Fossil Fuels: The Big Lie

From the Chevron site, you get the official Western explanation of the origins of crude oil - the lifestuff of the modern world, with biogenic theory:

By the 1920s, crude oil as an energy source - not just as a curiosity - came into its own. But to many, it's still as mysterious as it was to ancient man. Even in the petroleum industry, most people never see crude oil.

Geologists generally agree that crude oil was formed over millions of years from the remains of tiny aquatic plants and animals that lived in ancient seas. There may be bits of brontosaurus thrown in for good measure, but petroleum owes its existence largely to one-celled marine organisms. As these organisms died, they sank to the sea bed. Usually buried with sand and mud, they formed an organic-rich layer that eventually turned to sedimentary rock. The process repeated itself, one layer covering another.

Then, over millions of years, the seas withdrew. In lakes and inland seas, a similar process took place with deposits formed of non-marine vegetation.

In some cases, the deposits that formed sedimentary rock didn't contain enough oxygen to completely decompose the organic material. Bacteria broke down the trapped and preserved residue, molecule by molecule, into substances rich in hydrogen and carbon. Increased pressure and heat from the weight of the layers above then caused a partial distillation of the organic remnants, transforming them, ever so slowly, into crude oil and natural gas.

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So basically, we are given an explanation that defies the logic of even children. Upon hearing this in grade school science class, I asked my teacher why the dead matter that 'saved up' wasn't eaten by other creatures. Since my grandfather had already shown me how leaves and plants die, decompose, and become soil that feeds new plants, the idea that plants, animals, and plankton thrown into big stores that turned into oil didn't make sense. While 'common sense' doesn't always apply to geology, it's more of a precursor of doubt that increased my interest in the abiogenic theory. Abiogenic theory states that crude oil is a product of the Earth's geology:

Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the
mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:

Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system � huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.

At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.

Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."

In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.

In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.

Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.

Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.

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The abiogenic theory was created by Russian scientists in the 50s and 60s, and followed up with ultra-deep oil drilling experiments. One of the first places the concept was employed, to great profit, was off the coast of South East Vietnam which is now the White Tiger Field. The White Tiger Field in 1992 was producing 2,000 meters cubed of crude oil employing drills descending 15,000 feet into the earth, 12,000 feet of which are in basement rock - the true bedrock of the Earth over which sedimentary deposits exist. Check out this Current Science article from July 2004:

www.ias.ac.in...

The biggest problem with accessing basement rock sediments of oil, which for all we know could be of unprecedented size, is the cost and expenditure of finding profitable fields. Most of the world's oilfields today were found essentially by accident. For example, the place where oil was first mined in the world, Titusville, PA, was traditionally known by the local Indians as a place to get oil, where they would skim the oil off water in bogs and ponds to use for lamp oil, paint base, and other applications. In Texas, homesteaders were disappointed when they dug a well and found oil. From there, it went to 'wildcats' who were prospectors driving around the countryside throwing drills down for a few hundred feet until their finds became major mines of black gold.

All the oil they were finding, though, was simply oil created deep in the Earth ever since the planet's formation that seeped up all the way to the surface, and into underground resevoirs. The idea that we have a limited supply of oil confined mostly to the Middle East is not true. What we have there are the largest known reserves with access and distribution already in place, in an advantageous distribution area.

The lie that oil is from a limited supply of compressed plankton with some dinosaurs thrown in crumbles when crude oil is found in great measure 15,000 feet below the Earth, and 12,000 feet below the layer of sedimentary rock. Why this lie was perpetuated is probably a combination of ignorance and intent.

The biogenic theory came out in the West, but one of the creators of the Periodic Table of the Elements, Mendeleev, suggested it was abiogenic in nature. He was Russian. While his table was of obvious benefit to educators, the knowledge that oil is limited has restricted deep rock exploration in countries that are oil-poor, and thus economically dependent and allied to the West.

What is the link concerning biogenic/abiogenic oil creation to the war on terrorism? I do think that the Iraq war was primarily an oil grab, but I don't see the origin of crude oil as any part of the war on terrorism. I think this topic would be better served in the Website Related Discussion area.

[edit on 29-9-2004 by heelstone]

Oops, hehe yeah I thought this was going into Science and Tech. I posted in wrong forum.

this is like the 80th time this has been posted...would be better in a different forum also

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