Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Since fossil fuels takes million of years to form..

Question:
Is the earth still able to make fuel, say if the organic dies today and 10 million years later, will we get oil?

Yes and no. Eventually you can argue that everything is cyclic and new oil deposits will arise.
Whether they are abiotic or from living carbon deposits is arguable.
But the cycle you're measuring things could be intterupted by our sun dying and many other cosmic variables, so really you can guess anything you like and who's going to be able to prove you wrong?

Are you hinting that we could induce natural cycles manually to create new oil in years rather than millions of years?

Is the earth still able to make fuel, say if the organic dies today and 10 million years later, will we get oil?

Yes. Check out "Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes if you're interested in how oil forms. Put a bunch of organic matter 2 miles under the earth's crust in a place where it won't leak, seal it with a cap of salt or some such mineral, wait 10 million years, and presto! Oil. (Some oil is found at the surface, of course, but that is not where it formed.)

BTW, this is how we know we won't find huge new reserves by drilling deeper. Oil forms only at certain depths, and if the cores shows that the rock in question isn't rich in organics or was never deep enough, we know it won't contain oil. Similarly, we know that drilling deeper won't help, because any oil that sinks below the "oil window" turns into natural gas.

We can speed up the process in the lab. In fact, there's a plant that's been in the news lately that turns turkey parts into oil. But it's only energy efficient because we're raising turkeys anyway, for other reasons.

The thing about oil is that incredible amounts of energy went into making it...but we didn't have to provide that energy. It was provided by prehistoric sunshine and the forces of the earth. All we have to do is dig it up. We can make our own oil, but it's never going to provide the bounty that natural oil has.

I read somewhere that it takes around 96 tons of organic matter to form 1 barrel of crude oil.

Leanan wrote:
We can speed up the process in the lab. In fact, there's a plant that's been in the news lately that turns turkey parts into oil. But it's only energy efficient because we're raising turkeys anyway, for other reasons.

The thing about oil is that incredible amounts of energy went into making it...but we didn't have to provide that energy. It was provided by prehistoric sunshine and the forces of the earth. All we have to do is dig it up. We can make our own oil, but it's never going to provide the bounty that natural oil has.

That reminds me of the recycling vats in the computer game Alpha Centauri. The concept was that it is a civic duty for a human being to contribute their dead body into recycling rather than leaving it to the worms. Not sure if somebody other than Sid Meier thought of this first.
If you can do it with unwanted turkey body parts, then why not whole human beings?

Yes, it requires a huge change in soceital attitudes but think of the potential energy to be released from millions of deceased obese people the world over?
It could be a petrolheads dream, one day driving a Ferrari, the next day powering one!!

Seriously though, if it requires 96 tons of "organic matter" (or 864 people weighing 100k) to produce 1 barrel of oil then it may not be worth the relgious outcry?

Eating dead humans would be far more energy efficient that turning them to oil

I just read yesterday there were 2 main formation periods at 100 & 150 million years ago during extremely hot periods. Those temperatures led to huge growths of algae, which eventually poisoned the lakes – sank and formed the organic basis for oil.

Lots of good info:
http://www.isv.uu.se/UHDSG/articles/Oil ... Energy.doc

ROFL!!!

I can see it now:

Please tick the option you require after your death:

[ ] Donate my body to medical science
[ ] Donate my body parts as required for transplants to needy people
[ ] Donate my body to the catering service for the funeral mass

It wouldn't take 96 tons for manmade oil. That number takes into account that only a small fraction of prehistoric plant matter was deposited under conditions favorable to oil formation. See the numbers here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 102603.php

See also:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,960689,00.html

a 175lb (79kg) man could, theoretically, yield 38lb of oil, 7lb of gas, 7lb of minerals and carbon and 123lb of sterilised water. More practically, 100lb (45kg) of sewage becomes 26lb (11kg) of oil, 9lb of gas, 8lb of minerals and carbon and 57lb of water.