Posted on 11/19/2001 10:07:24 AM PST by Aurelius
SCIENTIST STIRS THE CAULDRON: OIL, HE SAYS, IS RENEWABLE
David L. Chandler,
Globe staff Date: May 22, 2001 Page: A14 Section: Health Science
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."
David Chandler can be reached by e-mail at chandler@globe.com.
The biggest heresy in today's scientific community is to think something different than everyone else thinks, and demand proof for their ideas. You see that most clearly in the global warming and evolution debates. Their theories become a religion to athiest scientists and that turns them into "fact." When someone pulls open the curtain, people like Cincinatus go ballistic and start trying to slander the source of their discomfort -- like the melting witch in the Wizard of Oz.
Also found this blurb from a 1997 a Toledo Blade article:
"...Millions of Americans learned in grade school that oil deposits originated in the age of dinosaurs, when vegetation in lush forests was buried and subjected to high heat and pressure. Those extreme conditions supposedly transformed the hydrocarbons in vegetation into the hydrocarbons of petroleum.
"That's nonsense," snapped Thomas Gold, a scientist at Cornell University. "There's not a shred of evidence from chemistry, geology, or any other science to support it. It has no place in textbooks and school classrooms."
Petroleum originating from plant matter decayed by bacteria, similar to bacteria that decay backyard garden-compost piles, would resemble a microbial product. Instead, petroleum is chemically similar to a pure hydrocarbon that has been contaminated with microbial material. That contamination, he argues, occurred as petroleum seeped upward through rock now known to contain enormous amounts of bacterial life. In moving upward, petroleum also collected helium, explaining why oil wells are such a rich source of helium. "This is the only possible explanation," Gold said. "The association of helium with petroleum has not been accounted for in any other way."
Gold also presented evidence that oil and gas deposits on Earth are primordial. That means they came with the planet. They were part of the original raw material that formed the sun and planets, and deposited deep below Earth's surface when the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago."
There was a Russian scientist pushing this theory back then. Everyone dismissed him then as a nut case and many so-called experts looked at consumption vs reserves and concluded that we would run out of oil before the year 2000. Consumption has increased dramatically since 1970 and so have more proven reserves than we had then because we are now drilling into very deep reserves where conventional geology says their should be no 'fossil fuels'.
There is obviously something not right with conventional theory.
"...It may turn out that there is too much oil for our own good. A massive increase in known oil reserves could lower oil prices and drastically devalue existing reserves.
A longer-term problem is that an unchecked increase in oil consumption could place untenable strain on the global environment. Already human activities in our oil-dependent society have led to alarming species extinction rates. An oil glut could accelerate this problem.
It would be ironic if the Chicxulub impact event turned out to be a time bomb that was not only associated with the extinction of the dinosaurs and other species at the end of the Cretaceous Period, but also with another mass extinction resulting from human activities some 65 million years later. "
So the dangerous facts here are deeply tied to the man-made global warming belief system as well as the economic fortunes of oil companies
As I understand the conventional theory, petroleum doesn't really come from dinosaurs or other animals, it comes from plant matter. Peat moss bogs and mangrove swamps are perhaps modern analogs of the material that may have become petroleum. I don't know what differing conditions led to coal or shale oil versus liquid petroleum. Obviously the material had to be buried under rock otherwise it would have decayed or burned on the surface.
Gold argues that the presence of helium in petroleum proves that petroleum seeped up from below, carrying heilum along with it. It is equally possible that the helium being emitted by the radioactive decay in rocks was absorbed by the petroleum in situ. He argues that the presence of non-hydrocarbons in petroleum is the result of bacterial action, but there is no proof for this, no experiment showing that underground bacteria can create pristane and other common substances.
The Crack In the Cosmic Egg
by Joseph Chilton Pearce
" ...Pearce tackles the question of reality and tells us that
it is influenced by everything we do and believe: our notions about reality,
personal experiences, language habits, evolution. Literally everything in this
world affects and becomes our view of reality. "
It sort of says that our notions of reality create our reality.
To me, the failure of alchemy refutes the entire idea. But,
as regards oil, if we believe hard enough that it is inexhaustible,
then it will be. Well, I'm dancing as fast as I can. :)
That would, at least IMHO, appear to be the case.
Not only that, but irrigation for farming in dry lands has some very delitorious effects over time. Over time, it concentrates certain minerals and such at the surface until they reach unacceptable levels. Large parts of our midwest are now more or less unfarmable between the problems of that and dropping water tables. Fortunately we don't need them all to raise food on.
Dog Gone, you've got some good logical reasons in your arguments, but I don't think some here will accept logic.
Maybe a little common sense will suffice:
Oil is NOT a renewable resource any more than water is a renewable resource.
Oil wells are depleted every day.
The ONLY way they can ever produce again is for more oil to flow into the reservoir through the permeable rock which allowed the reservoir to fill in the first place.
Oil fields are either gas driven or water driven.
When depletion occurs in the case of the former, there ceases to be enough gas pressure to drive the oil into the pocket.
When depletion occurs in the case of the latter, the water simply overtakes the oil that it is pushing and floods the pocket.
This is not rocket science - just plain common sense!
I have drilled over five miles deep in the Anadarko Basin in Oklahoma.
If anyone finds an oil well below 20,000' anywhere in the world, I'll personally fly him and his family to Houston and buy them the biggest steak in town!!
This again is common sense!
Under extreme temperature and pressure, OIL doesn't exist!
The breaking point in depth of the conversion of oil to natural gas and condensate varies according to the temperature gradient of the area in question.
The term "condensate" is simply the liquid component of natural gas which forms when it cools off as it comes up the wellbore.
It is not oil per se, but it is a lot more valuable than oil because of the ease of refining into useable products.
I've been in this business for over forty years.
Where does oil come from??
I haven't the vaguest idea, but I doubt seriously that the dinosaurs had anything to do with it.
I'd rather think that God did it.
Our energy future cannot depend upon oil.
It must depend upon our huge reservoirs of natural gas.
When the American people accept the advantages of using natural gas as the primary energy source, our energy problems will be solved.
The main reason this has not happened is that Big Oil has too much money tied up in it's overseas properties and they generate too much income.
They also have hundreds of gas wells, but the expense of shutting down the refineries which process our oil thirst cannot be offset by their gas sales.
How many advertisements do you see touting the advantages of natural gas?
Probably none, but you see hundreds of advertisements about the great results in economy and efficiency available because of some additive that one of the major oil companies have added to their gasoline.
Yet, we have thousands of vehicles of city, state and federal governments driving down the road using natural gas.
Doesn't this seem a bit incongruous?
Well...one of the seven sisters was going to drill one to 25,000 ft. south of Pyote, but the mergers came first.
What do we have now, the four sisters?
Our company workload is down 60% right now, that is why I am home instead watching a rig turn right, first Thankgiving in ten years at home.
Congratulations, bert!
I came home last evening, but the times I've been home for Thanksgiving have been few and far between.
I've worked a lot of wells around Pyote and Cayanosa, and if I remember correctly the Ellenberger comes in at about 22,000' the same as it does in the Gomez Field around Ft. Stockton.
I assume they permitted to 25,000' intending to drill to about 23,500' or just past the Ellenberger.
When I first went to the Gomez in about 1967, it was taking over a year to drill those 24,000' wells.
When the journal bearing bits came into being, we chopped that time to about seven months.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, old podnuh!
Unlike South Texas and many other places in the U.S., the temperature gradient in the Permain Basin is very low, something like 1.2* per hundred, but even at that the bottom hole temperature is going to be about 430* and the overburden pressure is going to be about 24,000 psi calculated at 18.2 ppg.
I'll believe it when I see it!
HAHAHA!!
I was in a friend of mine's office in Dallas a few years ago, and he mentioned he had an 18,000' turn-key well to drill at Columbus.
He asked me if I wanted to work it.
I said, "Bill, I HATE turn-keys!"
He got another man from Houston to work it who locked up his house in Houston, moved to the rig and worked nine months straight drawing his rate every day!
Talk about open mouth, insert foot!
LOL!!
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