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

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

[gjenkins]

The deep hot earth theory? I had a PHD Chemist tell me of this 15 year ago. I never mentioned it to anyone for fear of being labelled a kook. Interesting.

[Double Tap]

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.

Fields are refilling because they were produced too quickly, therefore outlying struture didn't have time to drain into area they were producing. It happens all the time. It doesn't support this theory.

[Aurelius]

I accessed the article in the Boston Globe Archive (it is from last May, 22)at a cost of $2.50 (no, I'm not asking for a donation) and pasted what is posted above from there. I still have the archive page up and could give you the URL. Unless you just want to see the original I don't know what point that would serve, and, I don't know if you could access it from the "pay-for-view" archive.

[spycatcher]

Interesting post. That's not a very big lake.

[Lee'sGhost]

Speaking of "weird science," what happened to the guy with the big "change the world" transportation invention that was gonna be announced? They were calling it "IT" as I recall. (Hey, that line should be in the Pirates of Penzance.)

[bert]

I find this theory plausible. The source seems very reasonable in light of recent discovery of microbes at strange places in the crust.

Renewable may be however on a geologic or worse cosmic timetable.

[Willie Green]

U.S. Petroleum & Crude Oil Overview
(thousand barrels per day)

	1960	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000
U.S. Crude Oil Production	7,035	7,804	9,637	8,375	8,597	8,971	7,355	6,560	5,834
U.S. Petroleum Imports	1,815	2,468	3,419	6,056	6,909	5,067	8,018	8,835	11,093
Total	8,850	10,272	13,056	14,431	15,506	14,038	15,373	15,395	16,927
Imports as % of Total	20.5	24.0	26.2	42.0	44.6	36.1	52.2	57.4	65.5

[Dog Gone]

I don't profess to know everything about oil or other hydrocarbons, but I am skeptical of categorical statements of fact made by people with no background in the business. Especially when those statements contradict what we actually see.

You can put all the truly major discoveries of oil by size on a time bar graph, starting with the giant East Texas Field in 1912 and including the Middle East, Russia, and anyplace else. Despite our ability to go deeper and explore in more inhospitable conditions, the discovery fields continue to get smaller and smaller in size.

The inescapable conclusion is that we've already discovered the "easy" oil that's out there. Could the reserves underlying Antarctica be equivalent to what we've already discovered elsewhere? Conceivably, but we may never know. The politics and economics won't allow it.

Will we discover another "East Texas Field" in the Lower 48? Not a chance.

By the way, the East Texas Field has been mostly plugged now. It's done.

[michigander]

That's not a very big lake.

Yes. Except, I have to wonder how large the lake that would contain all the available oil in the world would be.

[RobFromGa]

bump for further investigation, looks interesting.

[RightWhale]

I never mentioned it to anyone for fear of being labelled a kook.

In a way FR could be thought of as a think-tank. Ideas are often thrown onto the table, sometimes outrageous ideas. It should be noted that a percentage of asteroids and meteors are what they call carbonaceous chondrites:- frozen, mucky, carbon-rich bodies. One might assume that earth itself is made from the same stuff with the exact proportions controlled by its solar environment. Simply burning carbon fuels doesn't remove carbon from the earth, it goes back eventually into the sea and is subducted under the continents, there to be cycled through once more. In the long run, totally renewable. Maybe we can consume the hydrocarbons faster than they are produced, but that is a self-limiting process. When we run low, we will slow down; it's automatic, not a source of concern.

[spycatcher]

Except the refilling may actually be coming from deep underground where there isn't supposed to be "dinosaur and plant oil"

Wall Street Journal article:Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning

[spycatcher]

See WSJ article above

[VOA]

bump!

[cinFLA]

This article is old news and incomplete. Published last year was an article that showed our old, depleted oil wells were being naturally replenished.

[okiedust]

Well you've convinced me, guess that means that geosynclinal theory is still debunked too huh? Shoot.

regards

[Aurelius]

Can you give us a link.

[Dog Gone]

I'm familiar with that report. There are several other depleted fields that seemed to be recharged without explanation.

But keep in mind that this is a very few instances out of literally hundreds of thousands of fields. If this were happening frequently, it would be a different matter.

The conventional wisdom is that the hydrocarbons we are finding and recovering didn't originate in that particular rock layer. Instead, we believe it originated from a source rock (usually a shale) and migrated upward until it hits a layer which it can't penetrate. We look for those seals, and hope to find hydrocarbons trapped underneath.

A lot of things can cause oil to migrate even today. A minor earthquake is a shift of those rocks and it is those new faults that provide a crack for upward migration.

There are any number of such explanations which could account for an old field recharging with new oil from below. In fact, under conventional thinking, it would be surprising if this DIDN'T occur once in awhile.