The Abiotic Oil Controversy (Richard Heinberg)

[Dogmudgeon]

An excellent article on petroleum science and its implications by Richard Heinberg (author of Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World and The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies.

Abiotic oil has recently been seized on as a way of "debunking" the idea that we are facing an energy crisis with unimaginable consequences. Alas, in spite of its recent politicization, the idea does have considerable merit, although there are many areas of scientific inquiry which have been better served by the biotic oil hypothesis. Heinberg explains the controversy in detail for the educated lay reader.

The debate over oil's origin has been going on since the 19th century. From the start, there were those who contended that oil is primordial - that it dates back to Earth's origin - or that it is made through an inorganic process, while others argued that it was produced from the decay of living organisms (primarily oceanic plankton) that proliferated millions of years ago during relatively brief periods of global warming and were buried under ocean sediment in fortuitous circumstances.

During the latter half of the 20th century, with advances in geophysics and geochemistry, the vast majority of scientists lined up on the side of the biotic theory. A small group of mostly Russian scientists - but including a tiny handful Western scientists, among them the late Cornell University physicist Thomas Gold - have held out for an abiotic (also called abiogenic or inorganic) theory. While some of the Russians appear to regard Gold as a plagiarist of their ideas, the latter's book The Deep Hot Biosphere (1998) stirred considerable controversy among the public on the questions of where oil comes from and how much of it there is. Gold argued that hydrocarbons existed at the time of the solar system's formation, and are known to be abundant on other planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and some of their moons) where no life is presumed to have flourished in the past.

The abiotic theory holds that there must therefore be nearly limitless pools of liquid primordial hydrocarbons at great depths on Earth, pools that slowly replenish the reservoirs that conventional oil drillers tap.

If you have any interest in "Peak Oil" issues at all, this article should be on your "must-read" list.

This article was found at http://www.rense.com/general58/biot.htm -- I do not like using Rense.com as a primary source, but it seems that he neglected to post the original link for this. If you can provide it, please do!

--bkl

[benburch]

1. Replenishment must be very slow, though

So "Peak Oil" is not avoided by the abiotic theory. Even if West Texas will again be FULL of oil in 10,000 years, that doesn't save us from our present problem.

[Maple]

2. The planet has lots of oil

what it doesn't have is 'cheap' oil.

And the more it costs to retrieve it, the more likely people are to switch to something else.

[enki23]

3. *slaps self again*

abiotic oil is a particularly smelly load of horseshit. and somehow, i feel the need to post that in every "abiotic oil" post that comes along, as they do with regularity.

just one little question before the pointless sniping session is over. how, pray tell, do porphyrin rings get formed "abiotically" deep in the earth?

[Viking12]

4. Thank you for posting

You saved me the trouble.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Because it's been politicized

I have a lot of respect for the non-political abiotic theorists, but the main reason this idea has made progress isn't science, it's politics. It provides a handy excuse for wasteful and ecologically ruinous practices.

The abiotic oil scientists should talk to Chandra Wickramasinghe, Fred Hoyle's protege. The Creationists used their work to support their nuttiness, although Panspermia can hardly be considered "Biblical". Wickramasinghe made the mistake of agreeing to make a statement in court critical of evolution that he's probably regretted ever since.

The modern "neo-conservatives" will hijack any idea they find that can be pressed into the service of their religious/political/scientific/social jihad.

--bkl

[amazona]

7. i agree with bkl's post 100 percent!

Though I dare not use the word "ditto" as it has been hijacked.
:-)

[phantom power]

8. me three

If a thousand scientists tell these people something they don't want to hear, neocons will always give the megaphone to the one quack with a theory they can leverage.

[Dogmudgeon]

11. Here's the kick-in-the-head part of it

The abiotic oil proponants are not, in the main, oil company shills. The theory was developed by Russian and Ukrainian scientists in the 1950s. And while I feel that the theory has a number of weaknesses, the work involved to support or refute it has led to several advances in petrology.

Every time politicians get this involved in science, science suffers -- and so do we peasants. We are seeing that right now in pharmacology and biotechnology. I'd hate to see yet another chunk of the scientific world disappear behind a proprietarian wall.

--bkl

[amazona]

6. well

I tend to believe that there must have been some abiotic formation of oil at one time. Otherwise I think we have difficulty explaining the pre-Cambrian oil in Russia.

[NickB79]

9. Pre-Cambrian is not pre-life

The Cambrian period was the time in Earth's history when life made the leap from primarily unicellular species of bacteria to an astounding range of multicellular species 500 million years ago. There was life on Earth for 2.5 billion years before the Cambrian explosion. Before this, vast mats of cyanobacteria covered shallow seas for over one billion yrs, forming structures known as stromatolites and filling our atmosphere with oxygen. The pre-Cambrian oil deposits are cyanobacteria-derived, not abiotic.

[amazona]

10. probably the best explanation, agreed NT

,

[jmcgowanjm]

12. Well, if they got it, nows the time to produce it

cause NYMEX is panic'd.

http://www.nymex.com/jsp/markets/lsco_fut_cso.jsp

http://www.stusco.com/content/rmquote/crude.pdf

$60 by next Friday-IMHO

[Dogmudgeon]

14. Right now, it's all panic psychology

Interesting pdf from Shell trading.

The good news is that panics inevitably subside, and the price is likely to come back down.

The bad news is that the market is more easily panicked now, and I doubt that the price will come back down to where it started.

--bkl

[jmcgowanjm]

15. that panics inevitably subside

Yes, cause we get a glut of the product
demanded (or like tulips or John Law, the product
is worthless) or eventually we're all worn out.

Until Peakoil hits the front pp or the >911
event takes place, this current "panic"
won't subside.

But in this case we can't be worn out, cause
when all's said and done, we'll
still be w/o oil.

[NNadir]

16. Most peak oil scenarios seem to assume that oil was here today and will

disappear tomorrow afternoon. This is not the case. International oil will run out over a period of decades, much as it did in the US: We still have some here, you know.

The dwindling of oil supplies is a good thing, just so long as we don't rely too heavily on that fuel fossil fuel, coal, to replace it. I am far more scared by coal than I am by oil.

[jmcgowanjm]

19. the problem is not "running out tomorrow"

The problem is 'free energy" and how that is transferred thru the
system.

So far, problems have been solved by moving
more "free energy" thru,

creating debt to later be paid off in more
"free energy".

Once peak hits no more debt creation will be allowed.

At Peakoil we lose the propellant of the 1st half,
we lose the sweet, high viscosity, kerosene-like oil
and get sour, low viscosity, asphalt-like oil.

So if it takes a bbl of energy to pull, process, & deliver
a bbl of energy, then it might as well stay in the ground.

[Dogmudgeon]

17. I'm pretty sure how this will be played

Prices will rise to some vaguely defined "ceiling", and then fall back, amid much fanfare. But the new "floor" will be appreciably higher than the old one.

Since we're in a general price increase right now, we haven't seen a floor since about 2002, if memory serves. If oil hits $60 a barrel this winter, the price may come back down to $40 a barrel. That will cause much rejoicing, but people will have forgotten that oil was stable at about $20 per barrel from roughly 1985 to 1995.

(Someone with a better handle on oil prices will have to correct my numbers here if I've strayed too far.)

This would be the ideal time to slap a major tax on gasoline and dedicate the revenues to that 'Manhattan Project' I occasionally talk about -- the one that funds mass transit and fuel research -- but that would be Socialism, and we can't have that.

So the next three or four "bumps" in oil prices ought to give us a fair idea of how much time we have left before trading our cars in for horses.

Oh, wait a minute. Horses need to eat, don't they?

--bkl

[Karmadillo]

18. Only biotic horses need to eat. Abiotic horses manufacture their own food

and and and I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I'm hopeful no one will read beneath the subject line.

[jmcgowanjm]

13. Also, BareKnuckledLiberal, you can find this article at

http://energybulletin.net/