Prospecting for Oil? Look In an Asteroid Crater

space.com website ^ | 14 December 1999 | By Michael Paine

[Fred Nerks]

The idea that complex hydrocarbons (the main components of petroleum oil) are a natural part of the Earth's crust should come as no surprise to scientists who study comets and asteroids.

[Clintonfatigued]

But it comes as a big surprise who have no scientific background.

This must mean that Saudi Arabia has had a lot of astroid hits.

[gotribe]

This makes the moon a LOT more interesting.

[marc costanzo]

This theory is not new - it goes back many years- a Austrian Jewish scientist named Goldstone- I think,
came up with this hypothesis that Petroleum is not the result of decaying marine plants at all, but coincident to the creation of the earth itself .

A vast ocean of hydrocarbons deep inside the porous rock of the earth itself, deep in the mantle .

Even the great Russian scientist Mendeleev described Petrol as a a material in which organic remains were added - as it percolated up to the Earth's surface .
Microbes feed on this geo-hydrocarbon, in turn they die and their remains are added to the petroleum .

[dirtboy]

One of the leading sources of oil for this country is Lousisana and the Gulf just offshore from such. All of those deposits were laid down by the Mississippi after the Cretaceous impact. It is far more likely that the oil we produce from those formations is from organic deposits laid down from millions of years of fluvial deposition.

I am not averse to alternative theories of where petroleum comes from. But they need to do a better job than this.

[billybudd]

Sounds like a bunch of hocus pocus.

[marc costanzo]

Follow-up:

This same Goldstone, held that deep asteroid impacts fractured the Earth's crust allowing thie Geo-Petroleum to be pushed to the surface .

[Berosus]

This calls for some kind of catastrophism ping, though Dr. Velikovsky thought BOTH the hydrocarbons and the craters had an extraterrestrial origin.

[Strategerist]

Sounds like a bunch of hocus pocus.

There's an infinite amount of nonsense (eagerly lapped up by the majority of FR, it seems) regarding abiogenic petroleum.

This particular article at least gets points for not claiming the standard theory of oil is that it comes from dinosaurs.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

"Geoscientist" Okay, what is that?
I have worked in oil exploration for years and I have never heard of that term.

Geophysicist
Geologist
Petroleum engineer
Seismologist

[marc costanzo]

>>"Rock oil originates as tiny bodies of animals buried in the sediments which, under the influence of increased temperature and pressure acting during an unimaginably long period of time transform into rock oil" -- M.V. Lomonosov 1757AD.

Maybe it's time to change the textbooks.
<<

You mean '1857', don't you ? ? ? ?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I've read about more or less continuous "seeps" moving upward against caprock. Never had it discussed in association with meteors...

[kinoxi]

Considering how much of the earth has been affected by impacts it would impossible to prove this theory wrong. That is without (fill in the blanks) millions of dollars in research.

[marc costanzo]

>>This calls for some kind of catastrophism ping, though Dr. Velikovsky thought BOTH the hydrocarbons and the craters had an extraterrestrial origin.<<

Dr. Velikovsky was the pariah of the scientific community !

Hell, Carl 'Spasmos' Sagan tried to have him academically lynched . .

[Lurker]

I just wish that 'scientists' would admit that they have no idea where crude oil comes from or exactly how much there is on Earth.

It would be so refreshing.

L

[dirtboy]

Petroleum geologists usually are less concerned about where oil comes from and instead tend to be much more concerned about determining whether oil will be present when their companies spend a couple million dollars to drill a well where they think the oil is going to be.

[Strategerist]

Dr. Velikovsky was the pariah of the scientific community!

More like "embarassing joke" rather than "pariah" and it's rather difficult to describe him as a scientist or part of the scientific community.

[SuzyQue]

The abyssal, abiotic theory of oil production has been around for a long time. Pretty compelling.

[Strategerist]

I just wish that 'scientists' would admit that they have no idea where crude oil comes from

They have an excellent idea where it comes from - dead microscopic plankton (much of it diatoms and algae) laid down in oceans and large lakes and later buried.

The chemical composition of such organisms exactly matches that of petroleum in many instances.

[cynwoody]

This theory is not new - it goes back many years- a Austrian Jewish scientist named Goldstone

Thomas Gold. The article mentions him.