Article from the other side... (way over the other side!)

clv101

I've been convinced of "Peak Oil" since I first came across it about a year ago... however I came across this article today:
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38645
I don't believe it for a moment, peak oil just has too much evidence and makes too much sense! But it makes you think... what if we've got it wrong? I wouldn't be the first time, in fact the vast majority of what people believed to be true about the world turned out to be wrong given enough time.

Aaron · Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 8:30 am Post subject: he he

Of course I'm tempted to do this myself, but there are so many folks here now that are more than capable...

The LA oil mystery (what's up with this?)

Go to it people...

clv101 - Watch this... these folks are smart, well informed thinkers.

Should be fun.

Didn't we have a thread about this before?
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"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.

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notacornucopian · Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 9:07 am Post subject:

Okay, I'll jump in with the obvious one............why would any oil exploration company spend the massive amount of money required to build and maintain an offshore oil rig when all they have to do is cap a depleted well, wait a little while, and voila ! A new gusher !

Even if there is such a thing as abiotic oil, it won't make up for the depletion rate we will see over the next few decades....

Barbara · Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 10:26 am Post subject:

Hope it's not true... or we'll kill ourselves with pollution in 30 years.

smiley · Fission Joined: Apr 16, 2004 Posts: 2125 Location: Europe

Yep and and as Jules Verne wrote the world is hollow and contains a sea of possibilities.

no seriously.

what the deepwater part of Mexico is concerned exploration began there relatively late due to the challenges associated.

http://oiltracers.com/mexico.html

The area around the gulf has been very geologically active due to collision of the continents meteor impacts, volcanism etc. The whole thing appears to be one big tectonic puzzle.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pciesiel/gly3150/gulf_of_mexico.html

with all that geological activity some oil could have migrated down wards, only to return when the pressure in the reservoir dipped. The complexity of the basin makes it difficult to spot these deeper reservoirs.

So there could be some oil at greater depths. However this is limited by the temperature (which increases with depth). Oil doesn't form at high temperatures, it cracks.

I guess this guy is violating about every thermodynamic law invented when he's talking about methane forming and rising from the core. At these temperatures methane surely will decompose. That's why we use the stuff in the first place, it is an unstable exothermic compound.

If not we would be swimming in hydrocarbons instead of water and breathing methane instead of CO2.

OK but if we just disregard thermodynamics as being wrong. Say the oil mysteriously migrates from a different dimension into to our earth's crust. Where are the gushers of oil on the surface, where are the oil springs? No a few tar pits won't qualify. The earth should be flooded with oil, it should be bubbling up like hot springs.

pip · Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:39 am Post subject:

HC's crack at high temperatures and normal pressures(0-1000 psi). What about 435,000 psi though?

smiley · Fission Joined: Apr 16, 2004 Posts: 2125 Location: Europe

"When the depth of burial reaches about 10,000 feet, heat, time and pressure turn the organisms into different types of petroleum."

"Higher temperatures usually produce lighter petroleum. Lower temperatures create a thick material, like asphalt. As the heat continues to alter the substances, gas is often produced. Depending on how much gas is present, sometimes it will stay mixed with the oil and sometimes it will separate. At temperatures above 500 degrees Fahrenheit, the organic matter is destroyed and neither oil nor gas is formed."

http://www.teachingtools.com/CrudeEnergy/RecipeForOil.htm

The whole process of oil formation is a cracking process. You start with organic matter which contains very complex carbohydrates and then crack them into less complex carbohydrates (oil and gas).

When moving to extreme pressures and temperatures these processes might change. However a conversion from light hydrocarbons to more complex ones seems unlikely.

A more probable option seems to me that the oxides in the earths crust (eg ironoxide) reduce the methane thus yielding iron, carbon carbon(mono)oxide and water. These are the substances which you'll find in volcanic gases, not methane.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

OilBurner · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 03, 2004 Posts: 417 Location: UK

I've been lurking here a while and finally decided to jump in and contribute. *splash* Smile

I've been following the two sides of Peak Oil vs Abiotic Oil in some detail and one small point seems quite intuitive but I don't think anybody has pointed it out. Let's (for now) accept that the fossil fuel theory is dead and buried (so to speak!!) and that all oil has seeped up from the Earth's mantle in the way that Thomas Gold et al have described. That is used as the primary argument against Peak Oil by people like David McGowan and it is appears a pretty good one at that.
However, it seems to me because the Earth is changing all the time, all oil fields will eventually lose their supply source because the crack into the mantle becomes blocked or restricted with the movement of the tectonic plates.
That would explain why some (or the majority) of oil fields are following the normal bell curve of production when applied to a finite resource. It also allows us to explain why some fields are re-filling: they still have a working flow from the mantle which may have enough pressure to replace any reasonable demand on the well.

To re-cap, most fields will not re-fill because the crack that created them is no longer supplying fresh oil and some oil fields will re-fill as the abiotic theory demands. This appears to agree with current observations of oil production, as much as they can be relied upon.
This has the effect of proving both the Peak Oil and Oil as a Renewable Resource camps are correct.
Yes, oil production is likely to peak, but there will always be a certain amount that we can pump, although the majority of fields will dry up because only so many oil supplying cracks will be active at any point in time. The cracks supplying oil must always be less than the number of original pockets of oil, otherwise we would be looking at an acceleration in the supply from the mantle and there is no reason to suggest this is happening or why it would happen.
So most calculations on peak will be wrong because they don't take into account the fact that some wells may not ever run out as far as current civilisation is concerned.
Despite this, it remains a fact that there must be a practical limit on supply unless these re-filling oil fields can re-fill much faster than current demand requires. In that case, it may be simply that all is required is to keep on drilling the renewable oil fields until the level within them starts to drop. That is when we know we have reached a limit on supply. I'm really not sure that anybody has given that posibility enough thought to know if oil supply might actually be way under what we're capable of - we just need to drill more at re-filling wells and see how far we can take them.
It is not beyond the realms of possiblity that the oil companies know this and are trying to not draw attention to this idea because it would severely drop oil prices? R: the image of diamond scarcity promoted by DeBeers.

Obviously the big concern is: if oil supply can actually be ramped up (or sustained at high levels) then can the planet cope with even more CO2 output in the atmosphere? Now that is worrying, I'd rather see us peak on oil than pump more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, at least with Peak Oil, something of society can remain and adapt to a more sustainable lifestyle - severe climate change may not allow for that!!

Now that's all off my chest I think I need a good lie down! Laughing

Aaron · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 8:46 am Post subject: I told you so...

Excellent posts all...

The best argument I can think of to dispute abiotic oil formation theory is it's irrelevance to peak oil theory.

Does it really matter how oil forms geologically? What we care about is how much we can produce into usable stuff like energy or products right?

So even if abiotic oil formation theory is correct, it simply does not matter.

Everyone agrees we have found fewer new oil fields for 40+ years running. We use 4 barrels today, for every new barrel we find.

A friend of mine in the exploration business told me recently that there are around 75% fewer people looking for oil than 10 years ago. It's just not viewed as profitable anymore.

To my thinking, when BP advertises the slogan "Beyond Petroleum", that pretty much says it all.

It's the amount of oil refilling these reserves that tells the tale. Even if they are refilling from deep sources, it's not enough to off set peak.
_________________
"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.

Praise HawkMan