Abiotic Oil: A Note from Louis Hissink
Posted by jennifer, November 5th, 2006 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Energy & Nuclear
“There is a widely held belief that coal and oil are the result of a conversion from organic matter, both vegetable and biotic, that accumulated in sedimentary basins over geological time to become fossil fuels. It is presumed that vast periods of geological time converted the raw buried organic material into petroleum at the base of the sedimentary piles in the earth’s crust. An alternative theory proposes that coal and oil are abiotic in origin and derived from upper mantle processes as suggested by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil, but also popularised by the late Tommy Gold in his controversial book, ‘The Deep Hot Biosphere’.*
In this guest blog post Louis Hissink explains the alternative theory, but begins by explaining how the current consensus came to be …
“Modern geological thinking remains wedded to its uniformitarian paradigm set up during the early nineteenth century when Charles Lyell, a Whig lawyer and amateur geologist, wrote his ‘Principles of Geology’ as a political work to refute the authority of the ruling Tories in England.
Rather than refute his critics facts with evidence, Lyell used his skills as a lawyer to convert his opponents by the art of persuasion, and his ‘Principles of Geology’ the main weapon.
Until then, geology was limited by the constraints of the Christian bible. There was a belief in one original catastrophe, the Noachian flood, which occurred during the recent geological past.
George Grinnell in his paper ‘The Origins of Modern Geological Theory’ describes the political circumstances that prompted the adoption of Lyellian doctrine or uniformitarianism that dominates modern geology thinking to this day.
Lyell’s Principles allowed the clerical geologists of his day to have their cake but also to eat it.
What Lyell did was to shift Biblical creation from its Ussherian date of 4004 BC to some more distant time by interposing an arbitrary period of geological time during which miracles could be invoked to explain geological observations under the principle that anything becomes possible if enough time is allocated. Lyell also dismissed the Old Testament as literature rather than a badly interpreted historical account of the Jewish Peoples and finally banished biblical catastrophism from the nascent science of geology.
When Lyell went to North America he visited the famous Horseshoe Falls (Niagara Falls) and asked a native at what rate the falls were receding. The native American answered that the rate was some 3 -4 feet per year. Lyell, however, assumed that as natives of a country tend to exaggerate their country’s facts then the quoted rate was too high and arbitrarily reduced it to 1 foot per year, subsequently establishing the date of the last ice-age at some 10,000 years past.
Is this relevant to abiotic oil? Yes because it demonstrates how the empirically obvious is changed by persuasive argument. Much of geology relies on the Lyellian system of persuasian and biogenic oil theory is no exception.
The paramount axiom in geology is that the key to the past is the present. Which means that what we observe, and have observed, of natural forces operating on the surface of the planet, in a geological sense, must explain the past. If the key to the past is indeed the present, then somewhere on the surface of the earth there must exist modern day precursors of the ancient coal seams and petroleum deposits — accumulations of vegetable and organic masses in sedimentary basins, pre-fossil deposits as it were — to produce tomorrow’s coal and oil.
It is generally assumed that the Pacific Ocean is of Jurassic age but no widespread accumulations of organic detritus have been found on the seafloor or in its thin sedimentary cover, and equally so for the other seas over the earth. Nor are there any enormous ever increasing accumulations of organic material on the land surfaces comprising dead animals or forests. Of course a minor amount of organic detritus does accumulate in the existing sediments today, but not at sufficient quantities to allow the interpretation that one day in the future oil will be produced from them. How could so much oil be produced from so few organisms?
But it is an irrefutable fact that the earth’s biosphere is continually recycling itself, whether via the plant or animal kingdoms and nowhere are deposits of organic material that could be the future coal and oil deposits forming. If petroleum is truly biotic, then enormous masses of organic material must be accumulating somewhere on the earth’s surface to form future oils. Why don’t we see them? Could the biogenic oil theory be wrong?
In the geological record the past mass extinctions of the biosphere of both plant an animal, are preserved with amazing fidelity in the sedimentary strata except that there are no coal and oil deposits associated with these fossils.
Strange, fossils that are not oil.
Of course coal has abundant plant remnants in it but as Tommy Gold pointed out, if coal is the result of compressing hundreds of meters of vegetation debris, then we certainly should not see undeformed tree trunks passing through the coal seams.
Unfortunately Christian fundamentalists have produced most of the scientific evidence for this, guaranteeing it will not be considered as “scientific” evidence. It is not so much the evidence as the interpretation of that evidence which is problematical.
This is a serious problem for the fossil fuel theory – just how are these enormous deposits of petroleum formed from organic material, given that we are not observing any modern day accumulation of organic material. (That minor plankton debris in sediments is capable of accumulation in the sedimentary basins requires a serious stretch of the imagination to produce the trillions of barrels of oil so far discovered). Does this then mean that it occurred in the geological past but not during the present? This is a violation of the key geological paradigm – that the present can explain the past.
Just how much oil do we have?
According to the US Geological Survey, “the earth currently has more than three trillion barrels of conventional, recoverable oil resources of which 1 trillion has already been produced” according to Mark Nolan, chairman of ExxonMobil addressing the Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference in Sydney during September 2006.
Now how much organic material has had to accumulate over geological time to yield these enormous oil reserves. It means living organisms being continuously created on the surface of the earth but then removed from their environment to form deposits of organic matter in ancient sediments where they can be preserved. We do not observe this occurring today so how could we assume that it happened in the past?
Furthermore, surely there must also be ancient deposits of organic material not yet converted to oil in the stratigraphical record too, but no, no such deposits have been discovered. And in any case how are fossils formed in the first place? Again we do not see them forming today. Animals die, decompose and are recycled into the biosphere.
However, in order to form a fossil, all biological processes have to cease to allow preservation. If putrefaction is allowed to proceed, the animal rots and disintegrates back into its environment. The quickest way to form a fossil from a living animal is to take it rapidly away from its normal environment and place it in an alien one so a snake in a tropical rainforest will be rapidly fossilised if quickly placed in the Antarctic.
So how does one accumulate tens of trillions of tonnes of organic matter in sediments without putrefaction or recycling in the biosphere to form the vast deposits that are then transformed into petroleum.
The only reason petroleum is called a fossil fuel is because it contains organic debris but it is quite obvious that if petroleum is abiotic and derived from the mantle, then as an excellent solvent of organic material, up-welling hydrocarbons will naturally incorporate the organic debris found in sedimentary rocks.
Another argument is that no oil has been found in the crystalline basement regions of the earth. Hardly surprising when the majority of petroleum geologists believe in biogenic oil and thus only look for it in sedimentary rocks. They have not found oil in granite simply because they have not drilled granite for oil on the basis of preconceived ideas that it is not possible. Unfortunately for the fossil fuelers petroleum is being found and commercially extracted in fractured granite basement off Vietnam.
According to this website: “ Since its foundation VIETSOVPETRO has drilled over 140 thousand meters of exploration and 800 thousand meters of production wells. As a result of this seven oil fields were discovered, the largest are White Tiger, Dragon and Dai Hung that are already operated by the Joint Venture. White Tiger is so far the largest oil field on the continental shelf of Vietnam. Main reserve of this oil field is concentrated in fractured granite basement that is unique in the world oil and gas production practice”.
Robert O. Russell, a wellsite geologist who drilled into crystalline basement granitic shield rocks for the express purpose of commercial hydrocarbon exploration at Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, has pointed out that there are more than 400 wells and fields worldwide, both off-shore and on-shore that produce or have recently produced oil from igneous rocks.
This fact alone indicates that many aspects relating to the origin of petroleum need to be revised.
Thomas Gold, a distinguished proponent of the non-organic theory, has expanded the application of the non-organic theory to all hydrocarbons, including coal.
An international conference on ‘Oil in Granite’ was held recently in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. One of the papers by Kosachev et al. from the Institute of Organic Physics and Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Kazan, concluded that much evidence existed in favour of the non-organic theory, and that viable mechanisms for the creation of migration pathways existed.
Recently, C. Warren Hunt, a geologist of the Anhydride Oil Corporation, Calgary, Canada, has proposed a variant of the non-organic theory. Hunt sets forth the notion that up-welling deep non-organic methane is bacterially modified into petroleum at shallow depths.
There is one other difficulty with the fossil-fuel theory, the violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The only hydrocarbon that can be created at the pressures and depths of the sedimentary basins is methane. Yet by the use of vast amounts of geological time, modern geology asserts that somehow vast quantities of organic debris, not observed accumulating anywhere, is converted to high order hydrocarbons by undefined processes. Saudi Crude, for example, which is essentially grease.
In summary, petroleum, or rock-oil, is not derived from the burial of organic debris in sedimentary basins. It is continually produced from the earth’s mantle as described by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil. It is emphatically not a fossil fuel derived from dead dinosaurs and fish and no one has yet been able to generate petroleum (apart from methane) from organic matter at the temperatures and pressures at the base of sedimentary basins.“
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* A full account of the Abiotic oil theory is presented at http://www.gasresources.net. C. Warren-Hunt has offered another origin for petroleum at http://www.polarpublishing.com/ .
Thanks Louis.
Glasby cites some 13 of Gold’s papers and many from the Russian literature. I have them on order too. So I take it you are familiar with the detailed chemistry in Glasby’s paper then Louis. I assume you would be keeping up with developments.
Luke,
you still have not refuted my point that Glasby omitted Gold’s Hot deep biosphere model.
Come back when you can.
Louis,
Thanks for raising an interesting and engaging topic. You and others here may find a recent news tidbit interesting and relevant.
A Taiwan-led research team has discovered a self-sustaining community of bacteria 2.825 km below the surface of the Earth in South Africa, proving that life forms can exist in inorganic environments.
According to the team’s research results, the biome, found in a gold mine outside Johannesburg, has possibly been there for 3 million to 25 million years, supporting itself by consuming sulfate and hydrogen, which does not come from photosynthetic process but from fracture water radiated by uranium.
A species from the division of firmicutes, the largest group in the bacteria community, was found to be able to digest minerals and produce chemical waste, which the other kinds of bacteria depend on to live.
The importance of this finding is that it is the first time scientists have proved that life can exist without photosynthesis and be sustained purely on minerals.
See, “Taiwan researchers find subsurface biome in inorganic environments,” The China Post, 2006/10/26, http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/detail.asp?ID=93697&GRP=B
See also, “Bacteria inform origins of life,” Daily Princetonian,
October 25, 2006, http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/10/25/news/16349.shtml
Louis – you mean Gold and 1992 and 1999 “The Deep Hot Biosphere” – nope he has those pride of place.
Ih Gold’s discussion of the deep, hot biosphere (1992, and 1999) he is referring to the upper 5 to 10 km of the Earth’s crust.
Methane can only be converted to hydrocarbons at >30kbar corresponding to about 100km below the Earth’s surface. The proposed reaction above this depth is not consistent with the the second law of thermodynamics. Furthermore bacteria can not catalyse thermodynamically unfavourable reactions.
So Gold’s deep gas theory in which hydrocarbons are supposedly formed from methane in the Earth’s crust is invalid.
Louis,
The term is ‘non sequitur’ not ‘non sequitor’ – do brush up on foreign languages before using them. Anyway, as a fellow contrarian I think your abiotic oil thread was very lively and interesting. Scientists should question everything. Merci, mon vieux.
Logical fallacy. Yeah right:
Much organic source is found in stratified water bodies where oxygenated surface waters permit plankton growth. As stated earlier, organic matter is sapropelic, supplied by phytoplankton.
The accumulation of such matter is aided when circulation of water is restricted to some extent so that an oxygen deficiency exists on the bottom sediments to decompose the organic material. E.g.
lakes, fjords, silled basins (Black Sea),sediment starved basins (Gulf of California), and deep Ocean trenches (Cariaco trench.)
As a result of poor circulation and restriction the water bodies become stratified and the sea or lake floor may become oxygen deficient (dysaerobic) or totally anoxic. Dysaerobic conditions occur where the sea floor is within the oxygen minimum zone, generally in a depth range of 100-100m. The low O2 results from bacterial decomposition of organic matter sinking down from fertile oxic surface waters. Where there
is oxygen deficiency on the sea floor, organic matter will be preserved.
Gee Louis, maybe that’s why you find oil in these places. Or maybe it’s just coincidental.
http://www.kingdomdrilling.co.uk/diggin/Oil%20and%20gas%20maturation%20688.pdf
Pah to Davey and his false patriarchal gods. God and Allah seek the credit to win the support of lobbyists, but oil is Gaia’s lifeblood and so regularly occurs in areas where She birthed human civilisations. Coal and gas are products from Her digestion. The clues that Louis seeks lie not where he looks.
Davy Gam Esq.
I accept the correction of non sequitur – probably caused by a few computer hardware hassles I had these last few days (more to do with wireless interference from peripherals – the Logitech wireless keyboard was very irritating.
Cheers
Nexus_6,
Like Luke, or Phil, his clone, (or is it the other way around) you are wading into deep waters.
Sure organic material is accumulating in stratabound water bodies.
OK, so what is a stratabound water body, since you raised the issue?
Luke,
your last comment displays your ignorance of the debate.
Who said Methane was converted to hydrocarbons at the 5-10 km of the earth’s crust.
But before I waste anymore time on this, I have a hardcover version of Gold’s Hot Deep Biosphere.
Have you actually read the book?
Schiller,
Thanks for that reference.
I might follow it up in a future AIG News issue, next year too !
Best
Luke,
Glasby might well have Gold’s texts as pride of place but you seem not to have understood my question.
Glasby’s quote which you emphatically used as a rejection of Gold’s hypothesis, did not mention a deep hot biosphere of ‘life’ “down there” as part of the formation of petroleum.
If you are going to can someone’s theory, at least study it.
Grassby is a bit of grind to get through in a detailed tour of the history of abiotic oils hypothesis. But you get to this incisive webpage
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012805_no_free_pt3.shtml
In closing, we turn to the eminent Australian astrobiologist and geologist, Dr. Jonathan Clarke. Dr. Clarke has produced a list of 16 observations which must be explained by the abiotic hypothesis before it can be seriously considered. We ask that abiotic supporters use this as a checklist, and please do not bother us again until you have successfully addressed each and every one of these points.
Dr. Clarke’s list is as follows:
To deny this [that 99.99999% of the world's liquid hydrocarbons are produced by maturation of organic matter] means you have to come up with good explanations for the following observations.
1) The almost universal association of petroleum with sedimentary rocks.
2) The close link between petroleum reservoirs and source rocks as shown by biomarkers (the source rocks contain the same organic markers as the petroleum, essentially chemically fingerprinting the two).
3) The consistent variation of biomarkers in petroleum in accordance with the history of life on earth (biomarkers indicative of land plants are found only in Devonian and younger rocks, that formed by marine plankton only in Neoproterozoic and younger rocks, the oldest oils containing only biomarkers of bacteria).
3) The close link between the biomarkers in source rock and depositional environment (source rocks containing biomarkers of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, those indicating marine conditions only in marine sediments, those from hypersaline lakes containing only bacterial biomarkers).
4) Progressive destruction of oil when heated to over 100 degrees (precluding formation and/or migration at high temperatures as implied by the abiogenic postulate).
5) The generation of petroleum from kerogen on heating in the laboratory (complete with biomarkers), as suggested by the biogenic theory.
6) The strong enrichment in C12 of petroleum indicative of biological fractionation (no inorganic process can cause anything like the fractionation of light carbon that is seen in petroleum).
7) The location of petroleum reservoirs down the hydraulic gradient from the source rocks in many cases (those which are not are in areas where there is clear evidence of post migration tectonism).
8) The almost complete absence of significant petroleum occurrences in igneous and metamorphic rocks.
The evidence usually cited in favor of abiogenic petroleum can all be better explained by the biogenic hypothesis, e.g.:
9) Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in igneous rocks (better explained by reaction with organic rich country rocks, with which the pyrobitumens can usually be tied).
10) Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in metamorphic rocks (better explained by metamorphism of residual hydrocarbons in the protolith).
11) The very rare occurrence of small hydrocarbon accumulations in igneous or metamorphic rocks (in every case these are adjacent to organic rich sedimentary rocks to which the hydrocarbons can be tied via biomarkers).
12) The presence of undoubted mantle derived gases (such as He and some CO2) in some natural gas (there is no reason why gas accumulations must be all from one source; given that some petroleum fields are of mixed provenance, it is inevitable that some mantle gas contamination of biogenic hydrocarbons will occur under some circumstances).
13) The presence of traces of hydrocarbons in deep wells in crystalline rock (these can be formed by a range of processes, including metamorphic synthesis by the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, or from residual organic matter as in 10).
14) Traces of hydrocarbon gases in magma volatiles (in most cases magmas ascend through sedimentary succession, any organic matter present will be thermally cracked and some will be incorporated into the volatile phase; some Fischer-Tropsch synthesis can also occur).
15) Traces of hydrocarbon gases at mid ocean ridges (such traces are not surprising given that the upper mantle has been contaminated with biogenic organic matter through several billion years of subduction, the answer to 14 may be applicable also).
16) Traces of hydrocarbons in hydrothermal fluids; these are also all compositionally consistent with derivation from either country rocks or Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.
The geological evidence is utterly against the abiogenic postulate.
We fully agree with Dr. Clarke: the geological evidence does not support the abiogenic hypothesis.
Dtribe
a comprehensive list fo points which I will counter once studied.
Your point 15, “Traces of hydrocarbon gases at mid ocean ridges (such traces are not surprising given that the upper mantle has been contaminated with biogenic organic matter through several billion years of subduction, the answer to 14 may be applicable also).”
Midoceanic ridges are not locii of subduction but in plate tectonic terms, linear zones of mantle upwelling.
May I politely suggest you stick to what you actually know and understand rather than, what I assume you are parroting, someone’s other view?
Norton, (or Morton, if you follow King Billy Coke Bottle) has decided to scan the computer.
So I retire.
detribe
Your reference site (from the wilderness) is scientically beyond the pale.
Your arguments, detailed above, have to be ignored as the ramblings of a credulous individual unable to discriminate fact from fiction.
Give this abiotic thing a bit of a rest for a mo Louis and tell us about how hurricanes are caused by electricity again.
Louis when confronted with our issues you have resorted to ad homs and bluster. Remarkably the same as with any AGW discussion.
Quite simply – you have failed to argue your case.
Following this thread, I am reminded of the 18th Century belief that all swans were white. Counting white swans only added to the supporting evidence, it did not prove the belief correct. Evidence of black swans forced amendment to belief.
Lous has proposed that oil may be abiotic in origin. That runs agains popular belief that oil is biotic and sedimentary in origin. I have posted a puzzling example of a small oil seep, from a granite outcrop, (with no sign yet of oil in the surrounding sedimentary deposits) which cannot be explained by the biotic origin theory. Like the black swan example, I have to accept that some oil may be abiotic in origin, and stop metophorically counting white swans to support a belief that runs counter to evidence.
Well Helen – the only to progress is to get some and have it analysed.
Pinxi,
I have spoken to my friend Jim Lovelock, and he says it was not Gaiea, it was Zadok the priest. Don your hijab and stay home until further notice. By the way, I tried to shufti that photo of you and Luke, but it said FORBIDDEN (signed Allah). I am very curious.
Varp,
Hurricanes, cyclones or typhoons are enormous vortices of, in the limited language I have, of fluid systems.
From observation of flowing fluids, generally water down drainage channels, scientists have developed some theories that work when the flow is “laminar” (or linear for the less informed”.
One of the mysteries of physical processes is when matters start to become unpredictable – or chaotic.
Chaos is an admission of scientific ignorance.
Luke,
I have never responded with an “ad hominem” to critics of my posts here.
Running out of facts?
Refutation of detribe’s onerous list is here – http://www.gasresources.net/DisposalBioClaims.htm
Varp,
the answer to your question is Birkeland Currents.
It’s the currents which produce the vortices.
hmmmm
“Your arguments, detailed above, have to be ignored as the ramblings of a credulous individual unable to discriminate fact from fiction.”
“May I politely suggest you stick to what you actually know and understand rather than, what I assume you are parroting, someone’s other view?”
“None of you commenting here seem to have understood the issue, and so don’t be offended if we then call you STOOPID.”
“You lot are literally grasping at straws.
How about butting out commenting about topics for which you have no expertise.
You are permitted full permission to comment on, adjudicate and censor any comments fitting the category “Stupidity”.”
ad hominem – “when people can’t find fault with an argument, they sometimes attack the arguer, substituting irrelevant assertions about that person’s character for an analysis of the argument itself.”
Glass jaw: “Vulnerability, especially of a public figure, to criticism.”
Pot calling the kettle black: “If someone hypocritically criticises a person for something that they themselves do, then it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. “
Louis – your rebuttal piece is hardly a scholarly article – wouldn’t even get past our base level panel – they should remove all the bolshy emotional comments for starters. Unlikely Glassby there is no side by side comparison of the literature – in such a piece they need to cite some of the copious isotope evidence and then refute it – they’ve simply offered an opinion and a dismissal – thta’s not science. They haven’t defended Gold and formation of hydrocarbons from methane. It’s a selective opinion piece and unconvincing.
It seems to me Louis, in this thread and others on this august blog, that you continually seek to muddy the waters.
Why? Gawd knows, but I can only assume that you are strangely compelled to defend industry at any cost. Seems to be part of this weird deeply felt belief that the earth and everything on and in it is ours to do as we see fit. Whether it’s part of a biblical misinterpretation or a cultural/narcissistic thing or just a shitload of guilt that causes one to cling to these apparently lame theories that deny any kind of potential anthropogenic cataclysm, you remain one of the exemplars.
I dunno what you think of the Holocaust and I don’t want to know, but why do you go on like this? Playing Devils advocate perhaps or a twisted relationship with your father? Whether or not oil is abiotic in origin is neither here nor there to me in this, what I find strangely compelling about this theory is why you are attracted to it and others that seem to hold out your fundamental belief that all is well and the party is set to continue.
Another example is this seriously wacky statement that you made over at Henry Thornton -
“Hurricanes are essentially electrical phenomena in the earth’s thicker atmosphere. CO2 and global warming has totally nothing at all to do with hurricane formation.”
I mean…… really…..why go on like this?
Cheers, Best Wishes and Love to All.
Varp,
Our differences might be explained by the observation that you don’t seem to think.
Present scientific theory assumes one force in the universe – gravity.
Heretics as myself suggest another bigger one, electricty, some 10 to the power of 39 times larger than gravity.
Think about it and come back.
Luke,
the article was published in a peer reviewed journal.
You should come up with the isotope evidence here, and when have you hinted at your scientific skills here?
You are a charlatan.
So you have to ask youself how many of us get to play Galileo ?
Anyway excellent “ad homage” guys – Louis I’ll still stoush with you and keep you company. Incidentally this thread has been quite good for you – you’ve almost over 130 comments – so you’ve had us on the ropes and engaged us fullsomely. Count the comments as sucess of the topic. And even though you don’t mind a bit of biffo and dodgem cars Louis – you never get totally nasty.
And we’ve saved you a few trips to the library.
But alas as the sun sinks – the thread will soon be below Jen’s fascist archival timeline and into blog archives where few tread except “blog monks and lay scholars”. Oil deserves another category I think. I can send you Glasby paper via Jen if you would like – inform her if so.
As a pissy little tree hugger that doesn’t know how the toaster works and never will. I will, unfortunately, never ever get a handle on anything quantum.
I do read New Scientist, but thats only to lull me to sleep……it’s just too weird I’m afraid!
Don’t want to derail the abiotic thread, but do you stand by that statement you made regarding hurricanes Louis?
Jeez I should have said “get knackered” before I wrote the above. Nah – a bit of biffo is OK. It’s cool.
But alas Phil here and Rog in the blog have me on a Google ban for a week. See my recent stoush with nasty Rog on Murray.
Energia board deserves to be sacked for allowing unscholarly material. Obviously a mere trade journal. I was not being smart – I can come up with a big literature on selective use of carbon isotopes by plants. Even distinguish whether areas have been C3 woodlands or C4 grasslands in the past.
Louis if you were’nt so bloody toey we may be able to learn something from each other even though you are a bit of an up yourself wanker. But watch I don’t knick your wallet when you’re not looking.
It is often possible to use different methods to produce essentially the same product.
Could it be that some oil is biotic, while some oil is abiotic?
Does anyone contend that there can be only one way by which oil is naturally produced?
Schillsy – yes I think there are naturally occurring hydrocarbons – but how much, why and where is the issue. I’m puzzled why petroleum geologists have so much success looking in the wrong rock types specified by the abiogenic hypothesis and why they can predict what sort of oil they are likely to find on biological criteria. Do they get right answers for the wrong reasons??
Helen & Schiller it has already been acknowledged in discussions above that perhaps *some* oil *might* be abiotic but is it of a quantity worthy of any attention?
Insofar as the best of us can make sense of his ad hom defensiveness and misuse of blunt secateurs, Louis doesn’t appear to be arguing that *some* oil *might* be abiotic. His strongest argument seems to be that anyone who questions his beliefs is an idiot.
[...] http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/11/abiotic-oil-a-note-from-louis-hissink/ [...]
Surely hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) not come from biological detritus. It’s nonsense because it’s impossible according natural laws of physics, overall 2nd Law Of Thermodynamics. To simplify discussions is interesting to note what said Sir Fred Hoyle:
“The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.” Fred Hoyle, 1982.