Re: Peak oil is an balloon, let's break it.

From: tadchem (tadchemNOSPAM_at_comcast.net)
Date: 02/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 17:35:38 -0500

"N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)" <N: dlzc1 D:cox T:net@nospam.com> wrote in
message news:kV2Rd.69866$Yu.23704@fed1read01...
> As I understand this argument, oil is purportedly produced naturally
> somewhere under surface of the Earth. I would assume that there would
then
> be no use in doing C-14 analysis, since the source of the carbon would no
> longer contain significant traces of atmospherically-produced carbon.

True. C-14 analysis would be futile as essentiall all is gone in the first
100,000 years of interment. However, in one paper
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/depth.html
Prof. Gold (one of the proponents of the inorganic origins of methane) notes
in the caption for figure 2 that "The carbon [C-13/C-12] isotope ratio as a
function of depth from the surface is shown for many different locations and
in a variety of containment rocks. The ratio follows a similar pattern
indicating that a fractionation process is occurring and that this process
is most effective at the shallowest levels."

What he does not note is that these fractionation processes are
*low-temperature* processes - high temperatures tend to be less
discriminatory in their treatment of elemental isotopes. The inorganic
origin hypothesis is a high-temperature and high pressure process. This
indicates that the petroleum *has* been involved with biological processing,
expecially since the petroleum is found in geological matrices that have
never experienced the temperatures and pressures required for the inorganic
mechanism.

> I
> would also assume then that arguments relating to how much oxygen has been
> liberated by plant matter would be moot, since this oil is *in excess* of
> the matching amount of plant matter (which is now on/near the surface of
> the Earth).

It may be of interest to note that the temperatures and pressures required
in laboratory experiments to form abiogenic methane [pressures between 5 and
11 GPa and temperatures ranging from 500°C to 1,500°C, from Fallon's first
post] would "crack" carbon-carbon bonds so that no higher hydrocarbons could
be formed - only natural gas.

> Isn't the real problem that it has taken so many million years, by
whatever
> source, to produce this oil?

That belief is based on initial speculations - based primarily on the age of
the rock in which the petroleum has been found. There have been few
observations made on rocks younger than 1 MYa. There *have* been
observations that the bottoms of bogs in the British Isles are well on their
way to becoming lignite (the lowest grade of coal) and they are all younger
than the Younger Dryas glaciation about 10,000 years old. Also, many of the
gas-bearing formations in the Gulf of Mexico built from Mississippi River
sediments that are geologically very young.

> I notice that there are no abandoned wells
> that have filled back up.

That depends on what you mean by 'filled back up.' One the hydrocarbons have
been withdrawn from a field, they are not replenished.

Some petroleum fields, when clumsily managed through greedy over-production,
yield only a fraction of their hydrocarbon contents before the field is
'invaded' by mineral-laden brines. Not good!

Optimum production of a field requires producing at a rate fast enough to be
commercially beneficial and slow enough that brines from underlying aquifers
do not channel through the porous rock and contaminate the formation. This
management requires an expensive kind of information; the details of the
productive formation's porosity and extent of fracturing must be known,
requiring a broad survey of down-hole rock samples from all over the field.

Many petroleum field production managers are motivated by financial and
political considerations to maximize short-term production, and are woefully
ignorant of the requirements for maximizing *overall* production.

Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA

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