[Dog Gone]

Cathles says that the telltale chemistry of the hydrocarbons reflects the streams and ponds through which they migrated, and thus could point to the ponds that remain to be discovered and produced.

Oil doesn't migrate through "streams" or collect in "ponds." Maybe they dumbed this down for the general public, but it's grossly misleading and casts doubts on the seriousness of this study.

[tpaine]

Whole Earth: THE DEEP HOT BIOSPHERE.(Review) / (book review)
Address:http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0GER/1999_Winter/58458608/p1/article.jhtml

[bribriagain]

"Oil doesn't migrate through "streams" or collect in "ponds." Maybe they dumbed this down for the general public, but it's grossly misleading and casts doubts on the seriousness of this study."

Enlighten us, please.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

As these sources mature, the hydrocarbons migrate upward toward the surface through what can be thought of as a myriad of small streams and ponds, much like a natural water system

It is a thought process, not actual! LOL!

[Servant of the Nine]

Oil doesn't migrate through "streams" or collect in "ponds." Maybe they dumbed this down for the general public, but it's grossly misleading and casts doubts on the seriousness of this study.

Well, Cornel is not exactly an epicenter of Petroleum Geological Research.
This would be a lot more believable from one of the Universities in Oil Country where the serious work is done.

So9

[aruanan]

Oil doesn't migrate through "streams" or collect in "ponds." Maybe they dumbed this down for the general public, but it's grossly misleading and casts doubts on the seriousness of this study.

Actually petroleum does flow in streams and collect under regions of relatively more impermeable overburden. This would make a pond or pool of oil, albeit upsidedown. Water flows because of gravity. Petroleum flows because of pressure gradients. Water collects in places out of which it cannot flow and in which the porosity is overcome by the inflow. Petroleum collects under formations the porosity of which is insufficient to handle the flow. In places where such overburden doesn't exist, the oil and accompanying methane flows right out of the ground. In some places the porosity is such that the petroleum is blocked from reaching the surface but not the methane, resulting in people lawns or fields catching on fire.