The death of the peak oil myth

[Mr.Fitnah]

Mantle Hydrocarbons: Can they form in the deep Earth?

Seems abiotic hydrocarbons may occur naturally and continually .

 

[DiveCon]

this will be an interesting topic

 

[editec]

I have heard this theory before.

It's interesting and one sort of hopes its true, too.

As to it's truth?

I'm certainly not in a position to know.

 

[Old Rocks]

This is an interesting subject that has been kicked around for the last 30 years. While this may represent a source of some of the hydrocarbons, I doubt that it is a significant amount, and the speed of replenishment is probably geological in nature. That is, fine, if you have several hundred millions of years of patience.

Upwelling of Hot Gas » American Scientist

Upwelling of Hot Gas
Alton Brown

The Deep, Hot Biosphere. Thomas Gold. 235 pp. Copernicus, 1999. $27.

This book's title is Thomas Gold's hypothesis: that most subsurface microbial food chains are based on nonbiological hydrocarbons upwelling from deep in the earth. This hypothesis is not very well defended. Only two of the chapters discuss microbial communities, and these chapters really avoid the topic of subsurface microbial metabolism, the key aspect of the hypothesis. In fact, this theory is at odds with the observation that most known deep microbes are found in fermentative communities that produce hydrocarbons (methane) rather than consume it.

Despite the title, the real focus of this book is the deep-earth gas hypothesis. Gold believes that most recoverable hydrocarbons were derived from space as the earth accreted. These primordial hydrocarbons, the theory goes, reside in the lower crust and upper mantle and slowly charge shallower conventional petroleum accumulations along planes of tectonic weakness. Because chemicals derived exclusively from bacteria are found in oil, Gold calls on subsurface microbial metabolism to contaminate the primordial oil. Most of the book elaborates and presents supporting evidence for this theory to a general audience.

Arguments in favor of the deep-earth gas hypothesis sound quite convincing on the surface to the uninitiated. But those arguments are deceptive. Well documented and theoretically justified criticisms of this hypothesis and explanations for almost all of the proposed inadequacies of the conventional model for petroleum generation have been published in the past decade, yet these criticisms and alternate interpretations are not mentioned or rebutted here. Key issues unexplained in this book are the occurrence of other chemicals in oils (such as steroids), indicative of specific eukaryotic sources, carbon isotopic fractionation patterns observed in normal alkane species inconsistent with an inorganic origin, and the ability of the conventional petroleum-generation model to predict where and how much of a specific oil type will be found in a geological basin.

I do not recommend this book for either its microbiological or geological aspects. The exciting and diverse world of subsurface microbiology is reduced to a pale caricature of itself. Arguments supporting the deep-earth gas hypothesis may have been valid 30 years ago, but we now know too much about the subsurface and about petroleum geochemistry to seriously consider these ideas in the form in which they are presented here. Like all evolving scientific theories, the conventional model of petroleum generation is still subject to modification in its details. But overall, it is alive and well, and the criticisms raised here are not likely to substantially change the model.—Alton Brown, Atlantic Richfield Company, Plano, Texas

 

[Old Rocks]

You can learn more on the subject by googling "the Gold hypothesis, hydrocarbons".

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

You can learn more on the subject by googling "the Gold hypothesis, hydrocarbons".

Yeah he raises some valid questions.
The same kind of questions that man made global warming people hate like,
Why are the moons of Jupiter and mars getting hotter?

 

[Old Rocks]

Why is Neptune getting colder?

 

[Toro]

There is plenty of oil in the world. They believe that as many as 4 trillion barrels of oil exist. But most of it cannot be accessed cheaply or by conventional means.

 

[Sunni Man]

If you google "abiotic oil"

You will find that the Russians are the main proponents of this theory which has been around for several decades.

Actually, there is more scientific evidence for abiotic oil than peak oil.

But most western nation's oil companies and their governments don't want this to become common knowledge.

 

[Old Rocks]

Peak oil refers to oil at a reasonable price. At a certain point, the cost becomes prohibitive, and the alterantives will take over the market. And the world is a peak oil in relationship to affordable oil.

 

[DiveCon]

Peak oil refers to oil at a reasonable price. At a certain point, the cost becomes prohibitive, and the alterantives will take over the market. And the world is a peak oil in relationship to affordable oil.

ah, so they are changing the definition one more time when it proves that it was a lie in the first place

 

[Sunni Man]

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is an extensive body of scientific knowledge which covers the subjects of the chemical genesis of the hydrocarbon molecules which comprise natural petroleum, the physical processes which occasion their terrestrial concentration, the dynamical processes of the movement of that material into geological reservoirs of petroleum, and the location and economic production of petroleum. The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins recognizes that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth. In short, and bluntly, petroleum is not a "fossil fuel" and has no intrinsic connection with dead dinosaurs (or any other biological detritus) "in the sediments" (or anywhere else)...

www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/why-does

 

[Old Rocks]

And all the known oil sources contain compounds that are the result of organic reactions within living cells. The is hardly an either/or proposition. The real debate is what the percentage that each contributes. Presently, most in the field think that the primary contribution is organic in origin.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I don't even know why we still bother with the notion of "Fossil Fuels" it's a geocentric approach to a notion that our own space exploration killed a horrible death many times over already.

Saturn's moon Titan, with a ambient temperature of -270 has LAKES of liquid hydrocarbons and as near as I can tell, they never had a massive die-off of velicoraptors to make these "Fossil Fuels"

Earth based hydrocarbons are aboitic, just like every place else in our solar system, just deal with it