Scientist stirs the cauldron: oil, he says, is renewable

Boston Globe | May 22, 2001 | David L. Chandler

[Dog Gone]

I'll add one more little tidbit which may dissolve some commonly-held beliefs. Just like oil isn't found in underground lakes or caverns, oil is NOT found in rocks that date to the age of the dinosaurs. It is found in rocks much older than those before dinosaurs ruled the world.

The origin of oil remains only a theory, and probably will always remain so, at least for our lifetimes. We can't recreate it in the labs so far. The best theory we have so far is that it was created from organic matter, usually decayed sea life, fish poop, and other nutrients which are continually deposited in the mud off the former coastline. As land masses lifted and sunk over the eons, the beaches continually moved inward or further out into the ocean. The beaches would create sand deposits which would bury the mud. The same principle would repeat itself many times.

The weight and pressure of the repeated deposits transformed the mud into shale, and the coastline into sandstone. Reefs were buried and compressed.

Somehow, over time, the organic material in the shales was tranformed into oil and gas which began seeping toward the surface. In those places where it was trapped in porous rocks or reefs, it has stayed until we find it today.

I think your offer, COB1, of a steak dinner for someone who can find deep oil is safe. If the Gomez field near Pecos, Texas, was gas then all such deep wells will be. The Permian Basin has cool rocks. Other places don't even have natural gas at those depths. It's so hot that the only gas that can exist is hydrogen sulfide (a few whiffs and you're dead) and carbon dioxide.

The idea that oil somehow survived those temperatures and moved up to shallow traps is fairly ridiculous.

[COB1]

"The idea that oil somehow survived those temperatures and moved up to shallow traps is fairly ridiculous."

I agree, Dog Gone.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[The Duke]

Hmmmm...this suggests that it is our *duty* to consume fossil fuels!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

To find all articles tagged or indexed using above index words

Go here: OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

and then click the topic to initiate the search! !

[Aurelius]

BUMP

[TexasTransplant]

Bump

[whd23]

But, but....

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Are posts being randomly removed from this thread?
I haven't seen anything wrong with any of them.

[muir_redwoods]

Please don't break out the tin-foil but Immanuel Velikovsky reasoned that there was vastly too much petroleum for it to have come from fossil sources and wondered at the mechanism that could turn flesh and bone into oil. Instead, he reasoned, it seems much more likely to have condensed with the other constituent elements and compounds that formed the earth and was as randomly distributed as gold deposits.