Re: Peak oil is an balloon, let's break it.
From: tadchem (tadchemNOSPAM_at_comcast.net)
Date: 02/17/05
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Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:00:56 -0500
"Pat Fallon" <pfallon@ptd.net> wrote in message
news:Neecnc0CK6_SnInfUSdV9g@ptd.net...
> Valid point.
> The fact that something can be done in the laboratory does not mean that
it is happening
> naturally.
>
> But it is evidence that it could be happening at the pressures and
temperatures found in the
> mantle.
There is more to chemical reactions than just having the right ingrediants,
temperature, and pressure. What *else* is present can be even nore
important to determining the result.
> BTW, have hydrocarbons been produced in the lab simulating the lower
pressure and temperature
> fossil fuel formulation scenario?
Yes. Zeolites (mineral compounds composed primarily of the oxides of
aluminum and silicon - the two most abundant materials in the earth's crust)
are the basis of *EXTENSIVE* studies in the field of heterogeneous
catalysis.
> I ask because, as I understand it, hydrocarbons do not spontaneously
evolve at these lower
> pressures and temps...
Moo. Ruminants (cud-chewing grazing animals) are considered to be the
primary source of the methane that gets into the atmosphere. The methane
comes from the cow's rumen, where it is *biogenically* produced at about 1
atm pressure and 37-40° Celsius.
Biogenesis in deep rocks is not to be ruled out entirely as microbes have
recently been found living under as much as a mile of rock:
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/life_discovered_hilo_rock.html
http://exosci.com/news/97.html
> In August 2002, in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(US)," Dr. Kenney
> published a paper, which had a partial title of "The genesis of
hydrocarbons and the origin of
> petroleum." Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
>
> "The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at
pressures less than 30
> Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves
hydrocarbons under
> pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent
with that
> environment."
A perfectly valid conclusion. Remember, however, that they were looking for
*spontaneous* production of hydrocarbons. Presumably this means
hydrocarbons produced in the *absence* of biogenic hydrocarbon-producing
organisms OR heterogeneous catalysts such as "rock". The dismissal of
catalysis from their studies renders the work irelevant to the real-world
problem of the origin of hydrocarbons in the presence of rock.
> But others have had much more luck finding hydrocarbons from "basement
reservoirs".
>
> [http://www.geoscience.co.uk/geofrc/geobasetop.html]
>
> "Hydrocarbon Production From Fractured Basement Reservoirs":
>
> "This compilation presents brief details of the occurrences of commercial
hydrocarbon reservoirs
> in fractured basement rocks from approximately 30 different countries. By
definition, the review
> concentrates only on those reservoirs found in igneous, metamorphic and
volcanic rocks.
[An interesting distinction, as I have always understood that all volcanic
rocks were by definition igneous.]
> Recent work by Kitchka (1998), supports the theory of an inorganic mantle
origin of petroleum.
> His paper introduces the concept that petroleum represents a complex
derivative of the fluid
> inclusions saturated with hydrocarbons in crustal and mantle minerals. He
concludes that the
> multi-stage segregation and migration of deep petroleum are realized by
fracturing and faulting.
> He cites a total of 370 oil and gas fields with commercial productivity
from crystalline
> basement. Other hypotheses by Kropotkin (1986), Krishna (1988), Szatmari
(1989), Porfir'ev
> (1974), Hunt (1998), and Gold (1980 & 1985) also consider the abiogenic/
mineral origin of
> petroleum."
I am not here to declare that it is not possible that quantites of petroleum
could have been produced from non-sedimentary rocks.
I *will* take exception to his conclusion that "multi-stage segregation and
migration of deep petroleum are realized by fracturing and faulting." This
totally ignores the thoroughly documented phenomenon of rock permeability.
"Permeability" is a property of rock in which not 100% of the space occupied
by the rock is filled. This is most obvious in sedimentary rock such as
sandstone. The component particles of the rock simply do not fit together
perfectly, leaving microscopic fissures through which fluids can flow. All
sedimentary amd much *igneous* rock shows this phenomenon - as igneous rock
cools it forms crystals which shrink and pull away from each other,
producing microfractures. Interestingly, some metamorphic rocks can *lose*
this property.
Impermeable rocks become "caprocks" when an entire layer of a soft mineral
such as dolomite (hydrous magnesium/calcium carbonate) is compressed to the
point that the microfractures are sealed off, preventing the flow of fluids.
Interestingly this can happen in distinct layers at the same location,
producing a "layer-cake" of gas and/or oil bearing formations. The
hypothesis that petroleum is solely orogenic, requireing high pressures and
temperatures, fails entirely to account for the existence of petroleum
sandwiched between impermeable layers of caprock.
> I know that Gold thinks that the biological origin of some sets of
molecules (hopane,
> pristine,phytane, steranes and certain porphyrins) found in all commercial
oil are not of the
> biological origin of the oils themselves, but by a contamination with
microbial (bacteria)
> materials.
Orogenic versus biogenic petroleum can be fingerprinted by the
presence/absence of enantiomers - non-superimposable mirror-images of
molecules. Like a right hand versus a left hand, some objects are
geometrically distinct from their mirror images. This applies to molecules
as well. Molecules produced by inanimate (i.e. orogenic) processes
> And as i understand it, some petroleum from deeper levels lack almost
completely the biological
> evidence.
Oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same
chemistry - oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing
depth. The hydrocarbon deposits of a large area often show common chemical
or isotopic features quite independent of the varied composition of the
geological ages of the formations in which they are found. Crude oil
examples anywhere from the Middle East can be distinguished from oil in any
part of South America or from the oil of West Africa.
Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among
geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to
produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Methane is found in many locations where a biogenic origin is improbable or
where biological deposits seem inadequate: in great ocean rifts in the
absence of any substantial sediments; in fissures in igneous and metamorphic
rocks even at great depth; in active volcanic regions even where there is a
minimum of sediments, and there are massive amounts of methane hydrates
(methane-water combinations) in permafrost and ocean deposits where it is
doubtful that an adequate quantity and distribution of biological source
material is present.
And at any given time, thousands of coal veins are ablaze around the world.
In China's northwestern province of Xinjiang alone, there are currently
about 2,000 underground coal fires burning. Indonesia currently hosts as
many as 1,000.
Some of these fires have been burning for thousands of years; Burning
Mountain Nature Reserve, for example, in New South Wales, Australia, has
been aflame for an estimated 5,500 years. Other coal fires are of more
recent vintage, often started through the actions of the notoriously
destructive human species. But underground coal fires long predate mankind's
proclivity for starting them, and many of the fires burning today are due to
entirely natural causes.
New Scientist noted, in February 2003, that "coal seam fires have occurred
spontaneously far back into geological history." ("Wild Coal Fires are a
'Global Catastrophe'," New Scientist, February 14, 2003) Radio Nederland
added that "Geological evidence from China suggests that underground coal
fires have been occurring naturally for at least one million years." (Anne
Blair Gould "Underground Fires Stoke Global Warming," Radio Nederland, March
10, 2003)
It is estimated that in China alone, some 200 million tons of coal go up in
smoke every year. That's a hell of a lot of coal. More coal than China
exports, in fact. In other words, the world's leading coal exporter loses
more coal to underground fires than it produces for export.
Coal is a member of the same hydrocarbon family as oil and natural gas, and
it is, like gas and oil, claimed to be a 'fossil fuel' created in finite,
non-renewable quantities. And yet this allegedly precious and limited
resource has been burning off at the rate of millions of tons per year, year
in and year out, for at least a million years, and probably much longer.
This raises, in my mind at least, one very obvious question: how is it
possible that nature has been taking an extremely heavy toll on the globe's
'fossil fuels' for hundreds of thousands of years (at the very least),
without depleting the reserves that were supposedly created long, long ago;
and yet man, who has been extracting and burning 'fossil fuels' for the mere
blink of an eye, geologically speaking, has managed to nearly strip the
planet clean?
>And then there's that helium and free nitrogen problem...
Not sure what you're referring to here. I know that helium is correlated
with oil fields...Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium
detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to
be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium,
identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200
and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that
are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the
dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the
solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product. I thought the correlation of
helium with oil was a problem for the fossil fuel theory...
Pat Fallon
pfallon@ptd.net
- Next message: guskz_at_hotmail.com: "Postulate #2: Time Dilation"
- Previous message: robert j. kolker: "Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science"
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