Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Scientist stirs the cauldron: oil, he says, is renewable
Boston Globe | May 22, 2001 | David L. Chandler

Posted on 11/19/2001 10:07:24 AM PST by Aurelius

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200201-209 next last
To: Skywalk
Professor Gold isn't perfect but he's a brilliant star that dwarfs a small dim planet like Cincinatus. Has also explained the nature of solar flares, coined the term "magnetosphere" and proved that the Earth's poles change position over time.

The biggest heresy in today's scientific community is to think something different than everyone else thinks, and demand proof for their ideas. You see that most clearly in the global warming and evolution debates. Their theories become a religion to athiest scientists and that turns them into "fact." When someone pulls open the curtain, people like Cincinatus go ballistic and start trying to slander the source of their discomfort -- like the melting witch in the Wizard of Oz.

181 posted on 11/21/2001 10:03:41 AM PST by spycatcher
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 179 | View Replies]

To: Looking for Diogenes
And check out this article from Space.com: Prospecting for Oil? Look In an Asteroid Crater

Also found this blurb from a 1997 a Toledo Blade article:

"...Millions of Americans learned in grade school that oil deposits originated in the age of dinosaurs, when vegetation in lush forests was buried and subjected to high heat and pressure. Those extreme conditions supposedly transformed the hydrocarbons in vegetation into the hydrocarbons of petroleum.

"That's nonsense," snapped Thomas Gold, a scientist at Cornell University. "There's not a shred of evidence from chemistry, geology, or any other science to support it. It has no place in textbooks and school classrooms."

Petroleum originating from plant matter decayed by bacteria, similar to bacteria that decay backyard garden-compost piles, would resemble a microbial product. Instead, petroleum is chemically similar to a pure hydrocarbon that has been contaminated with microbial material. That contamination, he argues, occurred as petroleum seeped upward through rock now known to contain enormous amounts of bacterial life. In moving upward, petroleum also collected helium, explaining why oil wells are such a rich source of helium. "This is the only possible explanation," Gold said. "The association of helium with petroleum has not been accounted for in any other way."

Gold also presented evidence that oil and gas deposits on Earth are primordial. That means they came with the planet. They were part of the original raw material that formed the sun and planets, and deposited deep below Earth's surface when the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago."

182 posted on 11/21/2001 10:14:17 AM PST by spycatcher
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 177 | View Replies]

To: Elihu Burritt
Yep. Though there is no water SHORTAGE--the problem of distribution and purity is definitely going to be with us for as long as there are nations too poor to do anything about the infrastructure needed to distribute drinking water. (Landlocked deserts are just pretty much stuck.)
183 posted on 11/21/2001 10:16:29 AM PST by ChemistCat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 176 | View Replies]

To: spycatcher; ChemistCat; gcruse
bttt*
184 posted on 11/21/2001 10:19:28 AM PST by ChemistCat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 182 | View Replies]

To: LibWhacker
I remember reading about this guy's theory WAY BACK. In the 70s, I think.

There was a Russian scientist pushing this theory back then. Everyone dismissed him then as a nut case and many so-called experts looked at consumption vs reserves and concluded that we would run out of oil before the year 2000. Consumption has increased dramatically since 1970 and so have more proven reserves than we had then because we are now drilling into very deep reserves where conventional geology says their should be no 'fossil fuels'.

There is obviously something not right with conventional theory.

185 posted on 11/21/2001 10:25:47 AM PST by Ditto
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Bigun
From the Asteroid article I just posted a link to:

"...It may turn out that there is too much oil for our own good. A massive increase in known oil reserves could lower oil prices and drastically devalue existing reserves.

A longer-term problem is that an unchecked increase in oil consumption could place untenable strain on the global environment. Already human activities in our oil-dependent society have led to alarming species extinction rates. An oil glut could accelerate this problem.

It would be ironic if the Chicxulub impact event turned out to be a time bomb that was not only associated with the extinction of the dinosaurs and other species at the end of the Cretaceous Period, but also with another mass extinction resulting from human activities some 65 million years later. "

So the dangerous facts here are deeply tied to the man-made global warming belief system as well as the economic fortunes of oil companies

186 posted on 11/21/2001 11:00:07 AM PST by spycatcher
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 178 | View Replies]

To: spycatcher
Shouldn't we find millions of tiny pockets of oil wherever we find a fossil?

As I understand the conventional theory, petroleum doesn't really come from dinosaurs or other animals, it comes from plant matter. Peat moss bogs and mangrove swamps are perhaps modern analogs of the material that may have become petroleum. I don't know what differing conditions led to coal or shale oil versus liquid petroleum. Obviously the material had to be buried under rock otherwise it would have decayed or burned on the surface.

Gold argues that the presence of helium in petroleum proves that petroleum seeped up from below, carrying heilum along with it. It is equally possible that the helium being emitted by the radioactive decay in rocks was absorbed by the petroleum in situ. He argues that the presence of non-hydrocarbons in petroleum is the result of bacterial action, but there is no proof for this, no experiment showing that underground bacteria can create pristane and other common substances.

187 posted on 11/21/2001 12:16:45 PM PST by Looking for Diogenes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 180 | View Replies]

To: ChemistCat
Thanks for the bump.  I have followed this issue for a while.
'Dry' wells have been known to refurbish themselves.
We all hope oil is renewable.  Did you ever read a book called:

The Crack In the Cosmic Egg
                                                         by Joseph Chilton Pearce
                         "    ...Pearce tackles the question of reality and tells us that
                        it is influenced by everything we do and believe: our notions about reality,
                       personal experiences, language habits, evolution. Literally everything in this
                       world affects and becomes our view of reality. "

It sort of says that our notions of reality create our reality.
To me, the failure of alchemy refutes the entire idea.   But,
as regards oil, if we believe hard enough that it is inexhaustible,
then it will be.  Well, I'm dancing as fast as I can. :)

188 posted on 11/21/2001 12:57:33 PM PST by gcruse
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 184 | View Replies]

To: spycatcher
So the dangerous facts here are deeply tied to the man-made global warming belief system as well as the economic fortunes of oil companies.

That would, at least IMHO, appear to be the case.

189 posted on 11/21/2001 3:48:30 PM PST by Bigun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 186 | View Replies]

To: ChemistCat
Yep. Though there is no water SHORTAGE--the problem of distribution and purity is definitely going to be with us for as long as there are nations too poor to do anything about the infrastructure needed to distribute drinking water. (Landlocked deserts are just pretty much stuck.)

Not only that, but irrigation for farming in dry lands has some very delitorious effects over time. Over time, it concentrates certain minerals and such at the surface until they reach unacceptable levels. Large parts of our midwest are now more or less unfarmable between the problems of that and dropping water tables. Fortunately we don't need them all to raise food on.

190 posted on 11/21/2001 6:57:11 PM PST by Elihu Burritt
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 183 | View Replies]

To: nopardons; Dog Gone; Cincinatus; RightWhale; Aurelius
Thanks for the bump, nopardons.
Sorry I was so long in responding; I just drove in from a drilling rig in South Texas where we were over 16,000' deep when I left.

Dog Gone, you've got some good logical reasons in your arguments, but I don't think some here will accept logic.
Maybe a little common sense will suffice:
Oil is NOT a renewable resource any more than water is a renewable resource.
Oil wells are depleted every day.
The ONLY way they can ever produce again is for more oil to flow into the reservoir through the permeable rock which allowed the reservoir to fill in the first place.

Oil fields are either gas driven or water driven.
When depletion occurs in the case of the former, there ceases to be enough gas pressure to drive the oil into the pocket.
When depletion occurs in the case of the latter, the water simply overtakes the oil that it is pushing and floods the pocket.
This is not rocket science - just plain common sense!

I have drilled over five miles deep in the Anadarko Basin in Oklahoma.
If anyone finds an oil well below 20,000' anywhere in the world, I'll personally fly him and his family to Houston and buy them the biggest steak in town!!
This again is common sense!
Under extreme temperature and pressure, OIL doesn't exist!
The breaking point in depth of the conversion of oil to natural gas and condensate varies according to the temperature gradient of the area in question.
The term "condensate" is simply the liquid component of natural gas which forms when it cools off as it comes up the wellbore.
It is not oil per se, but it is a lot more valuable than oil because of the ease of refining into useable products.

I've been in this business for over forty years.
Where does oil come from??
I haven't the vaguest idea, but I doubt seriously that the dinosaurs had anything to do with it.
I'd rather think that God did it.

Our energy future cannot depend upon oil.
It must depend upon our huge reservoirs of natural gas.
When the American people accept the advantages of using natural gas as the primary energy source, our energy problems will be solved.
The main reason this has not happened is that Big Oil has too much money tied up in it's overseas properties and they generate too much income.
They also have hundreds of gas wells, but the expense of shutting down the refineries which process our oil thirst cannot be offset by their gas sales.
How many advertisements do you see touting the advantages of natural gas?
Probably none, but you see hundreds of advertisements about the great results in economy and efficiency available because of some additive that one of the major oil companies have added to their gasoline.
Yet, we have thousands of vehicles of city, state and federal governments driving down the road using natural gas.
Doesn't this seem a bit incongruous?

191 posted on 11/22/2001 10:09:54 AM PST by COB1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 165 | View Replies]

To: COB1
Many thanks for some FACTS and common sense ! I knew that we needed a REAL expert on this thread. : - )
192 posted on 11/22/2001 11:17:30 AM PST by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 191 | View Replies]

To: COB1
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this thread. I actually enjoy listening to engineers passing their practical wisdom on to the young ones. They have a way of reducing a lifetime of productive years to a few concise statements. Like Gurdieff said, most people don't do. But then, most people aren't engineers.
193 posted on 11/22/2001 2:02:35 PM PST by RightWhale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 191 | View Replies]

To: COB1
If anyone finds an oil well below 20,000' anywhere in the world, I'll personally fly him and his family to Houston and buy them the biggest steak in town!!

Well...one of the seven sisters was going to drill one to 25,000 ft. south of Pyote, but the mergers came first.

What do we have now, the four sisters?

Our company workload is down 60% right now, that is why I am home instead watching a rig turn right, first Thankgiving in ten years at home.

194 posted on 11/22/2001 2:11:51 PM PST by razorback-bert
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 191 | View Replies]

To: razorback-bert
"first Thankgiving in ten years at home."

Congratulations, bert!
I came home last evening, but the times I've been home for Thanksgiving have been few and far between.

I've worked a lot of wells around Pyote and Cayanosa, and if I remember correctly the Ellenberger comes in at about 22,000' the same as it does in the Gomez Field around Ft. Stockton.
I assume they permitted to 25,000' intending to drill to about 23,500' or just past the Ellenberger.
When I first went to the Gomez in about 1967, it was taking over a year to drill those 24,000' wells.
When the journal bearing bits came into being, we chopped that time to about seven months.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, old podnuh!

195 posted on 11/22/2001 2:48:30 PM PST by COB1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 194 | View Replies]

To: razorback-bert
BTW: Those are all gas and condensate wells from the Ellenberger.
In fact, some of the best gas wells I've ever seen has been in the Gomez.
Coastal brought one in at the airport in Ft. Stockton that potentialed for a little over a billion cubic feet per day, and several hundred million was common place.
196 posted on 11/22/2001 2:53:57 PM PST by COB1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 194 | View Replies]

To: COB1
At the meeting, we had about the well, it was clear that they expect some oil at 25-30,000 ft. This was a few years ago and just after the first 3-d shots of the area. We were doing a very secret horziontal test well in the area and I do mean a tight hole, if I told about it I would have shot you and me.
197 posted on 11/22/2001 3:16:21 PM PST by razorback-bert
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 195 | View Replies]

To: razorback-bert
"they expect some oil at 25-30,000 ft."

Unlike South Texas and many other places in the U.S., the temperature gradient in the Permain Basin is very low, something like 1.2* per hundred, but even at that the bottom hole temperature is going to be about 430* and the overburden pressure is going to be about 24,000 psi calculated at 18.2 ppg.
I'll believe it when I see it!

198 posted on 11/22/2001 3:29:17 PM PST by COB1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 197 | View Replies]

To: COB1
I didn't believe it either, but it would have been one sweet job, I could have grown a garden or two, next to the pad.
199 posted on 11/22/2001 3:42:35 PM PST by razorback-bert
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 198 | View Replies]

To: razorback-bert
"I could have grown a garden or two, next to the pad."

HAHAHA!!
I was in a friend of mine's office in Dallas a few years ago, and he mentioned he had an 18,000' turn-key well to drill at Columbus.
He asked me if I wanted to work it.
I said, "Bill, I HATE turn-keys!"
He got another man from Houston to work it who locked up his house in Houston, moved to the rig and worked nine months straight drawing his rate every day!
Talk about open mouth, insert foot!
LOL!!

200 posted on 11/22/2001 3:55:09 PM PST by COB1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 199 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200201-209 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson