Oil - the theory FACT of abiogenic origin
I really do not like Malthusians. They run around, stirring up people by saying that OMFG, we are going to be out of ______ in ten years and there is nothing we can do about it unless we radically scale back our economy, etc. etc. etc. Club of Rome, Peak Oil, that kind of bullshit.
The thing that I do like about Malthusians is that they are 100% always dead wrong. They are very easy to debate in this manner.
Hey Peak Oil people -- what if it turns out the Earth manufactures petroleum on a continuous basis. Blow your little minds...
This '
abiogenic' process was first considered as early as the 16th Century and has been rattling around the geologic thought process ever since then.
We know that there is a lot of petroleum derived from organic materials that have been formed under heat and pressure -- there are coal deposits that still have leaf patterns.
What is puzzling is that of late, there have been record petroleum finds several miles under ground, several miles under the sea. We have to dig down seven or eight miles through water and rock to get them but they are there -- in places that were never above sea level, never had vegetation...
A new paper, published today (July 26th) in Nature Geoscience might have some explanation.
From
EurekAlert:
Hydrocarbons in the deep Earth?
The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth's crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle �the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core. The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced on-line issue of Nature Geoscience.
Methane (CH4) is the main constituent of natural gas, while ethane (C2H6) is used as a petrochemical feedstock. Both of these hydrocarbons, and others associated with fuel, are called saturated hydrocarbons because they have simple, single bonds and are saturated with hydrogen. Using a diamond anvil cell and a laser heat source, the scientists first subjected methane to pressures exceeding 20 thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level and temperatures ranging from 1,300 F� to over 2,240 F�. These conditions mimic those found 40 to 95 miles deep inside the Earth. The methane reacted and formed ethane, propane, butane, molecular hydrogen, and graphite. The scientists then subjected ethane to the same conditions and it produced methane. The transformations suggest heavier hydrocarbons could exist deep down. The reversibility implies that the synthesis of saturated hydrocarbons is thermodynamically controlled and does not require organic matter.
The scientists ruled out the possibility that catalysts used as part of the experimental apparatus were at work, but they acknowledge that catalysts could be involved in the deep Earth with its mix of compounds.
"We were intrigued by previous experiments and theoretical predictions," remarked Carnegie's Alexander Goncharov a coauthor. "Experiments reported some years ago subjected methane to high pressures and temperatures and found that heavier hydrocarbons formed from methane under very similar pressure and temperature conditions. However, the molecules could not be identified and a distribution was likely. We overcame this problem with our improved laser-heating technique where we could cook larger volumes more uniformly. And we found that methane can be produced from ethane."
It will be a lot more expensive to extract this oil but it is there and in continuous production.
Posted by DaveH at July 27, 2009 10:25 AM