in, as well as a base for other strata to be deposited on, creating a structural high for oil to migrate into.

While the impact creates a favorable structure, and the shockwave of the impact may cause a die-off which causes biotic accumulation far beyond the ability of the surviving ecosystem to digest, it would also cause rapid burial of the newly killed biota, and would more support the biogenic origin of any resulting petroleum as a source bed would be created. When that source bed reaches thermal maturity (temperature and compression from burial), oil would be produced and migrate into favorable reservoir strata, accumulating in the structure.

[crusty old prospector]

Primarily, source rocks are made up of microscopic organisms that lived in the photic zone (water shallow enough for sunlight to penetrate). They die and fall to the bottom over a long period of time. The water at the bottom of the ocean must be anoxic or bacteria and other organisms will consume this organic mush. The main component of these source rocks is dead algae, not terrestrial plants and animals. Woody material, such as leaves and parts of trees, that make it to the ocean (say, during a big flood on the Mississippi) can become source rocks but their chemical make-up only allows them to give off natural gas.

[mad_as_he$$]

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/26/science/geochemist-says-oil-fieldsmay-be-refilled-naturally.html?pagewanted=all

[Smokin' Joe]

Just where or when did the "green lobby" become a branch of government. And why is is so powerful?

When Leftisits hijacked the conservation movement in the late '60s, they began a systematic crusade to 'save the Earth'. Granted, in those days pollution was in many areas a problem which did threaten humans and the food chain we rely on, especially wild animals (fish, shrimp, etc.). Conservationists and ecologists were for the preservation of the essential elements of dynamic systems which could continue to sustain themselves, and for keeping excessive levels of industrial pollutants out of the food chain, partly because they affected humans.

That part was not bad, but as with all good things, once the job has been done and the crusade is over, no one wants to say "Good enough!" and go home. By the mid 70s the seed money the KGB had provided at least one (now dubbed "environmental") organization had paid off, and a new breed emerged, the "environmentalist". These were in contrast to the Ecologists and Conservationists, who had sought to preserve a dynamic system, because the thrust of Environmentalism was to preserve a static 'snapshot' of a dynamic system. As Conservationists either left the Environmental movement (the awareness they sought had been achieved, and many did not agree with the anti-industrial mission of the environmentalists) even Organizations such as the Sierra Club shifted their emphasis from cleaning trails to activism aimed at stymying industrial development, even under the regulations which had been passed to keep the environment clean.

With the increasing leftist influence, partly because of the void left by those who dropped out, the targets of emissions standards, water purity, etc. became moving targets with increasingly stringent criteria.

Recall, the KGB had donated seed money to get at least one organization which achieved international prominence to use the excuse of protecting the environment to hinder Western industrial development. Numerous true believers and legions of useful idiots swelled the ranks, donated money, wrote congress, etc.

Lobbying for increasngly stringent standards, beyond noticeable or scientifically significant effect, had the effect of causing porduction facillities (steel plants, power plants, etc., to be out of spec even while they were under construction, and modifications became prohibitively expensive.

No wonder so much 'outsourcing' occurred during this era.

No politician wanted to be portrayed in the media as anti-environment, (especially with pictures of cute furry things in the ad) because it would cost votes--especially with Dems whose liberal voter base is often swayed by emotional appeals, so the politicians catered to the environmental lobby for the absence of bad PR and donations.

With the formation of the EPA, both the decline of US industry and the environmental lobby's power were pretty much locked in.

When it comes to science, the idea of 100 parts per billion of sodium in your water might seem outrageous (especially if hyped as such), when in actuality, that may be far less than is natural in the groundwater in your area. A little hype, and virtually any industry can be made to seem bad, and only 'good' science (realism) can combat that.

A few 'buzz' substances became words which would produce knee-jerk reactions: Alar, Dioxin, and lately, Carbon Dioxide, all have produced reactions by the public which are as disproportionate to the general threat as the hype which produced the reaction.

A decline in emphasis on solid science and math has improved the playing field for junk science as well.

Why is it so poserful? Because the leftist press has become a tool of the tools. With a lawsuit on behalf of the snot dipping bot fly, a multi-billion dollar refinery project can be held up indefinitely, and the company which tried to build something which would benefit the economy and the nation will be spun as "destroyers of the Earth" in ads replete with cute babies and fuzzy critters causing public outcry among the 'touchy feely set' and seriously impact their bottom line at best, and subject them to a Congressional Investigation (conducted by leftists, reported by leftists)at worst, with all the expense and possibly company-killing effect that can have.

Until the American people have established that we are part of a functioning ecosystem and that includes our industry, we will be suckling at the hind teat.

Unless that happens soon (a re-establishment of prioities), we will fade industrially and become a second rate power at best. As the Soviets were well aware, we cannot be a superpower if we have to rely on outside sources for our atrategic materials, especially oil, refined products, and metals, and our economy suffers seriously when we cannot create wealth by refining and manufacturing things from raw materials.

[Doomonyou]

RL

[Kevmo]

bmflr