The Official Abiotic Oil Thread

roccman

"Or little green men are going to invade."

Excellent!!!

Hoping to catch a ride off this rock when PO.com begins posting recipes on how to season asscheek.

TheDude

Woah! Had my new post grafted on to the big 'un. Go back a page for details, including a rant about floridation. My questions don't have anything to do with Dr. Strangelove, however.

So what's this fascination with abiotic? Is it really being refined by subterannean Mole People? Is the answer back 10-15 pages?
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Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I will not abide another toe.

opxcpx · Coal Joined: Jul 17, 2007 Posts: 1

An abiotic source of oil in the deep mantle/lower crust is incredibly unlikely. I have read the article linked that is "proof" of this process and it is scientifically flawed and easy to refute.

I am not a petroleum geologist, but I am an expert on igneous and meatmorphic petrology and study the deep mantle and lower crust. First, inorganic carbon does occur in the mantle and lower crust as graphite, diamond at high pressure, CO2 and methane. There are fluid inclusions which contain both methane and CO2, and sometimes polymers of carbon formed by reaction between graphite and fluids in the inclusions, mostly formed during uplift and exhumation of rocks. However, fluid inclusions are typically .01 to 1 mm in diameter. 1 mm fluid inclusion are huge, and are very, very rare in lower crustal or mantle rocks. Bulk chemical analysis of rocks shows that mantle rocks contain as much as 1% voliatiles (CO2, methane, H20, ...etc). So, for 1 km^3 of mantle rock you have about 10 m^3 volatiles. Lets assume this is pure methane. Note however, that most of the voliatiles are CO2 and H20 as proven by phase equilibria of basaltic rocks which cover 2/3rds of the earths surface.

The energy equivalent of 1 barrel of oil is about 170 m^3 of methane. This means that to get enough gas to equal 1 barrel of oil from the mantle we would have to remove ALL of the fluid inclusions in 17 km^3 of mantle. The total volume of the earths mantle is about 758,244,372,290,000,000 km^3. Of that only the upper 100 km or so can contain methane, because carbon will form diamond at higher pressures then this, just ask South African miners. That means that if methane was the only fluid in the upper mantle (it is not) and it was equally distributed throughout, there would be about 154 billion barrels of oil equivalent methane stored in the upper 100 km of the mantle. That sounds like a lot but... how would you get it out?

Given natural creep rates of mantle rock, which are about as fast finger nails grow we can make some guesses. At a rate of 2.5 cm year for rock uplift we could expect about 25 km of mantle to move towards the surface at places like mid-ocean spreading ridges in a million years. (Note spreading ridges are the only place where the mantle is moved near the surface at a large scale over geologic time.) There is presently about 80,000 km of mid ocean ridge, and most ridges are about 2 km wide at the axis. So we get 2x25x80000 =4,000,000 km3 of mantle near the surface in a million years. That gives us about 235 barrels of oil equivalent out of the mantle through natural processes in a million years. I am into long term investments, but I think I will take my money elsewhere.

Bottom line, even though there are carbon based compounds in the mantle (and lower crust), given reasonable assumptions, and even absurdly generous assumptions as above, there is simply no way the mantle can supply the oil we see in commercial fields.

Furthermore, carbon compounds derived from inorganic sources ARE chemically distinguishable from those in organic sources. Their formula and structures can be identical, but their isotopic compositions are distinct. Many isotope studies have shown that petroleum is derived from biotic sources. I can supply references to those who are interested.

Best,
Chris

pstarr

hey opxcpx thanks for the analysis and welcome to peakoil.com and Peak Oil

As you've perhaps noticed there's not been much traffic on the 'Official Abiotic Oil Thread' lately. The proponents seem to have departed for loonier shores and crusts. Or they've gone to Pennsylvania to purchase that dry Venango County well old Colonel Drake has for sale. Do you want a piece of the action. It'll be pumping again real soon.
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CarnbY

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

TheDude

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

epii · Coal Joined: Apr 15, 2008 Posts: 6

{thread merged}

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

KingM

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

epii · Coal Joined: Apr 15, 2008 Posts: 6

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

TheDude · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:40 pm Post subject: Re: abiotic oil "theory" (sorry)

Plantagenet

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.

anagami