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

It's as basic as the terminology people use in discussing sources of energy: On the one hand, there are "fossil fuels," left over from the decayed remains of millions of years worth of vegetation and destined to run out before long; on the other hand, there are "renewable" resources that could sustain human activities indefinitely.

But what if fossil fuels aren't fossils, but are actually renewable and virtually inexhaustible? To most people, that question may sound as reasonable as asking what if down were up, or the XFL were a big, classy hit. But a handful of scientists, led by the unconventional and always-controversial astronomer Thomas Gold of Cornell University, state just that. Move over, dinosaurs, they say: Petroleum has as much to do with fossils as the moon has to do with green cheese.

Gold's claim, spelled out in a book just out in paperback as well as a talk at the Harvard Coop last week, challenges basic premises of the energy debate, from environmentalists' warning of oil's eventual decline to President George W. Bush's current talk about an energy shortage. Just dig deep enough, Gold says, and almost anyone can strike oil.

As one might expect, most mainstream petroleum geologists view this contrarian point of view with either scorn and derision, or the studied indifference reserved for flat-Earthers.

"We're very familiar with Tommy Gold," said Larry Nation, a spokesman for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Geologists in that field, he said, "are more open-minded than you might think. They're a pretty independent bunch, or there wouldn't be so many dry holes." But most of them draw the line at Gold's theory.

At least one successful natural gas geologist, though, has sided with Gold's unorthodox concept, which, in essence, goes like this: Far from being the product of decayed vegetation, petroleum is being manufactured constantly in the Earth's crust. It is made from methane, or natural gas, the simplest of all the hydrocarbon fuels, as it bubbles upward from the depths of the Earth where it has existed since the planet's formation more than 4 billion years ago.

As it rises, the methane is consumed by billions of microbes that exist in a dark netherworld where sunlight never penetrates. While all surface life depends on sunlight, this deep, hidden realm of life - dubbed by Gold as "The Deep Hot Biosphere," which is also the title of his book on the subject - lives on the chemical energy of the methane itself. The biological traces found in all petroleum, he argues, is derived from this hidden form of life, not from the decayed plants usually thought to be petroleum's source.

If Gold's theory is right, then the Earth's "reserves" of petroleum and natural gas may be hundreds of times greater than most geologists now believe. Oil wells that are pumped dry will simply refill themselves as more methane and petroleum works its way upward to fill the emptied spaces in the rock. This has already happened in a few places, geologists agree - something that is hard to explain by the conventional theory, but lends support to Gold's unorthodox view.

Gold's theory "explains best what we actually encountered in deep drilling operations," said Robert Hefner III, a natural gas geologist who has discovered vast gas deposits in Oklahoma over the last three decades, tapped by some of the deepest wells ever drilled. According to conventional theory, it should be impossible for petroleum or natural gas to even exist at such depths, because the pressure and the high temperatures should have "cooked" the hydrocarbons away, Hefner said in an interview yesterday.

Echoing Gold's view, Hefner said that astronomers have found hydrocarbons such as methane on virtually every planet and moon ever studied, as well as the far corners of the universe - places where the conventional view of hydrocarbons forming from decaying remains of living organisms couldn't possibly apply. "It's unlikely [oil on Earth and other planets] got there in two different ways. . . . It probably came from the same place, not from squished fish and dinosaurs."

Few people have been convinced so far. A single test of the theory has been carried out - a pair of wells drilled more than 3 miles deep in Sweden, with results generally seen as inconclusive. Gold had hoped to produce a commercial oil well, which might have cinched his case, but only a few barrels worth of oil came up. He attributes the poor showing to clogging by fine magnetite particles that he said are consistent with his theory.

But Gold is no stranger to being out on a limb with a scientific theory. In 1967, he suggested that newly-discovered pulsing sources of radio emission in the sky were actually rapidly-spinning collapsed stars, called neutron stars. The idea was considered so outlandish that he was not even allowed to speak at a scientific meeting on the subject. Less than a year later, however, his idea had been universally accepted, and remains the textbook explanation for what became known as pulsars.

Not all his ideas have been on target. His prediction that the moon was covered with such fine dust that astronauts might sink right in and be swallowed up once they set foot there caused NASA great - and ultimately unnecessary - anxiety. Gold, however, still maintains that his basic point, that the moon is covered mostly by fine dust rather than solid rock, was actually proved right.

If Gold turns out to be right about "fossil" fuels, then the world will be a very different place: Almost anyplace on Earth could become an oil producer just by drilling deep enough, and petroleum won't ever run out in the foreseeable future.

But nobody's betting on it at this point. "Most petroleum geologists don't agree with his theory," Nation said. "But it's fun to talk about."

"If coal is converted plant biomass, then why weren't the ferns and other plant fossils that you found in the coal, coal rather than fossils?"

They were. Some of the fossil ferns were encased in ironstone concretions, others were in coal itself. Flecks of coal and carbon impressions of plant stems, ferns, etc. were locked into those concretions also. What I was looking through were the tailings mounds- hills of dirt, rock and gravel left over from open pit coal mines. The coal was found in layers and veins, which was extracted and separated out from the other materials. The layers of coal were alternated with layers of mudstone and limestone gravel, which were all mixed up in the mounds of tailings in which I found fossils.

You may know a lot about the subject, but it seems you may be a bit cranky yourself in not admitting he was at least partially right then about the lunar surface, and now with the observations on Eros. I would say that Gold was as right as the others were -- and both sides were misrepresented. The truth was the middle. It's a deep layer of dust with other rocks on the moon, and as we've seen with Eros the dust may levitate exactly as he predicted. The facts from Eros are still being looked at.

Oil is being produced now in massive quantities from deep crystaline basement rock, and fields in the Middle East are being refilled from below, so that theory may indeed be correct. But we know already it's not a fraud. Other geologists may indeed be self-deluded though to not admit it's happening.

We also know now he was right about pulsars. Should we call every other astronomer who mocked him at the time, as you still do, a pernicious self-deluded fraud? No, they were just your typical arrogant scientists so closed to creative thinking they were actually afraid to allow him to speak. And just because his Steady State Theory of the universe was eventually superseded is he an fraud? Only a fool would say that.

Since he was right about his theory of mammalian hearing all the physiologists who ignored the obvious (to him) were pernicious frauds right? Nah, we'll give the lightweight physiologists a break.

His prediction of microbes on Mars may still be proved correct. Unfortunately Clinton and NASA put publicity above science and jumped the gun on that single Martian meteorite. But just because Clinton was a pernicious self-deluded fraud doesn't mean Gold's theory is wrong. ;)

I would say that Gold was as right as the others were -- and both sides were misrepresented. The truth was the middle. It's a deep layer of dust with other rocks on the moon, and as we've seen with Eros the dust may levitate exactly as he predicted. The facts from Eros are still being looked at.

You can say whatever you want to, but that doesn't make it correct.

Before Apollo, Gold claimed: a) the Moon had accreted from cold, primitive nebular debris and subsequently never melted or differentiated; b) fine dust produced by micrometeorite bombardment was levitated by electrostatic forces and, under gravity, collected into thick pools, which we saw as the maria.

Nothing in that scenario is correct! The Moon did NOT accrete from primitive material, but rather, from material thrown into Earth orbit during a giant collision. He cannot be blamed for not knowing that, but he CAN be blamed for totally ignoring 30 years of careful scientific work that's shown that after the Moon formed, it melted globally, was battered by impact, and then re-surfaced by volcanic lava flows, which have a different composition than the highlands (in contrast to Gold's model prediction). Then, the surface regolith formed by micrometeorite bombardment. If electrostatic levitation occurs (and there is some evidence that it does), it is in no way comparable to the process that Gold was proposing for the origin of the Moon's observable surface features.

It's no sin to be wrong in science -- it IS a sin to continually falsify the historical record and ignore decades of careful work. Gold does both, on this topic of the Moon and the topic of petroleum geology.

I do not care what you believe, but this stuff is junk science as surely as man-made, global warming. Billions of dollars of engineering has been invested in the "geological" paradigm of the origin of petroleum -- an investment that's generated trillions of dollars of new wealth. What's Gold's model generated, except for a bunch of google-eyed press stories?

Oil fields really do deplete, and anyone who thinks otherwise is smoking crack. Even the giant Prudhoe Bay Field on the north slope of Alaska has begun an irreversible decline.

I invite anyone who thinks that more oil can be found anywhere by simply drilling deeper to put their money where their mouth is. There are any number of drilling funds out there where people can invest in an oil well.

In some parts of the country basement rocks can be reached at a fairly shallow level. A well to test basement rocks would be fairly cheap until you got to the basement granite. Then you'll spend a fortune on drill bits, but it's one way to test a theory. It's already been tested to my satisfaction, but anyone is free to pony up and try it for themselves. They'll get rich if they're right.

Unfortunately, there still exists a technology barrier to drilling incredibly deep wells. If money is no object, you could build a rig capable of drilling 100 miles deep or more.

But, as you said, it's the temperatures and pressures that stop you. At some point, your drilling tools start failing, basically because they are melting. We run into this all the time in the industry, and glib assurances that all we have to do is drill deeper don't wash. It's like trying to drill into the side of a volcano.

We continue to find oil in places where it wasn't possible to explore even a few years ago. The waters off the Texas and Lousiana coast have been very promising. It wasn't possible to drill in over a mile of water before, and there are strange and bizarre things that happen on the ocean floor that 99% of Americans don't realize. Mudflows, hundreds of feet thick, flow like rivers in these depths snapping off wells like they were toothpicks. We are learning to overcome many of these obstacles.

I can assure everyone that we wouldn't be doing those things if all we had to do was "drill deeper" in our existing fields. I wish!

Notice how you didn't challenge what I said you replaced it with something else. I never said anything about the evolution of the moon, it's the surface that was in question. And he was at least partially right in stating (unlike others who mocked him) that it was covered in a thick layer of dust. So why should he admit he was wrong about it when he wasn't wrong?

And what has Gold's petroleum geology model generated? How about saving us billions of dollars due to current low oil prices? They're as low as they are because Russia, using Gold's theories, is drilling oil from basement rock like crazy and refusing to stop for OPEC. And with a pipeline across Afghanistan we will be swimming in oil.

And decades of "careful work" by boneheaded scientists is no reason to believe anything (for instance man-made global warming) when a few hours of careful thought can put the lie to group-think conventional wisdom. Remember, just last week thinking that global warming being caused by the sun and not man was a conspiracy theory for cranks according to "experts."

"Gee Verne, think the sun might heat the earth up? No way Homer, it's you and me. We've done decades of "careful work" to prove it." What a joke!

I wish I could weigh in these reports about the basement rocks being productive in central asia. I never have read anything about the geology of that region.

It's counterintuitive, though. Basement rocks here in North America are pre-Cambrian granite. It not only couldn't serve as a source rock, but it has no porosity or permeability. In lay terms, no oil could flow through the rock if it wanted to. It would make an excellent seal.

The only way it could produce is through heavy fracturing and with a source below it. We see that all the time in the overthrust belt of the Rocky Mountains. But there, the "basement rocks" aren't really basement. They have been overthrust onto younger rocks which are providing the actual source of the hydrocarbons.

Whether that's what is happening in central asia, I simply couldn't say.

As I recall, you're the one who linked me to a NASA web site, claiming it "vindicated" Gold on the Moon. My posts 134 and 140 above shows how it does not do so. Forum readers can judge this one for themselves.

From this, I gather you're under the impression that Russian oil comes from their "basement rocks." Nothing could be further from the truth; the most productive fields in Russia are near the Caspian sea, a Paleozoic basin, and mid-Siberia, another sedimentary basin. These proven reserves, which are just now being tapped, will produce billions of barrels, all from the sedimentary "overburden." But, some clown sucks out some paraffin from a deep well and all of the Russian oil comes from "basement" huh? ROFL!! FReeper science!

Oh brave new world that has such people in it! Thank God for Tommy Gold, come to show us all how science has misunderstood the world. It so happens that billions of dollars in technology is based on this so-called "conventional wisdom", essentially all of our modern technical society. But of course, in true paranoid fashion, you'll believe that Gold's "good ideas" are being deliberately suppressed by "boneheaded scientists." Har!!

Gold fits the classic version of "pathological science" -- 1) publication of wildly heterodox views, mostly through widespread (and loud) media articulation; 2) plaintive cries of "persecution by the scientific establishment", with gratuitous swipes at the horrible, oppressive "peer review process", which is bent on suppressing his brilliant ideas; 3) heated claims to have been "right" on past crazy ideas, like Moon dust and Martian microbes; 4) heated claims the current non-results, in actual fact, vindicate his original idea. Thus, twelve barrels of sludge from the drill lubricant in Sweden proves the Baltic shield is an oil bonanza rivaling the Persian Gulf!!

Same old story -- cold fusion, N-rays, cosmic ice, Piltdown man, and now, abiotic petroleum. There's one born every minute. Looks like in you, Gold has found his.

remember the "deep oceans of dust" that the Lunar Modules were supposed to sink into? That's another brilliant Cincinatus strawman insight.

This just in...there is dust covering the moon as he predicted there would be. He never said anyone would be swallowed up. Now you're going round and round trying to excuse your try at slander by saying he refuses to admit he was wrong about moon evolution. So what? He's not Jesus Christ. Even Einstein was wrong about things.

And as for your claim that in Sweden "After expending tens of millions of dollars, with absolutely nothing to show for it but some trace, crustal gases" You're just spouting BS that you obviously didn't have a clue about, and I properly called you on it and you still haven't admitted you were wrong! (That means you're a crank according to your own definition) Actually it proved that he could get 80 barrels of oil from an area that was supposed to have zero oil, and the Russians have taken that info and...

This just in...since you haven't been reading as to not interfere with your opinions... "Drilling into crystalline bedrock is now underway in Russia on a large scale. More than 300 wells have been drilled to a depth of more than 5 km and are productive, as also is the giant White Tiger field offshore Vietnam, mostly producing also from basement rock." and..."

...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."

By the way...this just in...pulsars are rotating neutron stars. Luckily we have Thomas Gold to make a fool out of people like yourself who thought his ideas were heresy and shouldn't even be talked about, let alone listened to. Those were your "blind pigs." Sorry, I mean "respected scientists."

Asd far as NASA's martian rock... "they have not eliminated the possibility that the Martian crystals could have a biological origin." And the scientist who made the latest claim never examined the rock. So don't get too excited, Gold's still not wrong on that one yet.

Just because most of the scientific community bought into man-made global warming or any other hypothesis doesn't make it so.

You might want to look at facts and not be so emotional and arrogant to think you know everything. I'm sure you're still seething at Einstein overturning the Newtonian world that scientists had worked so hard for decades on. Too bad, discovery moves on. Facts are facts.

You would do well to read this and take it to heart.

P.S. Just so we can verify your scientific knowledge for the record, please feel free to expound upon the impossibility of discovering ancient man-made structures a half-mile under the ocean off Cuba.

Try educating yourself before posting.... "Russian petroleum geologists followed this operation closely. Dr. P.N. Kropotkin reported at a meeting in Moscow that the discovery of oil deep in the Baltic Shield may be considered a decisive factor in the hundred year old debate about the biogenic or abiogenic origin of oil. This discovery was made in deep wells that were drilled in the central part of the crystalline Baltic Shield, on the initiative of T. Gold."

However there may be better ways of educating oneself than relying on Gold's website for info. A Google search brings up this article:
The particular subject of this article is the application to such evaluation of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins, an extensive body of knowledge which has been developed and applied during the last forty years. 1996

One of the citations is:
Kropotkin, P. N., Ed. (1956). Origin of hydrocarbons of the Earth's crust.

Apparently, Gold got his theory from the Russians, not the other way around.

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