Is oil organic? - the Abiotic theory

[sam76]

I found this at marketwatch and thought perhaps worthy of it's own thread

Then there is the whole Abiotic oil theory.

This is the theory that oil originates not from decayed matter but from the planets core and there is a huge supply that is just too deep with current technology.

They have also found pools of hydrocarbons on Saturn moon, Titan. More oil there than exist on this earth. How could organic oil that comes from decayed matter be on one of Saturns moon in such great abundance?

NASA Scientist and others are now questioning the theory that oil is organic. The oil we are finding may just be oil that has leaked from these deep deposits.

Read it here.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/titans-organic.html

and here - http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCSUUHJCF_index_0.html

The theory has been around a long time but this new evidence from space supports it.

Unless the dinosaurs were space travelers and disappeared because they moved to Titan.

It actually is a very important theory that is getting new consideration.

 

[Smurf1976]

Interesting theory that's been around quite a while. But unless we work out a means of drilling deep enough to extract large amounts of it, oil at the centre of the Earth is meaningless to man. It's not as if it's seeping through close to the surface (eg into oil fields) quickly enough to provide even a small fraction of present consumption. Oil fields as we commonly know them deplete - plenty having watered out or dried up completely - abiotic oil clearly isn't seeping into them at any meaningful rate.

I compare it to putting $100 a year into a bank account. Theoretically you'll never run out of money. But if you're spending $50,000 a year then that $100 will at best slightly delay the inevitable that, in practice, the money in the account is finite in terms of the rate you want to use it.

 

[JerBear]

Sam76,

I was very pleased to see that you picked up my quote from Market Watch. It was just a fluke that I found it on this web site.

I have followed the Abiotic oil theory for a while and was always very skeptical. It was the proverbial "too good to be true" lesson that life teaches us. However, the new evidence suggests otherwise.

And then I remembered the lesson I learned in grade school. People laughed at Alexander Graham Bell when he said he could send voices over a wire.
Look where we are today with that technology.

Keep an open mind and do your research but always, always have a healthy bit of skepticism.

"Be cautious, The world is full of trickery"

Thank you again for using my posting.

Jerbear

 

[sam76]

Sam76,

I was very pleased to see that you picked up my quote from Market Watch. It was just a fluke that I found it on this web site.

I have followed the Abiotic oil theory for a while and was always very skeptical. It was the proverbial "too good to be true" lesson that life teaches us. However, the new evidence suggests otherwise.

And then I remembered the lesson I learned in grade school. People laughed at Alexander Graham Bell when he said he could send voices over a wire.
Look where we are today with that technology.

Keep an open mind and do your research but always, always have a healthy bit of skepticism.

"Be cautious, The world is full of trickery"

Thank you again for using my posting.

Jerbear

LOL no worries, mate.

Thanks for writing it.

I've never heard of Abiotic theory before - it's very interesting.

 

[derty]

Need to be a bit sceptical about the abiotic theory and correlations with Titan's 'hydrocarbon' lakes. While these lakes are hydrocarbon they are not oil, they are methane and ethane. So more correctly they are natural gas lakes. The temperatures on Titan allow these compounds, that are gasses on or near the surface of Earth, to exist in liquid form on Titan. Titan's position in the solar system means it will have quite a different elemental composition than earth.

Within the Earth the temperature rises as you get closer to the centre. As you heat the long carbon chains that are oil it 'cracks' into shorter chains and becomes gas. You need the increased temp and pressure provided by burial to upgrade the organic precursor to oil into oil (the oil window) though as you bury it further it cooks and becomes gas (gas window).

The abiotic theory provides some mechanisms to produce gas, mainly methane, but no real way to produce long chain hydrocarbons, especially at the temperatures and pressures where these reactions are taking place. The main mechanism appears to be via the serpentinisation of peridotite, which is a hydration process. As soon as the altering fluids contain a small amount of CO2 you don't form a serpentine-rich rock you form a talc-carbonate rock where the carbon supplied as CO2 in the fluids forms the carbonate minerals dolomite and magnesite.

The proposed processes are typically at plate margins and tectonically active areas and not the continental basins that host the oil and gas deposits.

Wikipedia has quite a good review of the proposed mechanism and the for and against argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum

 

[xyzedarteerf]

Interview with Lidsey Williams on the abiotic oil.

Part 1

Part 2

 

[sam76]

Interesting videos- thanks.


they were refering to the conspiritors allowing oil to go to $150 a barrel before opening up those massive fields - not long to go now!

Also interesting to note the Russians drilling to 40200 feet.

 

[Tysonboss1]

Oil is destroyed at temp's above 120,... I find it hard to believe oil could exist in large amounts deep in the earths crust where temp's would be much higher.

 

[rederob]

Oil is destroyed at temp's above 120,... I find it hard to believe oil could exist in large amounts deep in the earths crust where temp's would be much higher.

It's an improbable theory.
Let's assume for a moment it was true.
Exactly how do we locate these deep, hidden fields given that there is no evidence to date that any abiotic fields exist, even in Russia!
The Russian fields we know of produce "conventional" oil..

Exploring for, and producing, abiotic oil would be time consuming and prohibitively costly. Then there is the matter of bringing commercial fields online: We are talking many years after discovery.

At best abiotic oil would be too little, too late.
At worst it's a theory without merit.

 

[derty]

At worst it's a theory without merit.

At best it is a hypothesis, a scientific theory is about as close as you can get to being fact in science, the only thing more concrete is a Law.

I listened to the preacher guy's interview and then had a look about for information about the deep Russian drilling and while they did encounter water and hydrogen at unexpected depths there was no mention of any hydrocarbons intersected.

If anyone has any links that are not from peak oil conspiracy sites that contain information about intersected hydrocarbons in the deep Kola drill hole I would like to see them.

 

[Agentm]

i look at this abiotic theory as abiotic fraud..

good site to read into is this one.. its fairly logical, and lots of references to other articles and debate, imho most of the reasoned and well founded research seems to pound abiotics into the dirt..

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cach...ml+abiotic+oil+fraud&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=au

 

[derty]

Thanks Agentm, some good stuff there.

I thought I would place this rebuttal of abiotic oil by academic geologist John Clarke from your link here for all to easily see.

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.
Cheers
Jon Clarke

 

[Smurf1976]

If anyone has any links that are not from peak oil conspiracy sites...

Given that peak oil as a theory has been proven countless times in individual fields and entire continents I'd hardly call it a conspiracy.

It's like saying that ASF is a "stock market conspiracy site" on the basis that there is no proof that a stock market actually exists on a global basis.

Technically true, there is no global stock market, but numerous countries have stock markets just like numerous countries have actually experienced peak oil. I would argue that the notion of abiotic oil fits very much more in the "conspiracy" side than the notion that oil fields deplete - that latter point having been proven more than a century ago.

 

[rederob]

Given that peak oil as a theory has been proven countless times in individual fields and entire continents I'd hardly call it a conspiracy.

I read derty's point opposite to you, smurf.
Methinks he's talking about anti-peak-oil folk who spruik abiotic oil as the world's saviour.

 

[derty]

I read derty's point opposite to you, smurf.

That's correct rederob, as a geologist I firmly believe peak oil is a reality and we are getting there now. The conspiracy sites I refer to are those that propose that peak oil is a construct used to artificially inflate the worlds oil prices and use the abiotic oil hypothesis as proof that there is an unlimited supply of oil continually replenishing the worlds oil reservoirs, hence no peak oil.