1.If you have never seen it, I have a lot of porous granite in my back yard.
2.If I'm not mistaken, Isn't the Earth rotation slowing down?

Based on No. 2 above, I think we are still doomed regardless how Nature makes stuff.

Just an observation :o).

The problem is that consumers prefer to believe the infinite oil theory, because then they don't have to worry about their jobs, their Hummers and their $500,000 four bedroom mortgages.

What do we have to offer?  Cut spending, narrow the distance between your job and where you live to as close to zero as possible, drastically reduce your energy usage, look into organic gardening, etc.  

The CNBC "debate" was very interesting.  Smith got the opening and closing statements with the co-host helping out with the ambush.   The reason is very simple.  These financial guys are deeply threatened by the Peak Oil concept.  I have a rhetorical question:  what would the value of the 100 largest financial institutions be without the 100 largest oil fields?

In my opinion, the Hubbert "Linearization" model is our best ammunition, where one plots annual production as a percentage of cumulative production versus cumulative to derive estimated total cumulative production (Qt).  The Lower 48 peaked at 50% of Qt.  The North Sea peaked at 52% of Qt.  Texas peaked at 54% of Qt.  

Saudi Arabia is currently at 55% of Qt, and they are desperately trying to drill as many wells as possible.  The world is at 50% of Qt, and world year over year production is flat.  

So far, I have seen no examples of countries/regions showing increasing production beyond 55% of Qt.

Jeffrey Brown
   

I have read a bit about the abiotic theory, and I have to say that there are some pursuasive arguments for it.

There is a fairly recent paper with the incredibly cumbersome title of: "The Evolution of Multicompent Systems at High Pressures: VI. The Thermodynamic Stability of the Hydrogen-Çarbon System: The Genesis of Hydrocarbons and the Origin of Petroleum" (whew!) It is authored by an American and three Russians.  (Unfortunately, I no longer have the website where this paper can be viewed.)

Essentially the paper argues, and claims to prove, that under the temperature and pressures typical in the 'oil window, organic material of a biological nature is prohibited by thermodynamic constraints from being transformed into the far more chemically reduced ('reduced' as in oxidation/reduction reactions) hydrocarbons found in oil.

It also disputes the claim that under conditions of higher temperature and pressure, as encountered when one gets nearer to the mantle, all hydrocarbons get broken down to methane. (I recall the argument being that very high temperatures will drive the reactions toward methane, but that very high pressures will drive it toward more complex hydrocarbons.)

The paper ends with the results of an intriguing experiment. They took water, iron oxide, and calcium carbonate and placed the mixture into a specially designed high-pressure chamber intended to simulate the pressure and temperature some 60 miles deep. I recall the pressure  being something like 100 Mbar, which is incredibly high. Well, after they cooked this mixture under those conditions for some length of time, the 'froze' the products of the reaction via a technique I don't recall and then analyzed them for hydrocarbons. While they didn't get oil, they detected about 20 different organic molecules, thus suggesting that if you squeeze inorganic carbon, water, etc hard enough and at a high enough temperature, you can produce organic molecules.

I know it is a big leap to go from this lab-scale experiment to actually proving abiotic oil exists, but I found the results thought-provoking.  Though I am not well versed enough in thermodynamics (particularly chemical thermodynamics) to critically review their thermodynamic analysis, what if they are correct in claiming that it is thermodynamically impossible for living organic matter to transform into petroleum hydrocarbons under the conditions existing in the oil window?  

Anybody out there familiar with this paper of work along these lines to comment one way or the other?  

Mind you, I am high skeptical of abiotic oil, and even if it did exist, I doubt it will do us any good in the time frame that we would need it. But I'd like to be enlightened about what is and isn't known about the chemistry of oil formation.

The fact remains that the abiotic theory of petroleum genesis has zero credibility for economically interesting accumulations. 99.9999% of the world's liquid hydrocarbons are produced by maturation of organic matter derived from organisms. To deny this means you have to come up with good explanations for the following observations.

1. The almost universal association of petroleum with sedimentary rocks.

2. The close link between petroleum reservoirs and source rocks as shown by biomarkers (the source rocks contain the same organic markers as the petroleum, essentially chemically fingerprinting the two).

3. The consistent variation of biomarkers in petroleum in accordance with the history of life on earth (biomarkers indicative of land plants are found only in Devonian and younger rocks, that formed by marine plankton only in Neoproterozoic and younger rocks, the oldest oils containing only biomarkers of bacteria).

3. The close link between the biomarkers in source rock and depositional environment (source rocks containing biomarkers of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, those indicating marine conditions only in marine sediments, those from hypersaline lakes containing only bacterial biomarkers).

4. Progressive destruction of oil when heated to over 100 degrees (precluding formation and/or migration at high temperatures as implied by the abiogenic postulate).

5. The generation of petroleum from kerogen on heating in the laboratory (complete with biomarkers), as suggested by the biogenic theory.

6. The strong enrichment in C12 of petroleum indicative of biological fractionation (no inorganic process can cause anything like the fractionation of light carbon that is seen in petroleum).

7. The location of petroleum reservoirs down the hydraulic gradient from the source rocks in many cases (those which are not are in areas where there is clear evidence of post migration tectonism).

8 ) The almost complete absence of significant petroleum occurrences in igneous and metamorphic rocks (the rare exceptions discussed below).

The evidence usually cited in favour of abiogenic petroleum can all be better explained by the biogenic hypothesis e.g.:

9. Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in igneous rocks (better explained by reaction with organic rich country rocks, with which the pyrobitumens can usually be tied).

10. Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in metamorphic rocks (better explained by metamorphism of residual hydrocarbons in the protolith).

11. The very rare occurrence of small hydrocarbon accumulations in igneous or metamorphic rocks (in every case these are adjacent to organic rich sedimentary rocks to which the hydrocarbons can be tied via biomarkers).

12. The presence of undoubted mantle derived gases (such as He and some CO2) in some natural gas (there is no reason why gas accumulations must be all from one source, given that some petroleum fields are of mixed provenance it is inevitable that some mantle gas contamination of biogenic hydrocarbons will occur under some circumstances).

13. The presence of traces of hydrocarbons in deep wells in crystalline rock (these can be formed by a range of processes, including metamorphic synthesis by the fischer-tropsch reaction, or from residual organic matter as in 10).

14. Traces of hydrocarbon gases in magma volatiles (in most cases magmas ascend through sedimentary succession, any organic matter present will be thermally cracked and some will be incorporated into the volatile phase, some fischer-tropsch synthesis can also occur).

15. Traces of hydrocarbon gases at mid ocean ridges (such traces are not surprising given that the upper mantle has been contaminated with biogenic organic matter through several billion years of subduction, the answer to 14 may be applicable also).

The geological evidence is utterly against the abiogenic postulate.

Even if it was true do the proponents imagine that oil bubbles out of the mantle at 83 million barrels per day to satisfy our present consumption?   If abiotic oil was correct then it would still be a very slow process over billions of years not a panacea for our addiction.

They still have to explain biomarkers and the very simple fact that most current oil is found where the current theory predicts it to be.  We could not be that wrong for so long and found as much oil as we have.

First, I'm very glad that there are people with the expertise, energy, and inclination to so thoroughly debunk abiotic oil.

Second, I'm depressed by how often we have to slap down this idea, only to have it pop up again, like some energy geek's nightmare version of whack-a-mole.  Via my web site I get about one e-mail a week from someone telling me all about abiotic oil or asking me about it.  Sigh...

Although it may be impossible to disprove the presence of abiotic oil, the occurrence of oil in the world's commercial oil fields certainly fits the conventional biotic explanation.

The entire theory of abiotic oil seems far-fetched to me.  The ingenuity called forth by psychological denial is wonderous indeed!

It made me wonder who would choose such a writer to work with so I looked up Craig R Smith... a Gold Bug of the first order who puts out slick marketing pamphlets to hustle the rubes. http://www.craigrsmith.com/

Or, how about this?

"[Craig R.Smith] In 2000, in a partnership with Strategic Christian Services and Open Church Ministries, Swiss America published The Big Picture: The Shape of Things to Come on Planet Earth a one-hour program discussing social, economic and spiritual trends in the 21st century."

The wonder is this book is taken seriously at all.  Uff!

pete

To many times the symptoms are treated;
Examined, overstated-exaggerated,
and exploited, while the root cause
the disease itself ignored.

Why?

COMPLICATIONS... For example - such as a symptom,
FEAR - which is in a cascading manner the sire
of the condition of PARALYSIS which begats
an entire system to mal-function ultimately
preceeding DEATH.

Yet the diseae (not the symptoms)
are unthinkable to treat do to the matter
of a vested interest which concludes
as a deviant, anti-biotic?
That is life threatening to some.
A minority of the population actually.
I believe a good deal of people can do
and prosper with the bare neccesities.
In a nut shell one mans loss is anothers gain .
Just that simple.

My observation learned is that a few control the
many... and just as the pryamid is constructed
the top is at an altitude of unsustainable capacity.
The few control the many?
In the course of human events where the many desire
to be controlled. The truth of the current political,
economical environment is that the many are stauntly
in control but, unwittingly unaware of the fact.
The stress of everyday living (actual symptoms)
overcome and obscure the source/pressure/cause.

What we have here is the idea that the life support
machine an oil(hydrocarbon)based economy/society is
>>>> killing us !!!
The only solution is to pull the plug on the so
called life suport gadget.

Can't do it.
The top of the pyramid (social elitist would plunge)
and DIE, surrounded by the humble bread and butter
crowd.
If this control is lost you are free to think for
yourself. And while I do not understand it a good
many of the bread and butter crowd are cowards,
drug induced, brain washed, hypnotizzzed into seeing
themselves as margarine and crackers. BUNK!!!

Sure i cringe at the reality of sudden change,
but nothing is as sudden as looking one self in the
mirror and comtemplating an honest assestment,
personal responsibility over an individuals assests
and liabilities.

P = peak (productions LIMIT to meet human behavior)
O = oil  (energy)
R = reserves (oil available for production)
K = factor of effect (human behavior)

as a formula expressed as : (O + K) / (P - R) = 1

aka - a ONE DIVISOR GAME

what do I know ?
I enjoy time here at the Drum.

Think small,think fast,peace

I said on an earlier thread that one of my pet peeves is how the abiotic creationists continually invoke Eugene Island as an instance of an oilfield "regenerating" itself. I found this refutation by Laherrere:

This increase in reserve estimate is so unusual that it led to an article in the WSJ . . . entitled "Oil: a renewable resource?--Odd reservoir off Louisiana prods petroleum experts to seek a deeper meaning," suggesting that oil was coming from deeper sources. . . . It is really nonsense. In fact, the Eugene Island oil and gas field is flanked by the largest and best known fault in the Gulf . . . which puts the reservoir in direct communication with the source rock. Evidently, the rapid depletion of the reservoir dropped the pressure allowing it to be recharged that [sic] oil and gas from the source rocks. But the declines have resumed. . . .

Hubbert's peak is not based on geologic nor economic theory.  Hubbert studied production, discovery, and reserve data for various fields and regions and eventually to the data for the entire continental U.S.  He was able to fit an empirical curve to these data and use the equation of the curve to predict the peak of U.S. production in 1970.  

The decline in the rate of production after about one-half the oil has been produced observed in individual fields, the continental U.S., the North Slope, the North Sea, and elsewhere demonstrates that the rate of replacement is very slow relative to the rate of production. For practical purposes we can regard the total amount of oil to be finite.  It makes no difference if the oil were created by biotic or abiotic means.  (Conventional oil generation theory recoginizes that it takes several million years to create an oil field.)

Peak oil predictions are about a coming decline in the possible rate of production, not about the absolute end of oil.  The differences between declining production and the end of oil are subtile, but important and are not widely understood by the general public.  The theory of abiotic oil is a convenient place to hang false hopes for those who do not understand the concepts of peak oil and for those who choose not to believe it.

On the other hand if deep drilling technology improves it would make geothermal more practical

I guess the abiotic oil types dont believe that oil and coal come from similar sources since fossils are common in coal.

I found that technical paper on a chemical thermodynamic analysis of oil formation and also including the results of the experiment I cited  involving iron oxide, calcium carbonate, and water under extremely high pressure.

The paper is co-authored by J.F. Kenney, Vladimir Kutcherov, et al.

The website link is almost as long as the title and is as follows:

<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/17/10976?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=genesis+of+hydrocarbons+and+the+origin+of+petroleum&searchid=1085470440708_510&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0>

The analysis is beyond my meager and very rust thermodynamic capabilities, so I'm not in a position to judge it as an expert. But I'd be interested to see what some of you out there think about it.

Got to go for now.... will try to fish it out again later.

It's posted on the National Acadamy of Sciences web-page, I think.

In any event, bit late to get in the discovery game now, no? Maybe Koizumi and his clown troupe have also read the abiotic oil book and plan to buy up a slew of depleted wells and wait for them to recharge...

Did a quick search on the GeoRef Database from the American Geological Institute, which covers the field from 1785 to date, indexing 3500 publications in 40 languages. It has 786 articles using the word "abiotic," which drops to only 21 articles contining both "abiotic" and "oil." 20 of these seem to be off-topic. There is one conference paper, McCollom and Seewold 1999, "Rapid equilibration of CO2 and formate under hydrothermal conditions (with a comment on the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons during serpentinization)". A quote from the abstract:

"Berndt et al. (Geology, 1996) previously reported the reduction of CO2 to methane (plus higher hydrocarbons) in similar experiments. Contrary to the conclusions of Berndt et al., we find no evidence for synthesis of hydrocarbons. That is, although we did observe hydrocarbon generation similar to that of Berndt et al., isotopic labeling and blank experiments indicate that the most likely source of the observed hydrocarbons is decomposition of trace contaminants rather than abiotic synthesis." This is the only direct reference I found, and it isn't very direct.

We can conclude from this that if there is any good scientific evidence for abiotic oil, the scientists have apparently decided to keep it to themselves.

I understand that a reporter normally does not hold himself out to be an expert, even if he or she is one, by virtue of having worked a particular beat for a long time and learned a great deal about it. The reporter must quote others, find other points of view, never impose his or her bias on the reader or viewer.

The literal minded way in which journalistic guidelines are too often applied, allows the press to be used and the public to be bombarded with nonsense all too often. A good reporter, knows bilge for what it is and either fails to report it, or gives it the shortest possible shrift. One can say, for example, this argument exists, and this is why 95% of geologists don't buy it. That would be exposing viewers to all arguments while applying discrimination that serves the news consumer.

I understand that a reporter normally does not hold himself out to be an expert, even if he or she is one, by virtue of having worked a particular beat for a long time and learned a great deal about it. The reporter must quote others, find other points of view, never impose his or her bias on the reader or viewer.

The literal minded way in which journalistic guidelines are too often applied, allows the press to be used and the public to be bombarded with nonsense all too often. A good reporter, knows bilge for what it is and either fails to report it, or gives it the shortest possible shrift. One can say, for example, this argument exists, and this is why 95% of geologists don't buy it. That would be exposing viewers to all arguments while applying discrimination that serves the news consumer.

If we have any hope of pumping millions of barrels from these deep deposits, then places like Yellowstone or Hawaii should be spewing hydrocarbons in greater quantities. As it is, the carbon seems more likely to show up as diamonds.