The Arctic is estimated to hold 90bn barrels of untapped oil, according to figures from the US Geological Survey (USGS).
The USGS says the area has three times as much untapped natural gas as oil.
BBC News: Arctic ‘has 90bn barrels of oil’
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
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I think its fair to say that the World has an abundance of fossil fuels that with increasing technological advances will satisfy needs for at least the next 100-200 years.
The big question is; does CO2 at any particular level in our complex climate system cause or exacerbate any warming (or mitigate any cooling)?
We should not be panicked into unwise courses of action (biofuels anyone!) until the science is a lot clearer. It’s becoming clearer by the day that we are far from having a definitive answer.
And by the way: I’m believe in recycling, sustainability, fair distribution of resources, and at some point facing up to global population limits (only after extensive an open global debates)
I think its fair to say that the World has an abundance of fossil fuels that with increasing technological advances will satisfy needs for at least the next 100-200 years.
The big question is; does CO2 at any particular level in our complex climate system cause or exacerbate any warming (or mitigate any cooling)?
We should not be panicked into unwise courses of action (biofuels anyone!) until the science is a lot clearer. It’s becoming clearer by the day that we are far from having a definitive answer.
And by the way: I’m believe in recycling, sustainability, fair distribution of resources, and at some point facing up to global population limits (only after extensive an open global debates)
I was told that the world would run out of oil before the end of the 1970’s. The same crowd who predicted that is the same one fighting drilling. I guess that they don’t want to look even more wrong–sort of the way that they are on global warming.
Is this oil abiotic by any chance? Oh shit, what have I done!!!
Gosh, a lazy 90 billion barrels, just hanging out waiting to be discovered. And we haven’t even started on Antarctica yet. Oops, sorry, there is no oil in antarctica, that is, until the Chinese and Indian superpowers (at 1 rupee to the $) lose patience with this western indulgence and just bowl in there and find it all.
Mark,
Abiotic oil! No don’t try to have a discussion on that! You will be burned at the stake. Oops, sorry, I meant locked in a CO2 sequestration pit.
Actually it’s a pretty cool theory. I read a few bits about the theory which is something to the effect that deep(?) oil (or is it all oil?) comes from natural carbon outgasing from the core. It gets caught in certain geological pockets. Oil formation requires the high pressure and temperatures at those depths.
I believe there has long been a question of how organic material from the surface could ever get down to the depths where deep oil is recovered from. Unlike coal which is relatively shallow and has evidence of its organic source. Obviously, the abiotic oil theory suggests oil formation is a continuous process, and presumably old fields would be slowly replenished.
It’s one of those theories that you read about and have a hard time rejecting out of hand. Especially since it’s been around awhile (1930’s?) and it’s lack of pursuit might be suggested by business motivations to keep it quiet. (?????)
Sorry, but it was all Mark’s fault for bringing it up.
We really should be putting incentives/penalities for countries to curb their pop growth.The people at the top of the food chain will be doing well no matter what, but it has become apparent with Globalisation that scarcer resources shared amongst the masses,even if they are well educated,will mean poverty and increase the likelyhood of illegal migration,invasions and war.
Rather than just focusing on pollution we have to confront our pop explosion.The world’s pop is currently increasing by 80 million pa or 4 times the pop of Aust each year.
The secret to pop. control is economic development, something that will happen fastest if developing countries are not constrained from using fossil fuels!
Mark and Pete; just google Tommy Gold, magma oil, abiotic oil and Titan and hydrocarbons; part of the AGW life-style philosophy is to postulate natural limits, so the idea of Peak Oil is a crucial plank of the AGW cart; if oil, and coal and the other dirty energies are in fact running out, they can argue lifestyle change on two grounds; AGW and imminent energy deficiency; in a universe awash with energy I find the idea of sustainable energy bizarre; don’t these people know anything about enthropy? If everything is going to flat-line eventually shouldn’t we be getting the most out of the decay?
Yea about what I’d expect you’d say Cohenite. Wanker.
I have a mate with a PHD in geology who works 14 hours a day just writing [mostly very positive] reports on oil and gas core samples from Australia and world wide.
All these great reserves of oil and gas will be denied us if the Barbara Boxers et al get their way and the unintended consequences of bio-fuels will decend upon us like the plague.
But that’s what the true believers really want.
No progressive, civilised solution.
Ya gotta have guilt, chaos and destruction!
Please luke, a bit of decorum; onanist or nothing.
The irony. Global Warming can’t be real, but it’s making available oil that was previously not available.
The only wanker here is the one who has been utterly wrong on the peak oil debate from day one and still refuses to budge on hard evidence. Have a look at the archives.
Or perhaps later, I’ll copy paste my favorite peak oil idiot comments for a ROTFL romp down memory lane!
The thing that confuses me the most is that I, for one, live an evidence based existence. When new evidence emerges that strongly suggests I’m wrong about something, I simply say, stuff me! I’m sorry, mea culpa, Stop Loss. Change me POV, adjust me behavior and get on with life. Evolution happens.
Apparently, this isn’t the way that certain True Believers in the Magical Unicorn Universe operate. They’re creationists, they were created whole and that’s all she wrote…I suppose reality is virtual to them. Facts slide off their backs like water off a duck.
Gotta love those archives!
LOL
“The irony. Global Warming can’t be real, but it’s making available oil that was previously not available.”
Huh?
Ivan,
That was a non sequitur and considering the author, quite expected.
And any time soon Ender will be in to instruct us on our blasphemy of daring to think that oil is abiotic.
The only thing that puzzles me is why I can’t find a published graph showin the stability of the H-C system versus pressure/temperature.
Abiotic oil must be one of the ideas which we are not permitted to discuss.
Wes, interesting you mention creationism – I suspect Luke believes in the Big Bang and that would make him also a creationist. I wonder what Philip Adams would think about this, as he believes too, as well as being a devotee of the Climate Church.
Oh no – the abiotic oil God is unleashed…. argh !
“The irony. Global Warming can’t be real, but it’s making available oil that was previously not available.”
Allah gives nuts to the toothless.
No Luke,
Me no God, me merely messenger.
God of Biotic oil expected? Great God Ender?
Louis: “Great God Ender?”
I think he might be trapped in an Orson Scott Card novel.
Jan
“I think he might be trapped in an Orson Scott Card novel” somewhere in the globally warming absent, ever so cold remoteness of south west Western Australia.
Pete – Lance Endersbee, Emeritus Prof at Monash, previously Dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monash believes that water as well as oil has an abiotic source. He discussed it with Philip Adams one evening.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2006/1808528.htm
Janama – in that case then it’s proven. You should have told us earlier.
Probably explains then why aquifers reflect IPO activity (Not!). http://www.lockyerwater.com/doc/download/2002-01.pdf
Luke
Have you read Endersbee’s book? If not, cut the waffle – if you are going to critise an idea make sure you understand it in the first place.
Or can we expect a Harlow Shapley effort from you when he condemned Velikovksy’s Worlds in Collision without ever reading it, during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.
Your attitude to scientific scepticism smacks much like that described by David Stove some decades back about the scientific mafia.
After all, the AGW is as sound a theory as you assert it to be, then it should be self evident and no one would be sceptical of it. That we are means it’s not a sound theory, and that you and your fellow climate clowns need to scream rant and rave in reply is typical for those unable to exacuate a sinking ship.
Why would you bother. The paper I quoted has been journal published so the prior comment about ground water at least in the Australian context seems patently wacky. A recommendation from you Louis means it’s most likely wacko stuff. http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/11/1295/2007/hess-11-1295-2007.pdf
Louis – “And any time soon Ender will be in to instruct us on our blasphemy of daring to think that oil is abiotic.”
No you can think what you like. Just a reminder of the current score:
Biotic Oil – approx 2 trillion barrels
Abiotic Oil – approx 0 barrels (Tommy Gold did strike a couple of barrels he believed was abiotic oil however it was actually drilling mud).
“The Arctic is estimated to hold 90bn barrels of untapped oil, according to figures from the US Geological Survey”
Thats great. Now why are we able to tap this resource? Also why are we wanting to tap it if there are plentiful resources elsewhere where it is not so cold and difficult to drill for oil?
90 billion barrels – we can recover a third of this – 30 billion barrels.
Divide 30 billion barrels by 85 million barrels per day and we get:
352 days – wow a whole year of oil – we are saved after all.
Ender
Your research abilities are woeful – the black gunk had a high iridium content and along with other scientific evidence, tyhis refutes your statement that it was drilling mud.
“Measurement of the abundance of the rare-earth platinide element iridium has been evaluated as an alternate, or complement, to measurement of the helium isotope ratio 3He/4He as an indicator of a contribution of mantle origin material to a tested sample. Tests have been run upon the anomalous black, hydrocarbon-based material observed in the Swedish deep gas exploration well Gravberg 1 at depths of approximately 18,000 and 22,700 feet, respectively. Extraordinarily high abundances of iridium have been measured at both depths, with the greater magnitude at the greater depth. Examination of the surface rocks in the Siljan Ring area eliminated possibility of contamination from the surface which might be attributable to the original meteorite impact; alternate possible sources of error are discussed. The iridium tests effectively eliminated speculation that the black, hydrocarbon-based material observed in Gravberg 1 could have originated from any alteration of either diesel oil or a commercial additive to the drilling fluid.”
Source: http://www.gasresources.net/MantleMarkers(Hannover).htm
As for your listing of biotic oil – you still have not supplied a skerric of experimental evidence to support the biotic oil theory.
Authoritative rhetoric does not constitute proof.
Actually it’s a bit like AGW – postulate to be so and so but no proof offered so substantiate it.
So you show everyone here how you can spontaneously generate kerogens from the burial of zooplankton and algae to depths typical of sedimentary diagnesis conditions.
Miracles are not allowed in your proof.
Ender,
In addition the microscopic black gunk was extremely small sized crystals of magnetite – of a biological origin – and quickly filled in the fractures and pores at the depths of drilled holes in the Siljan Ring complex, stopping the recovery of the petroleum discovered at that depth.
Louis – “As for your listing of biotic oil – you still have not supplied a skerric of experimental evidence to support the biotic oil theory.”
And you have not provided a single barrel of oil from abiotic origin so I guess that makes us even.
Again even if I posted end to end microbes to oil experimental evidence would you accept it? That is why I do not bother any more. Even Steve Short who is on your side on AGW posted evidence that you did not accept. As you will not accept evidence even from another geologist what chance do I have?
Forget it – you can cling to the abiotic oil theories and congratulate yourself that you are a real original thinker. Unimaginative and ignorant old me will just cling to the clearly wrong one that produced all the oil that we are using now.
You mean to say a bucket of sludge from some deep hole is what the abiotic theory rests on. ROTFL !
“You mean to say a bucket of sludge from some deep hole is what the abiotic theory rests on. ROTFL !”
You’re laughing at that?
When AGW theory doesn’t even have that much to rely on?
ROTFL….&L…..&L….&L…..&L
Well not to an ignorant clown who hasn’t even read the relevant material.
What do you people do in the hours normal people are working? Unbelievable … 90 billion barrels is a mere 3 years of supply at current global consumption. You are going to need to find reserves like this every 3 to 4 months just to account for depletion of the elephant field currently carrying the world (since the 70s).
“Well not to an ignorant clown who hasn’t even read the relevant material.”
You’re not going to ‘do a Libby’ on me now, are you?
Anyway, the ignorant clowns who have read the relevant material are supposed to respond with:
“Whatever. You’re a troll and I’m not interested.”
Ender
I have provided evidence – the Russians have done that as published in the literature, otherwise known as the Russian-Ukrainian theory of Abiotic oil.
As for the rest, you have not provided any proof whatsover.
Why I had a chat and morning coffee some months ago with an oil company executive and his comment was that his geologists “BELIEVED” oil was biotic.
Belief is not proof, – oh sorry it must be because you also believe in AGW which is also unsupported with scientific fact.
In any case Ender your oily logic could be summed up as follows – As your cat has four legs as does your dog, then logically your cat must be a dog.
That is the biotic oil position summarised to its essentials.
“In any case Ender your oily logic could be summed up as follows…”
Louis – I think Ender’s logic (and AGW logic in general) can be summed up as follows:
– Yesterday, I put a banana in my ear, and did not observe any crocodiles.
– Today, I repeated the experiment and also did not observe any crocodiles.
– Therefore, putting a banana in your ear keeps crocodiles away.
Ivan
Correct – but Ender thinks this must be true – I wonder how he went with Davey Gam’s reference to Dorothy Sayers’ last week?
The frightening aspect of this irrationality is the fact they are politically in charge.
Ivan, may we should start calling Ender and Luke and their cohort “Bananas In Ears”?
Careful, Louis – there is actually some ‘science’ behind this.
You will recall that Cyclone Larry hit the coast of Nth Queensland back in 2006? Well – this was all predicted by the AGW gubmint science boys (increases in cat 5 hurricanes, etc).
And – what was the impact of Cyclone Larry? It wiped out the banana crop for that year. So therefore, it is entirely consistent with AGW logic that the scenario detailed above is correct. Now, to complete the circle, all we need is a study which ‘proves’ that Global Warming is endangering the habitat of crocodiles, and that they are bordering on extinction – and hence the fortuitous shortage of bananas.
You following me so far ….? I don’t know why Luke keeps banging on about ‘unqualified swill’ not having a grasp of ‘the science’. There’s nothing to it.
I have the inside word that the CSIRO is researching this topic – as we speak! Peer-reviewed papers to follow shortly.
Luke calling people unqualified swill? Heavens sake and he is the one with a BSc from an Enid Blyton university.
I do follow you logic – hee hee.
Louis – “As your cat has four legs as does your dog, then logically your cat must be a dog.”
I suppose this and the other rubbish Ivan posted is the height of your logic skills.
Lets have another score check just in case it has changed:
Abiotic Oil – perhaps 2 barrels if you accept Tommy Gold’s dodgy evidence
Biotic Oil – 2 trillion barrels
This is a really good distraction from the question you have not attempted to answer.
Tell us all why oil reserves can now be considered from the Arctic?
“I suppose this and the other rubbish Ivan posted is the height of your logic skills.”
> You’re a fine one to talk about logic.
“However nowadays with so many people living within the reach of sea level rises and so many mouths to feed ..”
> Still looking for your missing 1.3 billion people?
“Heavens sake and he is the one with a BSc from an Enid Blyton university.”
> Louis – are you sure of that? I thought I read that most of these gubmint science boys came out of Bovine University.
Ender
You are quite the dissembler – you refuse to acknowlege the Russian Data, restricting your whole argument on Tommy Gold’s theory; It is quite obvious you have not read it either.
In fact biotic oil theory isn’t a scientific theory at all because no where on the surface is the process actually occurring.
SO come back when provide some facts and not the fantasies you indulge in.
“I do follow you logic..”
Louis – the logic is sound.
Accoding to Global-Warming-Induced-Polar-Bear-Hysteria(TM) (or what us scientific types refer to as “GWI-PBH”), the fact that more polar bears are being observed coming into settlements to forage in dumpsters is ‘proof’ that their numbers are declining. Observation: More polar bears. Conclusion: Numbers are declining.
Carl Sagan speaks to this sort of ‘Ender-logic’ in the following clip, when he makes the summary of: “Observation: Couldn’t see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs” (6:10-6:50)
If this logic works for polar bears, it works for crocodiles – i.e. the fact that more crocodiles are being observed in habitable areas ‘proves’ that they are under stress.
Ender
“This is a really good distraction from the question you have not attempted to answer.
Tell us all why oil reserves can now be considered from the Arctic?”
Ender, I don’t see anywhere in the posts before these that I was asked that question, and not being asked it, I would not answer it.
As for your last sentence, it is meaningless. What are you trying to say?
Oh I know, its the usual lefty-wefty chattering and twittering to utter meaningless statements.
So the US has 90 billion bbls of oil – so what? They heaps more than that on the rest on the continental US. Only problem is the US Democrats won’t let them drill. So the US is in Iraq.
And that raises an interesting POV doesn’t it – Ender and his global lefty mates stop oil companies from exploring on the Continental US, but people need oil, so the US has to get oil elsewhere. Invade Iraq, etc etc.
So who caused it in the first place?
Th Greenies and Democrats and their counterparts here in OZ.
Ender, your lot are not very bright are they. In your case we will call you Reflector!
Because you are not even bright enough to be a tail light.
Don’t waste our time with your nonsense please.
Luke
“Probably explains then why aquifers reflect IPO activity (Not!). http://www.lockyerwater.com/doc/download/2002-01.pdf
Oh but they do boyo and this paper shows it very, very nicely indeed. Just translate the authors’ IPO into PDO (which it is) and then look carefully at Figure 2.
My god, it’s that 1976 Great Pacific Climate Shift!
“Typically, groundwater levels were falling in the mid to late 1960s, but then rose sharply until the late 1970s. Levels then
declined until the mid 1980s, when a brief recovery was followed by a further decline that continued until the late 1990s.
This pattern of groundwater level trend is particularly pronounced in central to northern areas of the state, but similar
patterns are observed in other parts of Australia, including the Northern Territory.
The impact of climate on groundwater levels was investigated through a representative time series. This was constructed
from the annual averages of monthly medians, in a historical data collection containing about 500,000 individual water
level records from over 30,000 bores. Similar time series were produced to represent median streamflow and salinity.
These time series were then compared with climatic indices, using multiple regression.
The water table time series proved to have a strong correlation with the rate of change of the Interdecadal Pacific
Oscillation (IPO). Streamflows were more affected by the SOI, with stream salinity being affected by both. The observed
patterns in all three time series can be explained through decadal scale balances between surface flow and baseflow.”
Bombed out again, LRON.
Louis – “So the US has 90 billion bbls of oil – so what? They heaps more than that on the rest on the continental US. Only problem is the US Democrats won’t let them drill. So the US is in Iraq.”
Ahh I see now. So where is this oil Louis? The self proclaimed most accomplished oil people in the world have been unable to find any more since 1970 when production peaked. Also there have been oil men in the White House for the last 8 years with a Republican controlled Senate and Congress for most of it and you wheel out this pathetic excuse – “Oh the Democrats won’t let me drill” – “If only the lefty Greenies would let us drill we would find all the oil we need”
Yeah right – just go on believing this. If the US was less dependant on oil there would have been no reason to go into Iraq. However successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have been too afraid to touch the untouchable American way of life so invasion and wars for oil has replaced conservation and alternatives.
“Don’t waste our time with your nonsense please.”
As you have enough nonsense for 50 right wing misinformation blogs I guess me wasting your time IS superfluous.
Ender:
“However successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have been too afraid to touch the untouchable American way of life so invasion and wars for oil has replaced conservation and alternatives.”
I strongly agree with this statement. It shows up the basic flaw in a big powerful system i.e. the dominant imperial power on the planet, which relies on the principle (admittedly often proven to be correct) that unfettered free enterprise is resiliant at adapting to current conditions or appropriately anticipating them (e.g. California).
I have spent and do spend large chunks of my life in the US and have part ownership of a Californian technical consultancy. It’s a very strange and even frightening place but also quite a wonderful place in the hearts and minds of those who can ‘dig it’ at some level. Yes I was at the Haight and yes I did inhale (a lot 😉 and yes I have listened at the feet of Richard Feynman and Tim Leary. It was all a real privilege.
I am saddened by the fact that a nation that could put men on the moon and also elegantly and craftily ‘sucker bait’ the Soviet Union into economic collapse just trying to keep up with a neat illusory feint called ‘Star Wars’ (‘lasers in space’ – just slightly less achievable than ‘pigs in space’ 😉 failed to anticipate and adapt ahead of time to Peak Oil.
Just goes to show we need to rework the whole idea of enterprise and ingenuity. Big government ain’t going to deliver us from the coming Dark Age.
Time for a cuppa and some light reading:
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/modern-economists/2008/07/28/
Whilst Ender checks his super!
http://business.smh.com.au/business/savings-savaged-as-super-funds-shed-10-20080729-3me3.html
Now if Ender and LRON had only managed to roll their super over into Incitec Pivot Ltd (IPL) they would have been able to cash in on all those farmers buying and spreading superphosphate like there is no tomorrow.
IPL shares took just a tiny tumble over the last month but, hey, still +26% since end January ain’t too bad.
But of course, that was all just a silly illusion on my part, what with the big nasty AGW-driven drought and all……
A bit more light reading and another cuppa are called for
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Wallenwein/jul282008.html
……and a good lay down!
Keating, where are you when we need you…?
Bex anyone?
Ender
Refute it please with facts, not your dubious un-named authorities/
ABSTRACT: For almost a century, various predictions have been made that the human race is imminently going to run out of available petroleum. The passing of time has proven all those predictions to have been utterly wrong. It is pointed out here how all such predictions have depended fundamentally upon an archaic hypothesis from the 18th century that petroleum somehow (miraculously) evolves from biological detritus, and is accordingly limited in abundance. That hypothesis has been replaced during the past forty years by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins which has established that petroleum is a primordial material erupted from great depth. Therefore, petroleum abundances are limited by little more than the quantities of its constituents as were incorporated into the Earth at the time of its formation; and its availability depends upon technological development and exploration competence.
“Rock oil originates as tiny bodies of animals buried in the sediments which, under the influence of increased temperature and pressure acting during an unimaginably long period of time, transform into rock oil [petroleum, or crude oil]”
Academician Mikhailo V. Lomonosov, “Slovo o reshdenii metallov ot tryaseniya zemli,” Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 1757.
“The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths.”
Academician Professor Vladimir B. Porfir’yev, senior petroleum exploration geologist for the U.S.S.R., at the All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1956.
“Statistical thermodynamic analysis has established clearly that hydrocarbon molecules which comprise petroleum require very high pressures for their spontaneous formation, comparable to the pressures required for the same of diamond. In that sense, hydrocarbon molecules are the high-pressure polymorphs of the reduced carbon system as is diamond of elemental carbon. Any notion which might suggest that hydrocarbon molecules spontaneously evolve in the regimes of temperature and pressure characterized by the near-surface of the Earth, which are the regimes of methane creation and hydrocarbon destruction, does not even deserve consideration.”
Professor Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, at All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1968.
“The eleven major and one giant oil and gas fields here described have been discovered in a region which had, forty years ago, been condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production. The exploration for these fields was conducted entirely according to the perspective of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. The drilling which resulted in these discoveries was extended purposely deep into the crystalline basement rock, and it is in that basement where the greatest part of the reserves exist. These reserves amount to at least 8,200M metric tons of recoverable oil and 100B cubic meters of recoverable gas, and are thereby comparable to those of the North Slope of Alaska. It is conservatively estimated that, when developed, these fields will provide approximately thirty percent of the energy needs of the industrial nation of Ukraine.”
Professor Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Chairman of the Department of Petroleum Exploration, Institute of Geological Sciences, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kiev, and leader of the project for the exploration of the northern flank of the Dnieper-Donets Basin, at the VII-th International Symposium on the Observation of the Continental Crust Through Drilling, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1994.”
Source: http://www.gasresources.net/energy_resources.htm
Because of the general lack of familiarity outside the former U.S.S.R. with the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, several immediate facts about that body of knowledge deserve to be set forth.
· The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not new or recent. This theory was first enunciated by Professor Nikolai Kudryavtsev in 1951, almost a half century ago,(Kudryavtsev 1951) and has undergone extensive development, refinement, and application since its introduction. There have been more than four thousand articles published in the Soviet scientific journals, and many books, dealing with the modern theory. This writer is presently co-authoring a book upon the subject of the development and applications of the modern theory of petroleum for which the bibliography requires more than thirty pages.
· The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not the work of any one single man, – nor of a few men. The modern theory was developed by hundreds of scientists in the (now former) U.S.S.R., including many of the finest geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, and thermodynamicists of that country. There have now been more than two generations of geologists, geophysicists, chemists, and other scientists in the U.S.S.R. who have worked upon and contributed to the development of the modern theory.(Kropotkin 1956; Anisimov, Vasilyev et al. 1959; Kudryavtsev 1959; Porfir’yev 1959; Kudryavtsev 1963; Raznitsyn 1963; Krayushkin 1965; Markevich 1966; Dolenko 1968; Dolenko 1971; Linetskii 1974; Letnikov, Karpov et al. 1977; Porfir’yev and Klochko 1981; Krayushkin 1984)ƒ
· The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not untested or speculative. On the contrary, the modern theory was severely challenged by many traditionally-minded geologists at the time of its introduction; and during the first decade thenafter, the modern theory was thoroughly examined, extensively reviewed, powerfully debated, and rigorously tested. Every year following 1951, there were important scientific conferences organized in the U.S.S.R. to debate and evaluate the modern theory, its development, and its predictions. The All-Union conferences in petroleum and petroleum geology in the years 1952-1964/5 dealt particularly with this subject. (During the period when the modern theory was being subjected to extensive critical challenge and testing, a number of the men pointed out that there had never been any similar critical review or testing of the traditional hypothesis that petroleum might somehow have evolved spontaneously from biological detritus.)
· The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not a vague, qualitative hypothesis, but stands as a rigorous analytic theory within the mainstream of the modern physical sciences. In this respect, the modern theory differs fundamentally not only from the previous hypothesis of a biological origin of petroleum but also from all traditional geological hypotheses. Since the nineteenth century, knowledgeable physicists, chemists, thermodynamicists, and chemical engineers have regarded with grave reservations (if not outright disdain) the suggestion that highly reduced hydrocarbon molecules of high free enthalpy (the constituents of crude oil) might somehow evolve spontaneously from highly oxidized biogenic molecules of low free enthalpy. Beginning in 1964, Soviet scientists carried out extensive theoretical statistical thermodynamic analysis which established explicitly that the hypothesis of evolution of hydrocarbon molecules (except methane) from biogenic ones in the temperature and pressure regime of the Earth’s near-surface crust was glaringly in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. They also determined that the evolution of reduced hydrocarbon molecules requires pressures of magnitudes encountered at depths equal to such of the mantle of the Earth. During the second phase of its development, the modern theory of petroleum was entirely recast from a qualitative argument based upon a synthesis of many qualitative facts into a quantitative argument based upon the analytical arguments of quantum statistical mechanics and thermodynamic stability theory.(Chekaliuk 1967; Boiko 1968; Chekaliuk 1971; Chekaliuk and Kenney 1991; Kenney 1995) With the transformation of the modern theory from a synthetic geology theory arguing by persuasion into an analytical physical theory arguing by compulsion, petroleum geology entered the mainstream of modern science.
The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not controversial nor presently a matter of academic debate. The period of debate about this extensive body of knowledge has been over for approximately two decades(Simakov 1986). The modern theory is presently applied extensively throughout the former U.S.S.R. as the guiding perspective for petroleum exploration and development projects. There are presently more than 80 oil and gas fields in the Caspian district alone which were explored and developed by applying the perspective of the modern theory and which produce from the crystalline basement rock.(Krayushkin, Chebanenko et al. 1994) Similarly, such exploration in the western Siberia cratonic-rift sedimentary basin has developed 90 petroleum fields of which 80 produce either partly or entirely from the crystalline basement. The exploration and discoveries of the 11 major and 1 giant fields on the northern flank of the Dneiper-Donets basin have already been noted. There are presently deep drilling exploration projects under way in Azerbaijan, Tatarstan, and Asian Siberia directed to testing potential oil and gas reservoirs in the crystalline basement.”
I can’t more than this except to point out that since Ender knows about this enormous body of scientific literature, we can only assume that his committment to ideology is greater than his committment to facts and truth.
Ender
I may add that Russia is one of the largest oil producing nations – if not the largest.
As far as I am concerned the science described by Kenney and others has been verified by experiment. Biotic theory remains one based on consensus and deductionist science, or pseudoscience in other words.
Here endereth the lesson.
Louis – “As far as I am concerned the science described by Kenney and others has been verified by experiment.”
You have not posted any peer reviewed work that starts with carbon and hydrogen and ends up with long chain hydrocarbons that resemble crude oil – tholins don’t cut it. No matter how many Russian theories you post they still have not discovered one barrel of abiotic oil.
“There are presently more than 80 oil and gas fields in the Caspian district alone which were explored and developed by applying the perspective of the modern theory and which produce from the crystalline basement rock”
From your link – your source fails to list the fields, their location and their production rate. There is just a vague reference.
This link does mention them.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011205_no_free_pt2.shtml
“The authors of this study claim that the Dneiper-Donetsk basin was chosen as the area for their study because it had already been deemed to possess no potential for petroleum production.27 However, the authors did not mention that the Dneiper-Donetsk basin is the home to most of Ukraine’s proven oil reserves, and has been the focus of traditional oil exploration within the country for some years.28 The report claims the discovery of abiotic reserves totaling some 8,200 million metric tons of oil, or about 60 billion barrels of oil.29 There are many conflicting reports on the estimated reserves of Ukraine, and inconsistencies related to the Krayushkin study only complicate matters (see note 26 below).”
“In the USGS World Petroleum Assessment 2000, geologist G.F. Ulmishek states that the Dneiper-Donetsk hydrocarbons have been classified into two oil families, which have their source in two different rock suites in the Upper Devonian and Lower Carboniferous sections. The Lower Carboniferous source rocks are Visean organic rich marls and shales. The Devonian source rocks, which occur much deeper, are organic rich marine anoxic shales similar to the shales of the Pripyat basin. The source rocks are largely overmature throughout the basin where they dip below the oil window, though they are mature in marginal areas where they reside within the oil window.36 This explains why most of the hydrocarbons in the basin are in the form of gas. ”
Finally Russian oil production has peaked.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/005196.html
“Russia has peaked.
The country’s oil production fell for a fourth straight month in April, confirming pessimistic forecasts for the year, while exports rose on the back of improved weather.
Industry and Energy Ministry data released Sunday showed that production stood at 9.72 million barrels per day, down from 9.76 million bpd in March and more than 2 percent lower compared with the post-Soviet high of 9.93 million bpd in October.”
They had better find some more abiotic oil and quick.
Ender,
Published Experimental Science below which I think I have posted before.
I have made my case and you have not – End of story.
As for your Peak Oil reference, get real – not one number quoted just people’s opinions.
“Kenney, Kutcherov, Bendeliani and Alekseev published:
The Evolution of Multicomponent Systems at High Pressures: VI.
The Thermodynamic Stability of the Hydrogen-Carbon System:
The Genesis of Hydrocarbons and the Origin of Petroleum.
Abstract:
The spontaneous genesis of hydrocarbons which comprise natural petroleum have been analyzed by chemical thermodynamic stability theory. The constraints imposed upon chemical evolution by the second law of thermodynamics are briefly reviewed; and the effective prohibition of transformation, in the regime of temperatures and pressures characteristic of the near-surface crust of the Earth, of biological molecules into hydrocarbon molecules heavier than methane is recognized.
For the theoretical analysis of this phenomenon, a general, first-principles equation of state has been developed by extending scaled particle theory (SPT) and by using the technique of the factored partition function of the Simplified Perturbed Hard Chain Theory (SPHCT). The chemical potentials, and the respective thermodynamic Affinity, have been calculated for typical components of the hydrogen-carbon (H-C) system over a range pressures between 1-100 kbar, and at temperatures consistent with those of the depths of the Earth at such pressures. The theoretical analyses establish that the normal alkanes, the homologous hydrocarbon group of lowest chemical potential, evolve only at pressures greater than approximately thirty kbar, excepting only the lightest, methane. The pressure of thirty kbar corresponds to depths of approximately 100 km.
For experimental verification of the predictions of the theoretical analysis, special high-pressure apparatus has been designed which permits investigations at pressures to 50 kbar and temperatures to 1500°C, and which also allows rapid cooling while maintaining high pressures. The high-pressure genesis of petroleum hydrocarbons has been demonstrated using only the solid reagents solid iron oxide, FeO, and marble, CaCO3, 99.9% pure, wet with triple-distilled water.
Natural petroleum is a hydrogen-carbon [H-C] system, in distinctly non-equilibrium states, composed of mixtures of highly reduced, hydrocarbon molecules, all of very high chemical potential, most in the liquid phase. As such, the phenomenon of the terrestrial existence of natural petroleum in the near-surface crust of the Earth has presented several challenges, most of which have remained unresolved until recently. The primary scientific problem of petroleum has been the existence and genesis of the individual hydrocarbon molecules themselves: how, and under what thermodynamic conditions, can such highly-reduced molecules of high chemical potential evolve.
The scientific problem of the genesis of hydrocarbons of natural petroleum, and consequentially of the origin of natural petroleum deposits, has regrettably been one too much neglected by competent physicists and chemists; the subject has been obscured by diverse, unscientific hypotheses, typically connected with the rococo hypothesis(1) that highly-reduced hydrocarbon molecules of high chemical potentials might somehow evolve from highly-oxidized biotic molecules of low chemical potential. The scientific problem of the spontaneous evolution of the hydrocarbon molecules comprising natural petroleum is one of chemical thermodynamic stability theory. This problem does not involve the properties of rocks where petroleum might be found, nor of microorganisms observed in crude oil.
This paper is organized into five parts. The first section reviews briefly the formalism of modern thermodynamic stability theory, the theoretical framework for the analysis of the genesis of hydrocarbons and the H-C system, – as similarly for any system.
The second section examines, applying the constraints of thermodynamics, the notion that hydrocarbons might evolve spontaneously from biological molecules. Here are described the spectra of chemical potentials of hydrocarbon molecules, particularly the naturally-occurring ones present in petroleum. Interpretation of the significance of the relative differences between the chemical potentials of the hydrocarbon system and those of biological molecules, applying the dictates of thermodynamic stability theory, disposes of any hypothesis of an origin for hydrocarbon molecules from biological matter, excepting only the lightest, methane.
In the third section is described a first-principles, statistical mechanical formalism, developed from an extended representation of scaled particle theory appropriate for mixtures of aspherical, hard-body molecules, combined with a mean-field representation of the long-range, attractive component of the intermolecular potential.
In the fourth section, the thermodynamic Affinity developed using this formalism establishes that the hydrocarbon molecules peculiar to natural petroleum are high-pressure polymorphs of the H-C system, similarly as diamond and lonsdalite are to graphite for the elemental carbon system, and evolve only in thermodynamic regimes of pressures greater than 25-50 kbar.
The fifth section reports the experimental results obtained using equipment specially-designed to test the predictions of the previous sections. Application of pressures to 50 kbar and temperatures to 1500°C upon solid (and obviously abiotic) CaCO3 and FeO, wet with triple-distilled water, all in the absence of any initial hydrocarbon or biotic molecules, evolves the suite of petroleum fluids: methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane, hexane, branched isomers of those compounds, and the lightest of the n-alkene series.
6. Experimental demonstration of hydrocarbon genesis, under thermodynamic conditions typical of the depths of the Earth.
Because the H-C system typical of petroleum is generated at high pressures, and exists only as a metastable mélange at laboratory pressures, special high-pressure apparatus has been designed which permits investigations at pressures to 50 kbar and temperatures to 1500°C, and which also allows rapid cooling while maintaining high pressures.(28) The importance of this latter ability cannot be overstated; for, in order to examine the spontaneous reaction products, the system must be rapidly quenched to “freeze in” their high-pressure, high-temperature distribution. Such mechanism is analogous to that which occurs during eruptive transport processes responsible for kimberlite ejecta, and for the stability and occurrence of diamonds in the crust of the Earth.
Experiments to demonstrate the high-pressure genesis of petroleum hydrocarbons have been carried out using only 99.9% pure, solid iron oxide, FeO, and marble, CaCO3, wet with triple-distilled water. There were no biotic compounds or hydrocarbons admitted to the reaction chamber. The use of marble, instead of elemental carbon, was intentionally conservative. The initial carbon compound, CaCO3, is more oxidized and of lower chemical potential. All of which rendered the system more resistant to the reduction of carbon to form heavy alkanes, than it would be under conditions of the mantle of the Earth. Although there has been observed igneous CaCO3 (carbonatite) of mantle origin, carbon should be more reasonably expected to exist in the mantle of the Earth as an element in its dense phases: cubic (diamond), hexagonal (lonsdaleite), or random-close-pack (chaoite).
Pressure in the reaction cell, as described in (25) of volume 0.6 cm3, was measured by a pressure gauge calibrated using data of the phase transitions of Bi, Tl, and PbTe. The cell was heated by a cylindrical graphite heater; its temperature was measured using a chromel-alumel thermocouple and was regulated within the range ±5°C. Both stainless steel and platinum reaction cells were used; all were constructed to prevent contamination by air and to provide impermeability during and after each experimental run.
The reaction cell was brought from 1 bar to 50 kbar gradually, at a rate of 2 kbar/min, and from room temperature to the elevated temperatures of investigation at the rate of 100 K/min. The cell and reaction chamber were held for at least an hour at each temperature for which measurements were taken in order to allow the H-C system to come to thermodynamic equilibrium. The samples were thenafter quenched rapidly at the rate of 700°C/sec to 50°C, and from 50°C to room temperature over several minutes, while maintaining the high pressure of investigation. The pressure was then reduced gradually to 1 bar at the rate of 1 kbar/min. The reaction cell was then gently heated to desorb the hydrocarbons for mass spectrometer analysis, using an HI-120 1B mass spectrometer equipped with an automatic system of computerized spectrum registration. A specially-designed high-temperature gas probe allowed sampling the cell while maintaining its internal pressure.
At pressures below 10 kbar, no hydrocarbons heavier than methane were present. Hydrocarbon molecules began to evolve above 30 kbar. At 50 kbar and at the temperature of 1500°C, the system spontaneously evolved methane, ethane, n-propane, 2-methylpropane, 2,2-dimethylpropane, n-butane, 2-methylbutane, n-pentane, 2-methylpentane, n-hexane, and n-alkanes through C10H22, ethene, n-propene, n-butene, and n-pentene, in distributions characteristic of natural petroleum. The cumulative abundances of the subset of evolved hydrocarbons consisting of methane and n-alkanes through n-C6H14 are shown in Fig. 3 as functions of temperature. Methane (on the right scale) is present and of abundance approximately an order of magnitude greater than any single component of the heavier n-alkanes, although as a minor component of the total H-C system. That the extent of hydrocarbon evolution becomes relatively stable as a function of temperature above approximately 900°C, both for the absolute abundance of the individual hydrocarbon species as well as for their relative abundances, argues that the distributions observed represent thermodynamic equilibrium for the H-C system. That the evolved hydrocarbons remain stable over a range of temperatures increasing by more than 300 K demonstrates the third prediction of the theoretical analysis: Hydrocarbon molecules heavier than methane do not decompose with increasing temperature in the high-pressure regime of their genesis.
Source
Figure 3A may be viewed on the link above.
No Tholins were reported Ender.
In addition recent US research using a diamond anvil reports:
Rocks into Gas (March-April 2005)
Sunday, 13 July 2008
1:09 PM
Harvard Magazine
Hydrocarbon Heresy
Rocks into Gas
Geologists have long believed that the world’s supply of oil and natural gas came from the decay of primordial plant and animal matter, which, over the course of millions of years, turned into petroleum.
Two diamond anvils, each about 3 millimeters high, in a diamond anvil cell. They compress a small metal plate that holds the sample. The device can generate pressures greater than those in the center of the earth (3.6 million atmospheres) The methane generation experiments use pressures in the 50-100,000 atmosphere range, corresponding to the earth’s upper mantle.
Photograph courtesy of Dudley Herschbach
But new research coauthored by Dudley Herschbach, Baird research professor of science and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, questions that thinking. Published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study describes how investigators combined three abiotic (non-living) materials — water (H2O), limestone (CaCO3), and iron oxide (FeO) — and crushed the mixture together with the same intense pressure found deep below the earth’s surface. This process created methane (CH4), the major component of natural gas. Herschbach says this offers evidence, although as yet far from proof, for a maverick theory that much of the world’s supply of so-called fossil fuels may not derive from the decay of dinosaur-era organisms after all.
Herschbach became interested in the origins of petroleum hydrocarbons while reading A Well-Ordered Thing, a book about the nineteenth-century Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who developed the periodic table. Written by Michael Gordin ’96, Ph.D. ’01, a current Junior Fellow, the book mentions a theory long held by Russian and Ukrainian geologists: that petroleum comes from reactions of water with other abiotic materials, and then bubbles up toward the earth’s surface. Intrigued, Herschbach read further, including The Deep, Hot Bio-sphere by the late Cornell astrophysicist Thomas Gold. An iconoclast, Gold saw merit in the Russian and Ukrainian view that petroleum has nonliving origins. He theorized that organic materials found in oil — which most scientists took as a sign that petroleum comes from living things — may simply be waste matter from microbial organisms that feed on the hydrocarbons generated deep in the earth as these flow upward.
Another of Gold’s assertions about methane and oil really caught Herschbach’s attention. “He said there wasn’t much chance that you could do a laboratory experiment to test this,” Herschbach reports. “And I thought, ‘Holy smoke! We could do this with the diamond anvil cell.'” Long interested in how molecules behave under high-pressure conditions, he contacted Russell Hemley, Ph.D. ’83, a former student now at the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, to suggest the methane experiment. Together with Henry Scott of Indiana University and other researchers, Herschbach sought to create the same conditions found 140 miles below the earth’s surface, where temperatures are scorching and pressures mount to more than 50,000 times those at sea level. “It’s a great pressure cooker,” he explains.
The diamond anvil cell, developed at the Carnegie Institution, can create the same pressures found as far as 4,000 miles beneath the earth’s surface. The cell employs two diamonds, each about three millimeters (roughly one-eighth-inch) high, which sit with their tips facing each other in hardened precision frames that are forced together, creating intense pressure in the small space between the tips. Diamonds are an ideal material for such experiments, Herschbach explains. As one of the hardest substances on earth, they can withstand the tremendous force, and because they’re transparent, scientists can use beams of light and X-rays to identify what’s inside the cell without pulling the diamonds apart. He notes that previous experiments by Russian scientists arrived at different conclusions because they used an old-fashioned press that had to be opened before any products inside could be analyzed, potentially changing the results.
“The experiment showed it’s easy to make methane,” Herschbach says. The new findings may serve to corroborate other evidence, cited by Gold, that some of the earth’s reservoirs of oil appear to refill as they’re pumped out, suggesting that petroleum may be continually generated. This could have broad implications for petroleum production and consumption, and for our planet’s ecology and economy.
But before we begin to think of petroleum as a renewable resource, Herschbach urges caution. “We don’t know if a globally significant or commercially significant portion of methane might be formed abiotically from this pressure-cooker business,” he says. “Even if we did convince ourselves that a lot of hydrocarbons are formed that way, we don’t yet know how long it takes for it to percolate up and refill the reservoirs.”
For Herschbach, these exciting research questions have “given me a second scientific childhood.” He and his colleagues are eager to return to the lab and find out if even higher pressures will create more complex hydrocarbons, such as butane or propane. The research raises fundamental questions about how scientists determine if a material has living or nonliving origins. It also validates the work of previous scientists. “The fair conclusion,” Herschbach says, “is that the views of Thomas Gold and Russian scientists all the way back to Mendeleev need to be taken more seriously than they have been in the Western world.”
~Erin O’Donnell
Dudley Herschbach e-mail address: herschbach@chemistry.harvard.edu
Inserted from ”
PS
The two links which did not copy are below.
http://www.gasresources.net/AlkaneGenesis.htm
http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/03/rocks-into-gas.html
Incidentally the Harvard research is simply confirmation of the earlier Russian experiments.
Finally, the Russian paper was published in 2002, so the Russians have precedence.
Ender is shown yet again to be totally and not so gloriously, wrong again.
Ender
Here is another take on Peak Oil.
Interesting Interview:
ACRES U.S.A. Then what is the flaw in the peak oil argument?
ENGDAHL. It’s a flawed view from the beginning to end. I know the peak oil view — I myself subscribed to it as a possible explanation for the occupation of Iraq in 2003, because nothing else seemed to make sense. I have since
rejected it. I wrote a piece that was widely debated and earned me quite a bit of hostile mail, called “Confessions of an Ex-Peak Oil Believer.” The whole peak oil theory rests on the idea that oil is a fossil fuel, which is accepted as religious
dogma by almost every geology department in most of the world. The problem is, oil is not a fossil fuel, it’s not from the detritus of dead dinosaurs or from algae from under the ocean or bird fossils or whatever fossils you want to take. It’s not a biological product. Oil is generated deep down. If you’ve ever seen a schematic cutting into the core of the earth of how a volcano erupts, it’s like a huge seething cauldron deep down inside the earth’s mantle burning constantly.
Then there’s a fault or a rupture or an alignment of a certain structure near the surface of the earth, and that allows this enormous temperature and pressure to erupt to the surface, like Krakatoa or Mount Etna. Imagine that that’s how
oil is created, deep down in the earth — oil is a hydrocarbon, and Russian scientists have synthetically reproduced oil hydrocarbons in the laboratory at a hundred times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Oil is constantly being produced, at least from all indications, deep down in the Earth, and rather than saying it comes from dead animals that are pressed down in the earth from above, we should start training our geologists to look deeper at some of the fields
such as Ghawar in Saudia Arabia, some of these fault structures in the Middle East that gave them such riches of oil.
I was in Iceland a year ago giving a talk on my book, and the former foreign minister there told me the government had just commissioned an independent geophysical survey of Iceland in terms of presence of oil. He said the conclusion
was that Iceland is swimming on a sea of oil, that it’s a potential North Sea. Who controls the information we have on oil supplies? Who got the peak oil movement going? The intimate decades-long friend of Dick Cheney, Matt Simmons from Houston, the oil banker. And who benefits from $107 per barrel price of oil today? Well, I don’t see any signs that Exxon-Mobile is crying on their way to the bank. They’re making obscene profits, and it’s accepted as justifiable.
Nobody’s even debating that.
ACRES U.S.A. Can happy American motorists rest easy at night, then, believing that the discovery of large amounts of oil are going to mean that the price of gas will head back downward in t he near future? That would also bring the price of food down, and life would get a little easier.
ENGDAHL. I wish I could be reassuring, but the price of oil is controlled by two elements. One, the people who control the downstream, which are the big three or big four oil multinationals, two British and two American, and number
two, Wall Street. The derivatives market in paper oil trading has completely revolutionized the pricing mechanism for oil.
The exporters at the source in the Middle East aren’t the ones making $107 price per barrel. It’s Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and these oil-derivative trading banks that have emerged which have such an influence on oil price. Anytime there’s a news report on Reuters that says insurgents or the opposition in Basra has blown up a crucial oil export pipeline, then these hedge funds and oil speculators have an excuse to bid the price of oil up $10 a barrel in five minutes. It’s a very precarious thing. The oil companies have shifted over the last decade to just-in-time inventory, which means that they’re able to maximize the upwards price pressures. It’s a controlled market — this is not a free market! Energy is probably the most controlled market in the world, food being second.
“The whole peak oil theory rests on the idea that oil is a fossil fuel, which is accepted as religious dogma by almost every geology department in most of the world. The problem is, oil is not a fossil fuel.”
ACRES U.S.A. Then the supply of oil is assured for the next few decades at least?
ENGDAHL. No, people who have done the work on this say it’s assured for centuries ahead. I was told once by someone in Washington who was connected with one of the intelligence community think tanks that the United States had satellite reconnaissance evidence that there is enough undeveloped oil in the undefined border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen to supply the entire planet’s needs for petroleum for the next 50 years, and t his was 10 years ago. So the oil is there.
The Russian geophysicists know how to find it. They found oil in Siberia back during the Cold War when they had no possibility of relying on imported oil from the Middle East because NATO was blocking it. The Russians developed deep
oil geophysics and they found supplies in offshore Vietnam during the Cold War and they’ve located reserves throughout Russia. Russia is the second biggest oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia today.
ACRES U.S.A. Leaving aside global warming for another day, one consequence of the oil habit is its direct impact on the physical environment. There’s a mass of plastic waste swirling around in the Pacific right now that’s almost twice the size of Texas. The world is choking on this stuff.
ENGDAHL. That’s an ecological question that requires management by government agencies. We have to fuel our economies with an effective fuel that is affordable and can be made better, but I’m not an advocate of filling the Earth with plastic grocery bags by any means. That’s simply a problem that has to be solved.
ACRES U.S.A. It’s the hope of many people that if oil becomes scarce, the high prices would motivate research and changes in living habits to move away from these terrible things we do to our environment. Greenhouse gases notwithstanding, the physical and spiritual pollution caused by car culture in a places such as Houston and Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro is hard to overstate.
ENGDAHL. You mean the SUV culture? I agree with people who think SUVs are a little bit over the top. I think you can transport your family and buy groceries and do most of the things people need to do with cars that are of a modest size
and fuel efficient. There are known cases where inventors have developed engines that can get 100, 200, 300 miles to a gallon, but those inventors had their patents bought up by General Motors or one of the other big companies.
ACRES U.S.A. People dismiss those stories as urban legends.
ENGDAHL. No legend, no legend at all! I’ve met people over the years who have invented some of these things. They’re small, creative, usually a few people or one-man enterprises, and they get bought up and their invention is pulled off the market. The Arabian rights to my book A Century of War were bought up by a prominent Saudi publishing house and it was pulled off the market, so there’s no Arabian edition.
ACRES U.S.A. It seems to be a really eventful time we’re living through right now, as we speak in late March 2008. The dollar is falling, Iraq seems to be blowing up again, and Afghanistan is not going well. The Russians seem to have more weight to throw around with energy leverage than ever before, and so does Venezuela. OPEC doesn’t seem to be as effective an arbiter as it used to be, so what can we expect in the next few years?
ENGDAHL. That’s a huge question. In my humble opinion, I think we’re living through one of these historical eras of a fundamental paradigm shift of power. We had one between the 1870s and 1914 with the decline of the British Empire
and the emergence of two rival empires to challenge that, one was Germany, the German Reich, and the other was the
United States. That took between 1914 and 1945 before the outcome was clearly decided and the United States was the unquestioned dominant superpower in the world. The title of my next book provisionally is The Rise and Decline of
the American Century, which is the name that Henry Luce of Time magazine gave to the emergence of American hegemony in the 1940s. This sub-prime crisis is really a fundamental crisis of the U.S. banking and financial system, regrettably and tragically, because there’s no need for it. Unless really, really dramatic change comes from Congress and from a new President, which I’m skeptical about at this point, I think the United States is going straight in the direction of the Great Depression of the 1930s. You have waves of home foreclosure sweeping the country, you have suburban areas being turned into ghetto gang war lands, abandoned houses, people are terrified about what is happening to their once beautiful neighborhoods in the space of two or three years, and that trend is going to grow exponentially because the way these home mortgages were structured and fraudulently pushed on people. It was financial fraud on a huge scale. I’ve written a series on this called The Financial Tsunami, and if people are interested, they can look it up on the Web. The man who single-handedly pushed this at every juncture, the securitization
of mortgages and the expansion of that practice, was Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve,
right up until the day he retired. Now of course he’s written his memoirs and is claiming that he didn’t “get it” until
2005-2006. Well, I maintain he did get it, because he created the securitization of the new finance revolution, as he called it in speech after speech.
ACRES U.S.A. Is there a way out of this mess?
ENGDAHL. That will depend on how the government reacts and how the voters make the government react, because
after all there is a little bit of influence that voters have every four years at election time. This is a crucial year to call
politicians and elected representatives to task to make some real change. So far the debate that I’ve seen has been pathetic. None of the candidates are even beginning to address what is the most serious financial and economic crisis the nation has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. That’s going to have an effect on the ability of the Pentagon for power projection around the world. The idea of this sole superpower, I think, is going to be seen in a few years as a bad joke. Most of the world already sees it that way. Because the media is so closed to telling them what really is going on outside their shores, most Americans are completely in the dark about the realities. But there is a profound sense in most of the rest of the world that the United States is in a terminal decline and they’d best get as far away from it as they can without having their country bombed to smithereens in revenge. I think we’re going to see a number of poles in the world. We’ll see an Asian one with China playing a very important role, we’ll perhaps see a central European one with Russia playing a very important role, not an aggressive one in terms of military power but a defensive one. I think it’s up for grabs which way the European Union — Germany, France, England, the rest of Europe — will go in relation to these. Until now they tend to hold onto their Atlantic partner across the water, but that is becoming very tenuous as the dollar goes down and the Euro goes up. It’s really a profound change. This is no business-as-usual, three-or-four-month recession that the United States is looking at. We’re talking about a four, five,
six-year economic depression. And we have a President who seems to be intent on becoming the heir to Herbert Hoover, who during the 1929-1931 period kept making speech after speech about how we’ve turned the corner and the worst is behind us and just have faith in America. You read the speeches of President Bush and you’re reading the Herbert Hoover of 2008.
For more information on William Engdahl, including samples of his writings, visit www. engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. His latest book, Seeds of Destruction (ISBN 0-97371-472-7), is now available at select bookstores.
I have to mention one pertinent fact concerning the Diamond Anvil experiment – they only increased the pressure, while the Russian experiment increased both pressure and temperature.
Hence the US study only produced methane.
At least it is a step in the right direction.
Louis – “I have made my case and you have not – End of story.”
Well actually you have not. What publication peer reviewed this work and who replicated it? Both are required for work like this to be accepted.
“Ender is shown yet again to be totally and not so gloriously, wrong again.”
Sorry until someone repeats the work and publishes it in a journal that does proper peer review this is just so much crap. However that is your stock in trade isn’t it?
BTW the ‘experiments’ that are not peer reviewed and not replicated, did not even get close to to crude oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum
“Petroleum is a mixture of a very large number of different hydrocarbons; the most commonly found molecules are alkanes (linear or branched), cycloalkanes, aromatic hydrocarbons, or more complicated chemicals like asphaltenes. Each petroleum variety has a unique mix of molecules, which define its physical and chemical properties, like color and viscosity.
The alkanes, also known as paraffins, are saturated hydrocarbons with straight or branched chains which contain only carbon and hydrogen and have the general formula CnH2n+2 They generally have from 5 to 40 carbon atoms per molecule, although trace amounts of shorter or longer molecules may be present in the mixture.
The alkanes from pentane (C5H12) to octane (C8H18) are refined into gasoline (petrol), the ones from nonane (C9H20) to hexadecane (C16H34) into diesel fuel and kerosene (primary component of many types of jet fuel), and the ones from hexadecane upwards into fuel oil and lubricating oil. At the heavier end of the range, paraffin wax is an alkane with approximately 25 carbon atoms, while asphalt has 35 and up, although these are usually cracked by modern refineries into more valuable products. Any shorter hydrocarbons are considered natural gas or natural gas liquids.”
No-one says that you cannot make hydrocarbons from raw materials however the totally unique characteristics of crude oil including biomarkers can only come from the very long chain fatty acid hydrocarbons present in the cell walls and cells of animals and plants. You referenced ‘experiments’ did not replicate crude oil or anything like it.
And I cannot believe that I am arguing this yet again – can you stop hijacking threads on oil with your bullshit just once. That way all the rest of the people will not go to sleep.
“Sorry until someone repeats the work and publishes it in a journal that does proper peer review this is just so much crap. However that is your stock in trade isn’t it?”
Actually, bull$hit science, bull$hit peer-reviews and corruption of the scientific process is the AGW stock in trade.
See: http://energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/07192006hearing1987/Wegman.pdf
In particular:
“We found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of this relatively narrow field of paleoclimate studies are closely connected. Dr. Mann has an unusually large reach in terms of influence and in particular Drs. Jones, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Rutherford and Osborn.”
“Because of these close connections, independent studies may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. Although we have no direct data on the functioning of peer review within the paleoclimate community, but with 35 years of experience with peer review in both journals as well as evaluation of research proposals, peer review may not have been as independent as would generally be desirable.”
I think that’s their polite way of saying they are all crooks and frauds.
Ender,
The Russians do the experiments, the Carnegie Institute replicate it partially, and then you have the hide to pronounce that it isn’t satisfactory.
You have no idea of the difficulties in doing these experiments, which is why I know you have not read, nor understand anything in the scientific literature.
Quoting Wikipedia proves beyond doubt that you don’t understand science.
Hydrocarbons which upwell from the mantle and invade sedimentary rocks will dissolve all the organic material in those sediments – so asserting that the presence of biomarkers in hycrocarbons means nothing apart from the age of the sediments that the mantle oil invaded. It does not mean its biotic, and as Professor Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, at All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1968:
“Any notion which might suggest that hydrocarbon molecules spontaneously evolve in the regimes of temperature and pressure characterized by the near-surface of the Earth, which are the regimes of methane creation and hydrocarbon destruction, does not even deserve consideration.
End of discussion.
Ender
By the way, have you noticed that the only experimental data for generating hydrocarbons is from marble, iron oxide and water without any biotic material at all? No one has actually published any experiment at all using biomass to produce crude oil. I should say hydrocarbons.
Isn’t that odd. Do you think the the lack of experimental data for spontaneously producing hydrocarbon from biomass at burial depths to, what’s the depth oil shales become lithified – a couple hundred of meters? (Look up diagenesis)is because no one can actually peform this miraculous transformation of biomass to crude oil?
But you say they can, so fess up, where is the data.
“Although this theory has support by a large minority of geologists in Russia, where it was intensively developed in the 1950s and 1960s, it has only recently begun to receive attention in the West, where the biogenic theory is still believed by the vast majority of petroleum geologists. Although it was originally denied that abiogenic hydrocarbons exist at all on earth, this is now admitted by Western geologists. The orthodox position now is that while abiogenic hydrocarbons exist, they are not produced in commercially significant quantities, so that essentially all hydrocarbons that are extracted for use as fuel”
The operative word is “believed” in the above quotation from http://www.masterliness.com/a/Abiogenic.petroleum.origin.htm
It is simply faith based science.
Louis – “The Russians do the experiments, the Carnegie Institute replicate it partially, and then you have the hide to pronounce that it isn’t satisfactory.”
Absolute rubbish. The Carnegie Institute produced methane which last time I looked was not crude oil. So please post the peer reviewed paper that starts with carbon and hydrogen and ends up with a sample of crude oil that I could send to an assayer in a double blind experiment that could not be distinguished from crude oil.
“Hydrocarbons which upwell from the mantle and invade sedimentary rocks will dissolve all the organic material in those sediments”
Yes they will however the source rocks will then be depleted of biomarkers which is not observed in ANY present oil fields.
The problem with this whole discussion is that it is completely irrelevant. The fact is that we can produce oil like substances from algea resembling crude oil far more than your ‘experiments’ with the long chain aromatics that are present in crude oil plus the fact that ALL present oil is contained in sedimentary basins removed from any mantle rock complete with biomarkers and fossilised source rocks with complete stratification plus that ALL present oil is found where biotic oil theory would predict it to be. I guess it is now up to the abiotic people to do some proper peer reviewed research and publish some experiments proving that it is impossible for biotic oil to exist, find some biomarker depleted source rocks and do experiments that actually produce crude oil.
Worst still is that the source of oil is irrelevent to the present problem of Peak Oil. There are presently NO oil wells in the world that do not deplete in a regular and predictable way with extraction of the oil. Not one out of the hundreds of thousands that exist.
So whether oil is biotic or abiotic is a non issue. Which is precisely why you hijacking threads with your crap is so annoying. Even if the Russian ideas are 100% correct THIS present endowment of crude oil is being used at an unsustainable rate. However it got there we are using it too fast and it is depleting and will, for our lifetimes and our present economy, fail to meet our present demand.
As our society is based on the amount of oil we use, demand destruction of the scale to fit the new lower production that will be possible in the future without alternatives will be the end of our society as we presently know it.
Which is exactly why the idea that the Tar Sands, or Shale Oil will save us. It can’t because we cannot extract either of those resources fast enough to satisfy growing demand. Even if all oil is aboitic it will not renew itself fast enough from our present society to remain the same as it now.
Abiotic oil, or Tar Sands oil or biofuels are just distractions from the very real task we have to preserve our current society in much the same way as it is now in the face of diminishing oil supplies. The only way to do this is for us to use more efficient transport and use alternatives that do not rely on crude oil such as electric transport.
Your hijacking of threads to satisfy your wet dreams of free thinking ‘independence’ completely does my head in. I cannot imagine a person that has to be so anti everything just to be different.
“Which is exactly why the idea that the Tar Sands, or Shale Oil will save us”
That should read
“Which is exactly why the idea that the Tar Sands, or Shale Oil will save us is completely wrong”
Ender
You are wrong again – I wrote above that Carnegie created only methane from their experiment.
Heavens you seem so het-up you can’t even understand plain written English.
Incidentally I neve inferred or implied that tar sands or oil shales will save us, or are you in soliquy mode again?
“You are wrong again – I wrote above that Carnegie created only methane from their experiment.”
OK so what’s your point?
“Incidentally I neve inferred or implied that tar sands or oil shales will save us, or are you in soliquy mode again?”
In one of your references is the idea that if oil is abiotic it could be referred to as a renewable resource. This is utter crap and could lead us to delay alternatives longer and longer. This is also exactly what the idea of the tar sands and shale oil does.
The statement was a pathetic attempt to get this thread almost back on subject.
Ender,
If you don’t understand the point, then you are truly stupid. Perhaps someone else could explain it to you.