Thank you so much for challenging me the other day. I don’t recall every hearing about “abiotic oil” specifically and certainly don’t recall reading about it. I do remember reading about the Russian Deep Bore project in Norway, IIRC some 20 years ago but what I read was just as they were beginning. So I am sure I didn’t just dream it up independently but it did resonate with me. I recall the Fischer Trop process from Organic Chem 40 years ago.
I did look up abiotic oil just now on Wikipedia and was shocked to find an article. Even more shocked to see Fischer Trop referenced. Interesting. I honestly had never seen any of that.
The reason I pinged you is I recall hearing or reading that Helium is always associated with petroleum but as I recall there is no theory to explain why. Thoughts?
My understanding of helium (limited though it is) is that most terrestrial helium is formed in the lithosphere by radioactive decay of heavy elements. Like natural gas, it is lighter than everything else around it, and it migrates upward through pores and fissures in the rock, becoming trapped by the same mechanisms that trap natural gas. Helium is created by a different mechanism than that which creates natural gas, but it behaves pretty much the same from a fluid mechanics standpoint. It tends to migrate upward toward the earth’s surface, until, like natural gas, it encounters an impermeable layer, becomes trapped and accumulates. Sometimes helium and natgas flow into the same trap, which is why you often (but not always) find them in tandem.
The ultimate source of "abiotic oil" is postulated to be the primordial methane from the original gaseous constituents slowly percolating from the earth's deep interior to the surface. Helium is either primordial or results from various very long half-life primordial radioactives decaying (alpha particle decay). But both are gaseous, and get to the surface through the same "channels of porosity" until they hit some barrier (like a salt dome, or basalt layer), and are "trapped".