Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby Armageddon » Sun 09 May 2021, 16:04:51

diemos wrote:
ROCKMAN wrote:A lot of theories come from folks that don't no shit about oil and gas production.


I don't know shit about how to extract oil and gas from the ground.

But I know that it was all created more than 100 million years ago and is finite.



That’s my thought too. I’ve always that if an oil well was replenishing, it was probably draining from another one at a similar depth.
User avatar
Armageddon
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7186
Joined: Wed 13 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: St.Louis, Mo

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Sun 09 May 2021, 21:19:46

As far as I'm concerned every one of the millions of bbls of oil I helped to discover had an abiotic origin. For the less evolved out there let me explain for the uptenth time: geologist don't explore for oil: we explore for potential hydrocarbon TRAPS that might contain oil. How the oil originated that could be contained in the traps is not part of the calculus. For all I know every bbl I've drilled into was created abiotically, biologically, by God or by Satan (part of his plan for to aid man in his destruction of the earth's ecology).

It made no difference in my efforts to identify and drill potential TRAPS where hydrocarbons could accumulate and ALSO BE PRODUCED FROM.


The statement works for oil and gas exploration in well explored and developed basins...the risk for source and migration is very, very low. That is not the case around the world and certainly not in the many countries I was involved in E&P in over the years. Before Doug Waples developed his little computer program we used to used calculators to figure out how much hydrocarbons could be generated from a given source rock. As time went on and Doug refined his tool and many others added to the notion of organic maturation and migration of matured HC into traps we used that as a primary tool to direct our explorations in many places around the world. It didn't always lead to successful wells but I know for a fact it helped us avoid exploration in basins which had no hope of source rocks ever having matured enough. I can say with absolute certainty there is not a single place in the world where I have worked on oil and gas (pretty much every continent other than Antarctica and many countries and basins in all of the other continents) that you could not tie the oil to the source rock through organic fingerprinting and via seismic it was possible to map the migration pathway from source to trap.
My point is outside of the very well explored areas in North America an understanding of source rock quality, time-temperature burial history and migration pathways was absolutely essential to exploration. It took up a major part of our peer review discussions when looking at various basins around the globe.
User avatar
rockdoc123
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 7685
Joined: Mon 16 May 2005, 03:00:00

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 10 May 2021, 08:59:31

diemos wrote:
ROCKMAN wrote:A lot of theories come from folks that don't no shit about oil and gas production.


I don't know shit about how to extract oil and gas from the ground.

But I know that it was all created more than 100 million years ago and is finite.


Not all of it is that old. Most oil in California came from the Monterey, and it isn't more than 20 million years old, give or take.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
User avatar
AdamB
Volunteer
Volunteer
 
Posts: 9292
Joined: Mon 28 Dec 2015, 17:10:26

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby diemos » Mon 10 May 2021, 10:12:26

AdamB wrote:
diemos wrote:
ROCKMAN wrote:A lot of theories come from folks that don't no shit about oil and gas production.


I don't know shit about how to extract oil and gas from the ground.

But I know that it was all created more than 100 million years ago and is finite.


Not all of it is that old. Most oil in California came from the Monterey, and it isn't more than 20 million years old, give or take.


'kay. Still not happening fast enough to keep up with what we're extracting.
User avatar
diemos
Heavy Crude
Heavy Crude
 
Posts: 1423
Joined: Fri 23 Sep 2005, 03:00:00

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 10 May 2021, 15:31:44

diemos wrote:
AdamB wrote:
diemos wrote:
ROCKMAN wrote:A lot of theories come from folks that don't no shit about oil and gas production.


I don't know shit about how to extract oil and gas from the ground.

But I know that it was all created more than 100 million years ago and is finite.


Not all of it is that old. Most oil in California came from the Monterey, and it isn't more than 20 million years old, give or take.


'kay. Still not happening fast enough to keep up with what we're extracting.


Quite true. No one appears to be arguing that current generation rates are enough to begin filling up fields all over the place, and in many cases this is probably impossible without some tectonic activity happening in minutes that otherwise took millions of years.

I do recall someone making the claim back in the old peak oil days for this effect being seen somewhere in the GOM, Eugene Island block somewhere or another? If memory serves, it is a basin currently in the generation window, and doing just that. Don't know if the claim was valid or not, but based on some rooting around I couldn't immediately discredit it. Or validate it. I am aware of a documented claim of a Soviet gas field refilling itself up, but that wasn't from current thermogenic generation, but hydrates.

Just a bunch of details though, oil fields aren't filling up in any way that matters. Field level reserve growth, as it has been for decades now, matters more than most anything else except tight formation development, and that is mostly happening in the US.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
User avatar
AdamB
Volunteer
Volunteer
 
Posts: 9292
Joined: Mon 28 Dec 2015, 17:10:26

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby Armageddon » Mon 10 May 2021, 16:36:05

Oil fields do not fill back up
User avatar
Armageddon
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7186
Joined: Wed 13 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: St.Louis, Mo

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby dissident » Mon 10 May 2021, 17:16:40

Armageddon wrote:Oil fields do not fill back up


There is one offshore field near Vietnam which supposedly "restocks". It is also in the wrong type of rock formation. The real story is that there is a proper conventional oil bearing rock source that leaks into this restocking reservoir so we have no free lunch.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... -hill_play
dissident
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 6458
Joined: Sat 08 Apr 2006, 03:00:00

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 10 May 2021, 18:25:25

dissident wrote:
Armageddon wrote:Oil fields do not fill back up


There is one offshore field near Vietnam which supposedly "restocks". It is also in the wrong type of rock formation.


Not like we trust Armie for what oil to put in a internal combustion engine, but wasn't that one oil field near Vietnam used as an example of abiotic oil by someone or another?

dissident wrote: The real story is that there is a proper conventional oil bearing rock source that leaks into this restocking reservoir so we have no free lunch.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... -hill_play
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
User avatar
AdamB
Volunteer
Volunteer
 
Posts: 9292
Joined: Mon 28 Dec 2015, 17:10:26

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 12 May 2021, 14:43:12

Arm: "Oil fields do not fill back up". Well, yes and no. There is such a phenominon as secondary migration. Not very common. Complex circumstances for sure. Also better to talk about increased production from individual RESERVOIRS and not FIELDS. Many fields have shown huge increases in production after the originally discovered RESERVOIRS had been fairly well depleted. Very old (yet very true) geologist saying: one of the best places to look for a new oil field is underneath an old (and somewhat depleted) oil field. IOW deeper then original discovery.
User avatar
ROCKMAN
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11397
Joined: Tue 27 May 2008, 03:00:00
Location: TEXAS

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby theluckycountry » Mon 26 Jul 2021, 17:14:55

Whether they begin to refill from adjacent formations or not is hardly of interest since the process must be quite slow or we wouldn't have to drill wells on the ocean floor a mile down.

Wood is interesting. I live in a rural town, surrounded by forests. I buy split wood, delivered, by locals, a lot cheaper than you could in a city. The cheapest I can buy it is $120 for a 6x4 trailer load. The wood is actually free of course, what I'm paying for is the oil powered cutting splitting and transport to my door, as well as the profit the local needs to support his oil-based lifestyle.

I wonder how much that wood would cost me without oil's subsidies?
après moi le déluge
theluckycountry
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 2205
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2021, 18:08:48
Location: Australia

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby mustang19 » Mon 26 Jul 2021, 17:27:49

theluckycountry wrote:Whether they begin to refill from adjacent formations or not is hardly of interest since the process must be quite slow or we wouldn't have to drill wells on the ocean floor a mile down.

Wood is interesting. I live in a rural town, surrounded by forests. I buy split wood, delivered, by locals, a lot cheaper than you could in a city. The cheapest I can buy it is $120 for a 6x4 trailer load. The wood is actually free of course, what I'm paying for is the oil powered cutting splitting and transport to my door, as well as the profit the local needs to support his oil-based lifestyle.

I wonder how much that wood would cost me without oil's subsidies?


It would cost the same, wages would collapse because society would regress to a Malthusian state and 10% of the population would work.

Wages for adult males wouldn't change much. It's that there's many more dependents and women don't work. You would pay 1-5% your income for that trailer load but nobody else would be able to use it.
mustang19
Permanently Banned
 
Posts: 816
Joined: Fri 06 Nov 2020, 20:43:52

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby Gmark » Mon 26 Jul 2021, 19:31:35

ROCKMAN wrote:Arm: "Oil fields do not fill back up". Well, yes and no. There is such a phenominon as secondary migration. Not very common. Complex circumstances for sure. Also better to talk about increased production from individual RESERVOIRS and not FIELDS. Many fields have shown huge increases in production after the originally discovered RESERVOIRS had been fairly well depleted. Very old (yet very true) geologist saying: one of the best places to look for a new oil field is underneath an old (and somewhat depleted) oil field. IOW deeper then original discovery.


That's interesting! For fields that do show an increase in production, what kind of timeline is involved? Can migration through a formation be fast, or am I misunderstanding this?
Gmark
Peat
Peat
 
Posts: 65
Joined: Fri 23 Jul 2021, 22:11:08

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 11 Jun 2022, 23:45:14

Endless Oil?



Everybody knows that oil and gas drilled out of the earth comes from the remains of plants and animals trapped underground millions of years ago. This received wisdom so dominates our thinking that it is enshrined in the very language we use–fossil fuels. They took eons to form, and we are using them up far faster than they can be replenished.

What if the whole theory is wrong?

That’s the premise of a small but passionate band of Russian and Ukrainian contrarians. They argue that oil and gas don’t come from fossils; they’re synthesized deep within the earth’s mantle by heat, pressure and other purely chemical means, before gradually rising to the surface. Under the so-called abiotic theory of oil, finding all the energy we need is just a matter of looking beyond the traditional basins where fossils might have accumulated.

The idea that oil comes from fossils “is a myth. … We need to change this myth,” says petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits.”

Alexander Kitchka of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences brashly estimates that 60% of the content of all oil is abiotic in origin, and not from fossil fuels. He says companies should drill deeper to find it.

Kitchka says oil may be found in all sorts of geological structures such as volcanic rock or deep-sea thermal vents where companies aren’t looking today.

Kutcherov points to a handful of productive oil fields in Vietnam and elsewhere that lay in hard rock such as granite. Traditional theory says oil shouldn’t be present there. Certain wells in the Gulf of Mexico have produced more oil than expected. The abiotic crowd says they are slowly being refilled from a deeper source.

The abiotic oil theory goes back centuries and includes as its prominent champions Dimitri Mendeleev, best known for inventing the periodic table. It didn’t gain much visibility in America until the late Cornell University astronomer Thomas Gold championed it in the 1980s. He said that oil contains organic compounds not because it is derived from fossils but because giant colonies of deep-earth bacteria feed on deep hydrocarbon pools way down in the mantle.

In the 1980s, he convinced the Swedish government and investors to drill four miles through solid granite in central Sweden. They eventually recovered 84 barrels of oil. Gold considered it a scientific success, even though the project was a commercial failure.

To prove that abiotic oil is possible, in 2002 Kutcherov superheated calcium carbonate, water and iron in a pressure chamber and then cranked it up to produce 30,000 times atmospheric pressure, simulating the conditions present in the earth’s mantle. Sure enough, about 1.5% of the material converted into hydrocarbons, according to results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most of it was methane and other gases, but about 10% was heavier oil components.

Since then, in work slated for publication, Kutcherov has shown that methane will convert into more complicated hydrocarbons under certain extreme conditions. Small amounts of natural gas that could be abiotic in origin have also been found in deep-sea vents. Kutcherov says methane is probably generated in the mantle, and depending on the conditions, it turns into heavier hydrocarbons as it bubbles up towards the surface.

Skeptics say that while traces of abiotic hydrocarbons may exist, little data support the idea of economically meaningful deposits. “Companies have been looking for oil for 100 years. If all this abiogenic stuff is there, why haven’t they found it?” asks geochemist Geoffrey Glasby, who spent nine months investigating the matter for a 2006 review paper in Resource Geology. He concluded the totality of the evidence did not support the concept.

“There is a difference between a few parts per million and tens of millions of barrels,” says Chevron geologist Barry Jay Katz, another skeptic. He notes that the theory fails to explain the wide variety of biological compounds found in oil from different parts of world. Oil from younger rocks contains compounds linked to flowering plants, but oil from older rocks formed before flowering plants existed contains only more primitive organic compounds.

“If you buy the theory, it says you will never run out of oil; there is an infinite supply, and don’t worry about anything,” says Katz. “That is not the way it seems to be working.”

American geologists might be convinced if the abiotic theorists can find big new oil fields using their methods. Kutcherov has developed a methodology for searching for deep migration channels where abiotic oil might rise to the surface. If he can raise money from investors, he hopes to begin searching for abiotic oil deposits in east Texas.


LINK
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: THE Abiotic Oil Thread pt 3

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 12 Jun 2022, 09:05:13

Seriously Tanada. This? Again? The reason why this idea doesn't even matter is because it is far easier to make liquid hydrocarbons out of natural gas, be it from other reservoirs or dairy cows farting. 440,000 PSI pressures to make some synthetic oil? Sort of? Maybe?

The Eagleford, when you do the thermal mapping of the generation, and other there you get oil (because the organic material wasn't heated as much) and other there you get gas (because the oil you first created was cracked to oil under additional temperature and pressure). And when you can type the kerogen involved (which geochemists do all the time) you discover the type of organic material the oil is sourced from (and therefore the nearby gas in the same formation), and in that same instant know it wasn't built from the raw materials quoted in the article.

The problem for the abiotic folks is always the geochemistry, where that gang of scientists can parade around their work on the organic material that all known oil and gas comes from, as opposed to those claiming it comes from something else, but can't back it up with the geochemistry. Or pressures and temperatures that turn sedimentary rock into granite, destroying the organic material along the way because of exactly those high pressures and temperatures needed to allegedly make oil. Except at those temperatures it then vaporizes to oil, and then methane even breaks down into, I dunno. I'll have to ask a chemist, what happens to methane under extreme pressures and temperatures. You end up with carbon and hydrogen in some form I imagine.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
User avatar
AdamB
Volunteer
Volunteer
 
Posts: 9292
Joined: Mon 28 Dec 2015, 17:10:26

Previous

Return to Peak Oil Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 77 guests