Abiotic Synthesis Of Methane: New Evidence Supports 19th-Century Idea On Formation Of Oil

Washington, D.C. are reporting laboratory evidence supporting the possibility that some of Earth's oil and natural gas may have formed in a way much different than the traditional process described in science textbooks.

Their study is scheduled for Nov./Dec. issue of ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly publication. Anurag Sharma and colleagues note that the traditional process involves biology: Prehistoric plants died and changed into oil and gas while sandwiched between layers of rock in the hot, high-pressure environment deep below Earth's surface. Some scientists, however, believe that oil and gas originated in other ways, including chemical reactions between carbon dioxide and hydrogen below Earth' surface.

The new study describes a test of that idea, which dates to at least 1877 and famous Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeelev. They combined ingredients for this so-called abiotic synthesis of methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, in a diamond-anvil cell and monitored in-situ the progress of the reaction. The diamond anvils can generate high pressures and temperatures similar to those that occur deep below Earth's surface and allow for in-situ optical spectroscopy at the extreme environments.

The results "strongly suggest" that some methane could form strictly from chemical reactions in a variety of chemical environments. This study further highlights the role of reaction pathways and fluid immiscibility in the extent of hydrocarbon formation at extreme conditions simulating deep subsurface.

The darkest secret of hidden science: Oil is like geothermal heat: As long as the Earth is tectonically active, we'll have it.

It's free. And effectively eternal."

Maybe on an eternal time scale. To have an oilfield you need a source [you can assume aboitic oil if you wish -- I wouldn't but it doesn't spoil the logic] and you need a suitable trap [porous, permiable, and with a good seal] at a depth no greater than 15 to 17,000 feet below the ground / seabed as that is about the limits of commercial oil. Natural gas exists much deeper, and has been produced commercially from much deeper. Not so oil.

In any event, most of the great easily accessible traps have been drilled. Some contained oil. Some contained natural gas. Some contained both. And others were "dry" -- a funny term to apply to water wet. If oilfields recharge, they do not do so quickly. It is possible redrill old field and produce some oil but typically not a lot and usually not enough to be economic.

All oil wells, oilfields, and countries will peak and decline. Texas still produces a lot of oil, but has been in a steady and largely uninterupted decline for almost forty years despite the best efforts of thousands of very smart people, using the best technology, and largely unimpeded by Government.

"That might explain a few dinosaurs being deep in the earth, but enough of them and plant life all over he entire world to create the world oil supply?
Oil has been found on almost every continent and in every ocean in the world

Not to argue the process, but to ask a question."

Not dinosaurs. Algae and algae are pretty much everywhere and a lot of them contain a high percentage of oils by weight. Not sure why the mystery about oil when coal is clearly from plants and by all appearances there are more coal resources than probable oil resources.

As I have noted in other posts, natural gas may be a little different in terms of origins ... then again most of it may not be.

I read somewhere that the Russians drilled wells near Baku (is that right?) that were tapped out in the 1920’s. Filling up with oil again. They think it’s from abiotic sources.

See this site for a discussion of that.

Here's a brief primer :

At that time, the oil fields near Baku were considered to be “depleting” and “nearing exhaustion.” During World War II, the Soviets had occupied the two northern provinces of Iran; in 1946, the British government had forced them out. By 1947, the Soviets realized that the American, British, and French were not going to allow them to operate in the middle east, nor in the petroleum producing areas of Africa, nor Indonesia, nor Burma, nor Malaysia, nor anywhere in the far east, nor in Latin America. The government of the Soviet Union recognized then that new petroleum reserves would have to be discovered and developed within the U.S.S.R.

The government of the Soviet Union initiated a “Manhattan Project” type program, which was given the highest priority to study every aspect of petroleum, to determine its origins and how petroleum reserves are generated, and to ascertain what might be the most effective strategies for petroleum exploration. At that time, Russia benefited from the excellent educational system which had been introduced after the 1917 revolution. The Russian petroleum community had then almost two generations of highly educated, scientifically competent men and women, ready to take up the problem of petroleum origins. Modern Russian petroleum science followed within five years.

In 1951, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins was first enunciated by Nikolai A. Kudryavtsev at the All-Union petroleum geology congress. Kudryavtsev analyzed the hypothesis of a biological origin of petroleum, and pointed out the failures of the claims then commonly put forth to support that hypothesis. Kudryavtsev was soon joined by numerous other Russian and Ukrainian geologists, among the first of whom were P. N. Kropotkin, K. A. Shakhvarstova, G. N. Dolenko, V. F. Linetskii, V. B. Porfir’yev, and K. A. Anikiev.

During the first decade of its existence, the modern theory of petroleum origins was the subject of great contention and controversy. Between the years 1951 and 1965, with the leadership of Kudryavtsev and Porfir’yev, increasing numbers of geologists published articles demonstrating the failures and inconsistencies inherent in the old “biogenic origin” hypothesis. With the passing of the first decade of the modern theory, the failure of the previous, eighteenth century hypothesis of an origin of petroleum from biological detritus in the near-surface sediments had been thoroughly demonstrated, the hypothesis of Lomonosov discredited, and the modern theory firmly established.

An important point to be recognized is that the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic petroleum origins was, initially, a geologists’ theory. Kudryavtsev, Kropotkin, Dolenko, Porfir’yev and the developers of the modern theory of petroleum were all geologists. Their arguments were necessarily those of geologists, developed from many observations, and much data, organized into a pattern, and argued by persuasion.

By contrast, the practice of mainstream, predictive modern science, particularly physics and chemistry, involves a minimum of observation or data, and applies only a minimum of physical law, inevitably expressed with formal mathematics, and argues by compulsion. Such predictive proof of the geologists assertions for the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins had to wait almost a half century, for such required the development not only of modern quantum statistical mechanics but also that of the techniques of many-body theory and the application of statistical geometry to the analysis of dense fluids, designated scaled particle theory.

What are we spending our research dollars on?

Global Warming.

Look around you, nearly every facit of our lives has an aspect of 'stop global warming' to it.

Our cars.

Our electricity.

The natural gas that we use to heat our homes.

The refrigerator in our kitchens.

Our roads, and road surfaces.

Mass transit.

Any one of us would make a list of a thousand things in a hour or two.

The insulation in our homes.

The food we eat is produced by 'enviromentally frendly' farms.

It's endless what Satans Spawn has unleased.

Oil Without Dinosaurs ?

You do know that the "oil is dead dinosaurs" myth is a strawman? Biomass on land usually turns to coal (gradually from peat to hard coal), whereas the scientific theory says that oil comes from plankton / algae (which are chemically astonishingly similar to petroleum).

Oil: The new renewable energy source.

Yeah, except that methane (CH4) isn't oil (which consists of much longer hydrocarbon chains).

It never did make sense to me, a non-oilperson and certainly not a chemist or biologist, that all oil came from multi-million-year-old organic matters ‘sandwiched’ between rock.

How could that happen? The rock would have to form, and that would takes thousands of years, and the organic matter didn’t rot away and disappear in those thousands of years?

There's surprisingly little rot at the pressures and oxygen levels you find miles below the sea surface. And yes, I'm aware that decompoisition happens there, too, just want to point out that your frame of reference is completely wrong.

Where and when did this come from...

Location of oil fields relative to prehistoric lakes and oceans.

... and how is it supported?

Chemical composition. E.g. similarity of molecules found in algae and in petroleum like porphyrin from petroleum vs. chlorophyll.

He was open to the possibility, but had not seen enough evidence to support the theory.

That's exactly the point. Abiotic hydrocarbons are certainly possible, especially simple ones like methane. But when it comes to the majority of more complex hydrocarbons like petroleum, it's just inferior as a theory (explains less, more holes...). So it boils down to a simple point: If you look at that facts, you keep your mind open without getting your hopes up. But if you're looking for something to pin your hopes to, to believe in, well then, at least it's better than sharia law.

It never did make sense to me, a non-oilperson and certainly not a chemist or biologist, that all oil came from multi-million-year-old organic matters ‘sandwiched’ between rock.

How could that happen? The rock would have to form, and that would takes thousands of years, and the organic matter didn’t rot away and disappear in those thousands of years?

The organic matter that forms oil is not "sandwiched between rock". Certain rocks that form contain ancient organic matter. These are called "source rocks". Yes the matter has rotted, but this just means that it converts into other sorts of molecules that are still present in the rock. It doesn't "disappear". Underground heat causes some of this matter to convert into oil. Often the oil does travel out of the "source rock" and accumulates in so-called "reservoir rocks".

"Oil shale" is an example of source rock where the conversion to oil has not completed. It has to be heated to produce oil.

I figure that one has to give people with training and decades of experience in petroleum geology and exploration some credit when they say that the current theories of oil formation make sense and account for most oil that has been found.

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