Nature has an article on abiotic oil; Deep-ocean vents are a source of oil and gas

You have to subscribe to get access to the whole article, so can anyone here fill us in on the gist of it? I heard about it at GNN, where they have a slightly longer excerpt

Picked up at World Net Daily,natch. Longer excerpt at richarddawkins.net, of all places.



WorldNet links to a good page on the Lost City. As usual this is interesting and undoubtedly irrelevant to future oil production - the Lost City is on the Mid Atlantic Ridge, should we be trawling the ocean for oil? Or should we expect a fillup on Ghawar in 200 years?

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Please forgive me for bringing up this bloody subject as I would imagine most of you are sick to death of it. Me too. I'm trying to find credentialed scientists like maybe NAS or AAAS members that refute J.F. Kenney's claims (from a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) of oil as being essentially of in-organic origin. I'm not a scientist but it is clear that the larger body of scientists regard oil as being of biotic origin and that's good enough for me, however the NAS isn't known for publishing shoody science.. so what's the deal?

I was only made aware of the "peak oil" debate fairly recently and feel like I've rammed into a wall at 150 m/p/h with the can-o-worms debate of "biotic" vs. "abiotic" theory. I'm very concerned about the human propensity for growth in everything from population growth to proportional growth rates in monetary wealth and the future sustainability of growth on a the finite space of this planet.

Richard Hienberg is a personal favorite of mine and has made his opinion on the so-called "abiotic" theory well known, however I've not heard him speak on the relatively recent discovery of abundant hydro-carbons on Saturn's moon, Titan. This has become an oft touted "proof" of late by the abiotic crowd in support of their "theory".

I don't pay much attention to anyone who hasn't been peer reviewed by the established scientific academies like NAS. Too much bogus science out there. I just want the truth as to whether or not petrolium is from organic or in-organic processes. Is this even being debated amongst the smartest of the smart? Or is it just a red herring?

Again, I'm sorry for bringing up this sore subject and if anyone can direct me to a serious article on a serious scientific website that deals with the subject of "oil origins", I would very much appreciate it. I'm having a very hard time finding an unbias website on the subject, seems they are all advocacy groups that get into the debate.. and I don't rate advocacy groups very high on my credability list.

Thanks,
epii

What if it were abiotic in origin? Would we suddenly find huge new reservoirs of oil?

I guess an op yanked my posting from another forum so to be safe I'm posting it again here:

Please forgive me for bringing up this bloody subject as I would imagine most of you are sick to death of it. Me too. I'm trying to find credentialed scientists like maybe NAS or AAAS members that refute J.F. Kenney's claims (from a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) of oil as being essentially of in-organic origin. I'm not a scientist but it is clear that the larger body of scientists regard oil as being of biotic origin and that's good enough for me, however the NAS isn't know for publishing shoody science.. so what's the deal?

I was only made aware of the "peak oil" debate fairly recently and feel like I've rammed into a wall at 150 m/p/h with the can-o-worms debate of "biotic" vs. "abiotic" theory. I'm very concerned about the human propensity for growth in everything from population growth to proportional growth rates in monetary wealth and the future sustainability of growth on a the finite space of this planet.

Richard Hienberg is a personal favorite of mine and has made his opinion on the so-called "abiotic" theory well known, however I've not heard him speak on the relatively recent discovery of abundant hydro-carbons on Satern's moon, Titan. This has become an oft touted "proof" of late by the abiotic crowd in support of their "theory".

I don't pay much attention to anyone who hasn't been peer reviewed by the established scientific academies like NAS. Too much bogus science out there. I just want the truth as to whether or not petrolium is from organic or in-organic processes. Is this even being debated amongst the smartest of the smart? Or is it just a red herring?

Again, I'm sorry for bringing up this sore subject and if anyone can direct me to a serious article on a serious scientific website that deals with the subject of "oil origins", I would very much appreciate it. I'm having a very hard time finding an unbias website on the subject, seems they are all advocacy groups that get into the debate.. and I don't rate advocacy groups very high on my credability list.

Thanks,
epii

I posted the List of molecules in interstellar space from Wikipedia, which tells you what a variety of complex matter can be found in hostile environments. I wasn't surprised they found some hydrocarbons on Titan, used it here as the basis of a joke in fact. We have had some discussions of Titan's potential however, like Harvesting hydrocarbons from Titan: not feasible.

Dunno if anyone has written any serious papers on abiotic. You might carefully check out the Wiki page's foonotes/refs.

NASA says there are more than 1,000x as much hydrocarbons present in surface lakes on Titan then exists in all the oil reservoirs combined on earth.

Huge amounts of abiotic oil exist............on Titan!

Titan seems to have similar natural processes to earth. If the same natural processes that create abiotic hydrocarbons on Titan also operate on earth, then we'd have at least some abiotic hydrocarbon on earth.

Please do, if you provide such links it may stop the abiotic oil cornucopians.

Welcome to this site, have some pie.

I read today that some expert said Oil is Abiotic, It forms in the Earth's mantle and reproduces. As a newby here, I was saying to myself, "This can't be true, how would it (oil) form thius way". Have others heard this or is mumbo-jumbo.

It's mumbo-jumbo. Fact: Oil and gas only occur in sedimentary formations which are where organic materials are/were. Abiotics claim that oil and gas is formed deep inside the Earth. But if that were the case, wouldn't oil/gas be found in igneous rocks almost exclusively, rather than in sedimentary rocks? Wouldn't Hawai'i, Iceland and other volcanic "hotspots" be the major oil producers then? Instead hydrocarbons are often found in places with the least amount of volcanic and even tectonic activity: Texas, GOM, Middle East, North Sea, and so on.

A search for 'aibiotic' in this forum would have been appropriate before posting as this has been discussed extensively.

doodlebug2,

Abiotic hydrocarbon theory was long promoted by the Russians. They were (maybe still are) drilling a very deep well looking for some in far eastern Russia. You might try searching Russian oil geology if you're still interested.

Abiogenic Origin of Hydrocarbons: An Historical Overview by Dr. Geoffrey Lasby [PDF]

And while I don't believe in it, I use this comparison to explain why it's worthless even if it is true.

Say there is about 30 Trillion barrels of oil that is locked into the earth (that's way, way, way above any estimate that I'm aware of).

Let's say all of this oil has been produced in the last 10 million years through this Abiotic process.


30,000,000,000,000 / 10,000,000 = 3,000,000 barrels produced a year or about 8,200 barrels a day.

Again, so what? We consume about 85,000,000 barrels a day or over 1,000 times what the earth might be producing!