Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that we don't need to drill in the Arctic (or anywhere else), because we can suck an unlimited supply of oil from the faces of acne-laden teenagers. 
Posted on 11/19/2001 10:07:24 AM PST by Aurelius
Some respected biologists believe that by weight, there is more life in the earth's crust than on the surface and in the oceans.
Assuming that petroleum is being replenished, the next question would be, at what rate?
This Gold article explains airplane crashes.
Even if his theory were true, it wouldn't help. We are using oil far faster than it is being made.
At best, in a couple billion years we could have fully recharged reservoirs which we then could again use up in about 150 years.
Why not? The theory that oil is a result of decayed plants and animals makes less sense. Why, if the conventional theory is correct, is it not possible to drill for oil everywhere? As a previous poster noted, funny how all the dinosars died in Saudi Arabia -- or Alaska, or off the shore of the Shetland Islands -- but not in the Dakotas or Arizona.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that we don't need to drill in the Arctic (or anywhere else), because we can suck an unlimited supply of oil from the faces of acne-laden teenagers.
You beat me to it.
"...Since the nineteenth century, knowledgeable physicists, chemists, thermodynamicists, and chemical engineers have regarded with grave reservations (if not outright disdain) the suggestion that highly reduced hydrocarbon molecules of high free enthalpy (the constituents of crude oil) might somehow evolve spontaneously from highly oxidized biogenic molecules of low free enthalpy. Beginning in 1964, Soviet scientists carried out extensive theoretical statistical thermodynamic analysis which established explicitly that the hypothesis of evolution of hydrocarbon molecules (except methane) from biogenic ones in the temperature and pressure regime of the Earth’s near-surface crust was glaringly in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. They also determined that the evolution of reduced hydrocarbon molecules requires pressures of magnitudes encountered at depths equal to such of the mantle of the Earth..."
Several oil fields have already refilled in just a few decades and the reason we're seeing oil so cheap right today is because Russia is putting the theory to the test.
"The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins is not controversial nor presently a matter of academic debate. The period of debate about this extensive body of knowledge has been over for approximately two decades(Simakov 1986). The modern theory is presently applied extensively throughout the former U.S.S.R. as the guiding perspective for petroleum exploration and development projects. There are presently more than 80 oil and gas fields in the Caspian district alone which were explored and developed by applying the perspective of the modern theory and which produce from the crystalline basement rock.(Krayushkin, Chebanenko et al. 1994) Similarly, such exploration in the western Siberia cratonic-rift sedimentary basin has developed 90 petroleum fields of which 80 produce either partly or entirely from the crystalline basement. The exploration and discoveries of the 11 major and 1 giant fields on the northern flank of the Dneiper -Donets basin have already been noted. There are presently deep drilling exploration projects under way in Azerbaijan, Tatarstan, and Asian Siberia directed to testing potential oil and gas reservoirs in the crystalline basement."
Having followed spycatcher's link, I notice where Gold is given credit for development of the Steady State Theory. I thought Fred Hoyle developed that theory?
One thing. Remember that crazy geologist who said that the dinosaurs went extinct from a meteor. Nobody believed him 20 years ago. Now EVERYBODY believes him. We shouldn't poo-poo this theory. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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