Posted on 06/13/2004 9:05:09 AM PDT by RockDoc
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:42:20 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Predictably, the recent rise in oil prices has the usual doom-and-gloom crowd, which has consistently been wrong for 30 years, saying once again that this proves we are running out of oil and that severe curbs on gasoline consumption must be imposed to preserve what little is left for future generations. They need not worry. There is growing evidence that oil is far more plentiful than we have been led to believe.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Jim Quinn (www.warroom.com) read the following article on his morning radio show this past week.
New Theory: Unlimited Oil Reserves in the World
by Jerry Mack, staff writer for WebToday
A new theory has evolved in the field of oil exploration.
A group of petroleum experts no contend that there may be virtually unlimited oil reserves in the world.
Why? Because of an anomaly in Louisiana. Oil production in a deep field in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana made a come back after being written off as a nearly depleted resource. In 1973, when the field was discovered, the oil well pumped approximately 15,000 barrels of oil a day.
By 1989, oil production trickled down to a daily output of 4,000 barrels.
Then, out of the blade, the PennzEnergy Company oil field at Eugene Island for seemingly no known reason began to pump 13,000 barrels per day.
Puzzled, geologists tested the new found crude, and discovered that it was from a completely different geological age than the original oil of 10 years ago.
Petroleum scientists now believe it is possible that the new oil is streaming from a vast source many miles below the surface of the Earth.
The ramifications of this discovery are staggering. Will oil prices plummet to record lows? Will new uses be found for the apparent new abundant, and affordable, supply of oil?
But there's more. This could be a whole new paradigm shift in traditional thinking on oil, and for that matter, in thousands of scientific theories and "absolutes" including the theory of evolution itself.
Why? Because the whole theory that it takes "millions of years" for dinosaurs, etc. to turn into oil, may be all wet. With this new discovery, it seems possibly, if not likely, that oil is produced by bacteria or some other substance, chemical or organism deep under the earth.
This new revelation could change the way countries think, wage war, make peace, etc.
This may explain why the Middle East oil reserves mysteriously doubled in the past 22 years, currently sitting at about two thirds of a trillion barrels. Unless, of course, dinosaurs had multi-level organic condos that melted down en masse into primordial oil soup.
Cornell University professor emeritus Thomas Gold has long contended that oil is manufactured deep in the earth under extreme pressure and heat. He believes that because the oil interacts with bacteria as it oozes to the surface, that it only appears to be prehistoric, when in actuality, is quite contemporary.
The underwater terrain around Eugene Island is not typical of oil fields as it is shaped like a giant kidney with numerous deep faults that emit oil and gas.
This means that Texas oil man Hayseed Stevens' ultra-deep drilling project in Israel may not be so far fetched. His long term "wild-eyed" theory is that the "mother lode" of oil sits underneath the Dead Sea, and once tapped, could siphon out the vast reserves of neighboring Arab countries.
The real problem is in not in the true state of reserves but in the short run inability of the Saudi's to govern their territory.
Driving away Westerners with selected attacks and assasinations is a smart leveraged tactic by Al Quaida - since without Western help the Saudis cannot produce much of anything.
Correct me if I'm wrong--and if I am my father the chemical engineer will be furious--but isn't the definition of an organic compound that it contains carbon. All petroleum products are hydrocarbons, ergo they contain carbon, ergo they are organic compounds.
That's what I was taught through two years of high school chemistry and two years of college chemistry. It's also what my son was taught in his sixth grade science class last semester.
It seems to me that this view show a total disregard for the very basic laws of chemistry.
I can think of nothing more conducive to all that we cherish than for the Arab world to be reduced to beggary and famine. We don't worry that sub-Saharan Africa will suddenly unleash nuclear weapons on us, for its citizens spend their days eking out a bare existence. May the Muslim world speedily join them!
Even if we had unlimited oil, we cannot refine it fast enough to create a supply big enough to meet the demand. That means prices probably won't go down regardless.
Gives a new meaning to slant drilling.
You are Correct. But so are they.
From Merriam-Webster on line: 3 a (1) : of, relating to, or derived from living organisms
SUV Bump.
Then again, I still have a big problem with the phrase "organic food" (all food is "organic"!!!) so maybe I'm just nit-picky ;-)
P.S. Well, I should add that the correctness of the abiotic theory does not depend on whether the author of this news article used the word "organic" in a scientifically correct way. Again, change "organic" to "organic in origin". Then, read the article. It comes out ok.
I think everyone should know that this theory has almost no support within the oil industry. In fact, I'm not aware of a single person within the industry who believes in an abiotic origin of oil. But I don't know everyone.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. If the "abiotic" camp is correct, there are some folks in various desert regions of the world who may be losing the influence thay have enjoyed for the last two or three decades.
Remember a few years ago, when certain athletes were touting the benefits of "Super Water"--water that had extra oxygen or extra hydrogen in it (I can't remember which). Supposedly, this special water was suppose to relieve our thirst faster and allow them to perform better.
A chemist wrote an article for Time I believe debunking this mystery water. He said in order for this to be true, You would have to take 3,000 gallons per day. He said there's a name for this--it's called drowning.
...that oil originates with the decomposed remains of dinosaurs, this brilliance from the same folks who brought us the flat earth thesis.
The article alludes to a few:
"For more than 50 years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have successfully used the abiotic theory to find oil and natural gas. For example, the Dnieper-Donets Basin has yielded a significant amount of oil and natural gas even though it is an area that conventional biological theories reject as unpromising."
Are Russian-Ukrainian oil scientists in the oil industry?
"The Gas Research Institute has financed exploration based on abiotic theories, with encouraging results."
I suspect the "Gas Research Institute" is part of the oil industry, at least if you include research as part of industry....
"Among leading scientists whose work supports the abiotic theory are Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University and J.F. Kenny of the Gas Resources Corporation."
Ok sure those two other guys are academicians, but J.F. Kenny of the Gas Resources Corporation is, presumably, in the oil industry...
The problem here is that the abiotic theory could be completely correct, and the industry could start implicitly using it as its working hypothesis, and scientists could take its truth for granted, but the politics would lag behind as ideologues resistant to it kept the "dead dinosaur" theory as the PC conventional-wisdom dogma alive for an extra 20-50 years. Politics lags behind science. So even if science decides, yes, abiogenesis is correct... it will take quite some time for that to actually influence the public debate. So either way I'm not holding my breath :)
My brother works at Phillips as a geologist and he's told me about dry wells returning to production - one in particular off the coast of Louisiana. He theorizes that there may be bigger reserves extremely deep that can percolate to the surface given the right conditions.
Rumplestiltskinland. :)
The aptly named Professor Gold should name his bacteria after the magical being who could spin endless amounts of gold from hay.
Just look a continental drift. I have a couple of "old" geology books from 35 to 50 years ago that present continental drift as a "maybe" theory. Today, it's accepted.
At EI 330, after the shallow zone was largely depleted and depressurized, it was unexpectedly recharged with new oil, chemically different, coming up from a deeper zone along the well-defined Red Fault in the Gulf of Mexico.
It's no secret that oil can be trapped in stacked pay zones, often separated by thousands of feet. It's more often the case than not. And it's conventional knowledge that oil can travel up fault lines to higher formations where they are then trapped.
None of this in any way suggests that the oil recharging the shallow zone at EI 330 was abiotic. All it suggests is that oil behaves like we always knew it did.
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