Earth Is An Oil-Producing Machine — We're Not Running Out

Investors Business Daily ^ | 11/04/2015 | KERRY JACKSON

[expat_panama]

Ever since M. King Hubbert in the 1950s convinced a lot of people with his "peak oil" theory that production would collapse and we'd eventually exhaust our crude supplies, the clock has been running. And running. And it will continue to run for some time, as technology and new discoveries show that there's still an ocean of oil under our feet.

[snip]

A BP official told the magazine that "energy resources are plentiful. Concerns over running out of oil and gas have disappeared."

Things are so good, in fact, that Engineering and Technology says "with the use of the innovative technologies, available fossil fuel resources could increase from the current 2.9 trillion barrels of oil equivalent to 4.8 trillion by 2050, which is almost twice as much as the projected global demand." That number could even reach 7.5 trillion barrels if technology and exploration techniques advance even faster.

This information backs up the idea that Earth is actually an oil-producing machine. We call energy sources such as crude oil and natural gas fossil fuels based on the assumption that they are the products of decaying organisms, maybe even dinosaurs themselves. But the label is a misnomer. Research from the last decade found that hydrocarbons are synthesized abiotically.

In other words, as Science magazine has reported...

[snip]

But for now, enjoy our cheap, abundant and efficient "fossil" fuels.

[thackney]

The regardless of the source, you believe in a finite amount relative to our rate of use?

[ShadowAce]

So--we get one ton of crude oil per ton of organic matter?

That's a pretty good efficiency rate.

[thackney]

No. We use one ton of crude oil for one ton of organic matter produced per year.

We are fortunate that the earth had 400 million years or so to build up a supply for our use.

We are consuming far faster that it is producing. We have a ways to go, but we will also use more per year in the future, for a while at least.

[Theo]

“Research from the last decade found that hydrocarbons are synthesized abiotically.”

Then we should stop calling them “fossil fuels.” They’re likely not.

[crusty old prospector]

I’ll give you a simple assignment. The United States is filled with depleted oil fields, from New York to California, Alaska to Texas. The fields are there because they are traps of varying types. Anticlines, fault-line, unconformity, stratigraphic, etc. Show me one of them that has suddenly been recharged and then returns to flush production. Just one.

[PapaBear3625]

It doesn't matter if hydrocarbons are synthesized abioticly.

What matters is the RATE of new production, versus the RATE of consumption. If hydrocarbons were being produced, historically, at the rate we are currently extracting them, then the Earth would have been covered in oil by the time we started drilling.

[BitWielder1]

Do you understand how much oil has been produced, and how that relates to the biotic mass on the earth over 400 million years?

I should have done the math first, I stand corrected.

Identification of Microfossils are used in the oil industry.

That is good information, thank you.

[RFEngineer]

‘Twas pulling your leg

[Irishguy]

that would leave a lot of oil still to be discovered, would it not?. if all we have used is 1%...well then there is no peak oil, sinc we still have 99% to go. all we have is a knowledge gap on getting it...

im a kinda half glass full type i guess..

also i dont listen to saudi oil ministers, well at all come to think of it but i do recall one who said something that actually made sense

the stone age didnt stop because lack of stones, we found something better...the oil age will go likewise, it wont end for lack of oil, we will get something better (my memory version not an exact quote)

the good news for the world is there is no shortage, at least for a century or more. that gives us the time to gain the knowledge to leave it behind and use something else.

[Smokin' Joe]

I can't say about every well, only the 300 or so I worked from North Dakota to Nevada. I have to take the word of other professionals who worked the rest.

You are looking at the ground up material from an 8 3/4 inch (or smaller) cylinder of rock you drilled. From that a lot can be determined, and even more if you are looking at core (either 4 or 5 inch diameter cylinder of rock). Biological activity leaves chemical markers which indicate association with that. Those markers are present in oil, and can even help determine if the oil came from a marine (salt water) or freshwater lake environment (like the Green River Formation).

There is always more to learn. But the bottom line is that the portion we have sampled is the surviving ocean bottom from any era earlier than Cretaceous, and that survived on the continental plate, not the oceanic plate which has been subducted by now.

So given we get to look at a fraction of the (estimated) 30% of the surviving sediments from any given pre-Cretaceous epoch, and not all of that was under water, we do only get to look at a small piece of the puzzle. We have greatly advanced in our ability to make educated guesses about what was going on elsewhere, based on the effect it had on the rocks which did survive, but that isn't absolute.

But, and there is always a but, that surviving rock is the rock we are getting oil out of (from those geological periods). The rock that isn't present any more (subducted, metamorphosed in mountain building events, or eroded away) may have produced oil which migrated into some of that rock, but for the most part what you see is what you get.

You can believe the people who drilled the wells have had people who described the samples taken from the wellbore during drilling and recorded that data (most states require that by law), and those samples were preserved in many instances for future review.

Nothing to get something examined like a profit motive.

If I thought there was a good source of abiotic oil that could be exploited, I'd be out pushing the prospect myself, holding out for an override. Even a small one would mean retirement for me.

[thackney]

Sadly, too many people let wishful thinking believe this true.

Exploration under the understanding of biotic formation produces oil for our use.

Exploration under the theory of abiotic oil formation produces cash from the gullible, occasionally including governments.

[DungeonMaster]

The regardless of the source, you believe in a finite amount relative to our rate of use?

Definitely a finite amount. The earth is of finite size even if it magically produced oil without bio matter.

Also, if the fossil fuel reserves were not based on one stand of bio matter being compressed by the flood, it changes the overall affect of burning it all.

Math time... 7 trillion barrels of oil / 225 million square miles of earth surface... 31,000 barrels for a square mile. That comes out to .01 barrel per square yard. Hmmm. Just thinking out loud here.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

the "data imply that hydrocarbons are produced chemically" from carbon found in Earth's mantle.

I thought the science was settled. < /ba dum, tish>

Didn't some Russian scientist propose this in the fifties?

[RaceBannon]

The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics.

Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant Vice President for a national bank.

She entered public life at a young age, as a finalist in the Miss Teen of America pageant. She also served as the Public Relations Director for a statewide political organization.

Jacki studied Economics, Spanish, and World History at Marshall University (Society of Yeager Scholars), Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and the University of Zaragoza in Spain. She is an alumna of the Vanderbilt University Law School, where she served as the President of the law school’s Federalist Society chapter.

Jacki has an extensive network in her six overstuffed rolodexes from which the show draws its guests—including industry leaders representing all parts of the energy sector (oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar, and wind), and government officials, journalists, and political insiders. Often, Jacki will know the day’s most-wanted guest and be able to secure the guest with a personal call.

Jacki is from the Ohio River Valley, where the shale runs deep. She descends from a long line of energy workers, including roughnecks, railroaders, coal miners, and nuclear energy specialists.

Listen to Jacki Daily Podcasts at Jacki's webpage by clicking here!

[thackney]

that would leave a lot of oil still to be discovered, would it not?

All organic matter does not become oil. Not 1% of all organic matter, or even 0.01%.

the stone age didnt stop because lack of stones, we found something better...the oil age will go likewise, it wont end for lack of oil, we will get something better (my memory version not an exact quote)

Absolutely. We won't run out of oil. It will become expensive enough that we will leave it for something else.

That is likely a combination of a dwindling resource and improvements in another technology.

So I personally don't worry about it, but I don't put false hope in believing it will always be there.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2784952/posts?page=9#9

[Navy Patriot]

Earth Is An Oil-Producing Machine we're Not Running Out

Finally, a grain of truth from the IBD slime.

[thackney]

Didn't some Russian scientist propose this in the fifties?

It has been proposed many times. In Russia they drilled based upon the theory. No commercial oil resulted from that exploration.

[1Old Pro]

This information backs up the idea that Earth is actually an oil-producing machine.

Yes and a VERY LARGE one at that.

[Smokin' Joe]

I don't think any of them have been re-charged. There are a host of factors which can contribute to them becoming productive again, most of which relate to how they were produced in the first place. Most reservoirs contain water and oil, and producing any reservoir too fast will cause the well to 'cone in', wetting the near bore porosity with water, and causing the well to produce more water than oil.

Water generally is less viscous than oil.

That may give the impression the oil has been produced, and it has, near the wellbore, but that leaves a lot of oil left in the reservoir. Horizontal wells will get that oil at a greater efficiency, but only when the well is drilled in the right part of the formation and produced correctly. Some things can't be rushed.

Another factor in apparent reservoir depletion is having reached bubble point, where natural gas dissolved in the oil comes out of solution in the reservoir rock, blocking pore throats and causing oil production to drop off. Maintaining reservoir pressure can prevent this, restoring it through injection of production water might cause the problem to clear up, but that is secondary recovery.

Often, what makes a well or field viable is economics: the cost of operating the wells plus the cost of disposing of produced water and cost of transporting oil to market versus the revenue generated by the oil, with costs for well maintenance and eventual site reclamation factored in.

If it won't make money, it will sit where it is, for the most part.

I did hear of an offshore well which gave the appearance of recharging, but it turned out the oil was coming from a deeper reservoir along either fault lines or fractures.

So, nope, no recharge, just the occasional rearrangement of fluids in badly produced reservoirs.

[puppypusher]

It really doesn’t matter if we have an abundance of energy in this country when you have a government that is artificially creating shortages all the time by boosting taxes on all types of energy.