Awww, come on! Who would sell us out to the Chicoms?
Posted on 06/27/2007 7:44:27 PM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas.
A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done.
Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels.
Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a "deep fault" at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Because it’s stupid and his been discredited about a billion times.
Doesn’t keep it from getting posted here at least three times a year.
lol!
I read the site (WND), but some things need to taken with a grain of salt.
“Because it’s stupid and his been discredited about a billion times.”
I’ve missed the explanation.
Is it due to incorrect estimation on their part or something like that?
Whats also stupid is that we dont drill off of Florida and all the other places that have PLENTY of oil.
I’ve heard rumors that the amount of oil in the gulf would simply boggle the mind - more than Saudi Arabia, but that it’s alot harder to get to.
I’m not sure if there are reliable estimates of whats in the continental shelf off the Falklands either, but the ones I heard have a heck of alot of zeros on the end...
Ping-a-ling for later read!
No, the ten cent explanation is that oil always seeks its way to the surface, and the depletion of the existing Eugene Island field loosened the well-known Red Fault which was its boundary.
New oil from a deeper reservoir was then able to slip into the widened crack and refill the the existing reservoir. This is a completely natural phenomenon, and it’s how all oil reservoirs get filled. It does NOT mean that new oil is coming from the center of the earth, only that existing oil keeps trying to get to the surface.
I believe just about everything on WND is to be taken with a grain of salt.
Where did the saying, “take with a grain of salt” come from anyway, and what does it mean? It I’ve always thought it sounded kinda silly.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
* Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
* At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
* Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."
* In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
* In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
* Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
* Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil....."
Very important if not a crackpot theory.
It’s actually a translation of the Latin phrase “cum grano salis.” There seems to be a bit of a debate about the significance of the Latin phrase, however. Etymologist Christine Ammer traces it to Pompey’s discovery, recorded by Pliny in 77 A.D., of an antidote to poison which had to be taken with a small amount of salt to be effective. Everyone else seems to bypass that explanation and trace “with a grain of salt” to the dinner table, where a dash of salt can often make uninspired cooking more palatable. “With a grain of salt” first appeared in English in 1647, and has been in constant use since then. The amount of salt metaphorically needed to make an unlikely statement acceptable often varies from a few grains to a few pounds. With all the flapdoodle being thrust at us these days, I’m surprised there isn’t a national salt shortage.
http://www.word-detective.com/052598.html
and it WILL be drilled - the Chinese are zeroing in on it - the dimrats wont let us drill, but then, we know there are big money connections and dealings between China and the dimRAts
Time to connect the dots?
That’s horsecrap, and I don’t know what oil company research staff is suggesting it.
Methane is methane, and can be formed in a number of different ways.
It doesn’t even require an organic source. Crude oil differs in chemical structure in incredibly different manners than methane and varies by location. It varies in quality and it varies in components. That can’t be explained if it all comes from some inorganic methane source.
There is no major oil company that I know of that thinks crude oil comes from methane or anything other than an organic source.
Of course, there are some little ones that you can find it with divining rods.
I believe if you take carbon bearing materials, along with water (hydrogen bearing), put it under intense heat and pressure, and throw in a reducing agent like iron, you get more and more complex hydrocarbons.
And as you’ve stated, huge amounts of methane are detected off of Earth, pigs might have wings to fly up there, but dinos didn’t!
If you really have faith in the myth of abiotic oil, may I suggest reading:
No Free Lunch, Part 1:
A Critique of Thomas Gold’s Claims for Abiotic Oil
by Jean Laherrere
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:OHh4XIRawBsJ:www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102104_no_free_pt1.shtml+%22No+Free+Lunch,+Part+1:+A+Critique+of+Thomas+Gold%27s+Claims+for+Abiotic+Oil%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
No Free Lunch, Part 2:
If abiotic oil exists, where is it?
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:WKHDLUyZmgcJ:www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011205_no_free_pt2.shtml+%22No+Free+Lunch,+Part+2:+If+Abiotic+Oil+Exists,+Where+Is+It%3F%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
If abiotic oil existed, it would be damn near impossible to drill a dry hole.
If you gather enough golden flies the lizard people will trade.
“Nevertheless, I shall continue my work on the water burning fuel injection and carburetor systems...”
Google the phrase “six-cycle engine.”
Eugene Island has been refuted so many time. It really is sad to think they keep trying to push this claim on the uninformed. The first link I posted has a rather nice summary.
In the early 1990’s an ambitious investigation of Eugene Island was undertaken through the joint auspices of the Global Basins Research Network, the Department of Energy and the oil industry. The purpose of the project was to develop new technologies to extract hydrocarbons from the streams which feed reservoirs instead of merely draining the reservoirs themselves, or to enhance the streams so that they will better feed the reservoirs. The study focused on Eugene Island and on the Gulf of Mexico in general because newly migrating hydrocarbons were well documented in this region, and migration approached rates of extraction. The project first had to determine the pathway of the migrating hydrocarbons and their origin.
The study determined that hydrocarbons were indeed migrating along the Red Fault. They concluded that as oils at depth are over-cooked and cracked into gas, this results in an increase of pressure. This is due to the expanding volume of gas produced from the more compacted volume of oil. When the pressure grows to hydraulic fracturing stress, the faults open and release a stream of oil and gas upward toward the surface. The migration pathways seem to branch from what appear to be three primary source areas at depth.
The migrating hydrocarbons contain biomarkers, heavy metals, and sulfur isotopes which indicate a carbonate marine source of Cretaceous age. The three sourcing depobasins are believed to be turbidite sands: organic detritus rich sands stirred up and deposited by deep sea turbidity currents. These turbidites were capped by a salt sheet and then buried beneath 3 million years of deltaic sands, resulting in the geopressures and temperatures necessary to transform the organic detritus into oil and gas.
Same reason we aren’t building nuclear power plants and driving plug-in electric cars.
Bookmark for later read
Thanks for the explanation.
A more popular method is to crush a large helping of dinosaurs, place in a pressure cooker and simmer for a few years.
re:19
Good luck with your experiments and you brilliant, well thought out remarks — they add so very much to an intelligent discussion>
By the way, genius, I didn'tt write the article, I only posted it for discussion -- that one and this one I also found to be interesting
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB924151147795357823.djm
Why don't you do us a favor -- show us some authoritative proof that the ideas expressed by the people mentioned in the articles are worthy on no more than childish ridicule.
The guy sounds like he’s half/joking to me.
Uh oh, somebody forgot to put on their Mr. humor face this morning. And perhaps if you spin around in a circle, your panties will untwist.
Thanks for posting the article. I actually enjoyed it and will study it carefully. I’ve read of this theory before and would love to believe it. Anything to shut the Islamofascist Muslims up and/or make them go away back to goat herding.
Some people take it with a grain of salt substitute then they wonder why it’s bitter
o-tay, if deep subterranean methane is turning into heavier hydrocarbons, where does all the excess hydrogen go as the carbons link up?
Umm, it rises?
heehee
Yeah, those hydrogen wells ROOL!
RPFLMAO
Pardoner you have one funny and great home page.
However, if I was you, the girl friend would have been kept secretly on the side for business trips to exotic places like Port Author, McAllen or Denton.
Thank you for the succinct and correct explanation.
It’s an anamoly, and the chances of it occurring again in the same spot is almost nil, and occurring elewhere is very small, and questionable if ever documented.
“Very important if not a crackpot theory.”
Is it reproducible at surface in the lab?
I think inorganic theory is very far out, but not impossible.
I remain in the organic origin camp, mostly due to the oil occurrence in relativley tectonic stable and depositinal basins, not near active plate boudaries.
Going out huntin and accidently shootin at some food and missing but hittin some crude is not possible.
Then the Klintons said move away from there.
Hollyweird or Washintune D.C., is the place to be.
Damn, maw ferget that trip out to Hollyweird to see Uncle Jed and Mr. Drysdale cause they ain’t got no $64,000,000 dollars.
Thank you for the synopsis on the maesurable eposidic expulsion and overpressure development due to rapid sedimentation that happens to be occurring in our lifetime. Sooner or later mankind would stumble onto witnessing this in “real time”.
What do you know of the reservior? I assume sandstone, but is it consolidated?
Water
bump
Awww, come on! Who would sell us out to the Chicoms?
Lets get our terminology and concepts straight.
There isn’t anything “inorganic” about methane. It is the fundamental building block of all orgainic compounds and is totally organic itself.
Methane is a hydrocarbon. Methane is organic. Methane is ubiquitous in the solar system and probably in the universe. It is probably present in untold abundance in the earths crust. There is NO reason to think it wouldn’t be, given what we know about its abundance on the other planets and moons in our solar system.
There are mechanisms whereby primordial methane could be transformed into long-chain hydrocarbons under the temperatures and pressures in the Earth’s crust.
There is nothing inconsistent about this theory and the presence of refilling oil reservoirs, and in fact it is completely consistent and predicted.
You may have some other ideas especially if you have been educated as a petroleum geologist in the United States. If you had been educated in some other countries, you would have been given a different story, and one that has a long history of research and evidence behind it. Which is right? I have my opinion, you have yours.
Deep oil is there, it’s just not particularly easy or cheap to get at and there isn’t any reason to go for it if we have ready access to shallow oil. But slow pumping of refilling resorvoirs seems like a good idea to me.
More information and references to several studies on block 330 is available here:
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/Research_Staff/Losh.html#Faults,%20Reservoir%20Fluids
Ah, d*mn, for a moment there I thought we weren't doomed.
Everywhere wells have been drilled using this theory where there is not a conventional, identifiable, sedimentary source rock for the oil, the well has pumped investors, not crude.
On the other hand, where wells have been drilled using the conventional model of a sedimentary source rock, thermal maturity of the source rock from heat or pressure, and migration pathways to a reservoir, the model proves out with at least the presence of some hydrocarbons, whether they are present in commercially exploitable quantities in producible reservoirs or not.
In this particular instance, there is an admittedly faulted geologic terrain, and it is quite likely that a deeper (perfectly normal) reservoir is feeding oil and gas to a shallower one along the fault.
Oil and gas migrate toward the surface, which is one reason why we can predict where to find them. In areas where oil is found, it is not unusual to have several geologic layers which can produce or acccumulate oil.
Where I mainly work, in the Williston Basin, there over a dozen formations (distinct geological strata) known to produce oil or gas, from about 15,000 ft. down toward the surface, ranging in age from Cambrian to Permian--all sedimentary rock.
Wells drilled in areas which do not have the sedimentary source beds or a structural feature which permits oil to migrate in from such beds have not produced.
The folks who own the wells there got a 'freebie' in that they did not have to drill down to the deeper reservoir.
Some good seismic work might well reveal the deeper reservoir, and the presence of structural features which will trap oil which will not migrate up the fault. If so, they have an exploration and development target which could expand the field.
For the tinfoil hat set, there is no way any unusual reservoir would be kept quiet for very long.
While some 'secrets' last for a few months (long enough to get the landmen out to lease the mineral rights), they seldom survive much past the 'tight hole' period.
States require well information to be submitted, and will only keep it secret for so long before it becomes public record. Developing a new and successful exploration strategy would do too much for a company's share value to keep a lid on it.
Thanks Joe, always good to get the perspective from someone doing this for a living.
Thanks Joe, always good to get the perspective from someone doing this for a living.
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