Abiotic Oil?
Dean
Doug Payton is quite taken with the theory of abiotic oil, the theory that petroleum is not a fossil fuel but is in fact generated by completely non-biological and largely inorganic sources. He cites a couple of sources to back that up.
I've written about this before, although I'm too lazy at the moment to find the links (feel free to do so in the comments if you're motivated). My short answer is that I find it fascinating, but I am skeptical if only because a successful theory by definition makes predictions. I have yet to see any strong predictions made by the abiotic oil theorists. Can they show how they can better predict where oil will be found than geologists who accept the orthodox view? Or predict it at least as well? If they can, they have something important. If they can't, then they have something highly interesting to contemplate.
To be clear, I'm not saying the abiotic theorists are lunatics, crackpots, dangerous, etc. I'm just saying: "show me the money." Telling me you can produce hydrocarbons by just subjecting iron, limestone, and water to high pressure is interesting--in fact, it's very interesting, and probably helps explain why hydrocarbons are so abundant in the universe--but in terms of energy production, it's about like telling me that you can squeeze combustible hydrogen out of seawater. Yeah, you can do it, and...?
To be fair, I haven't checked all of Doug's references thoroughly. If someone thinks I'm missing something big, let me know.
But I'm not sure you're asking for the right predictions. We've already found oil in places that would be unlikely with the biotic theory, such as under metamorphic and igneous rock layers. While the Russians have experimented with deeper drilling than most nations (and some of the abiotic theory comes from their results), such exploration close to the mantle (where the hydrocarbons would be generated).
The biotic process doesn't make much sense though. The amount of plant matter that would have to be buried so deeply and compressed and heated so much just doesn't make much sense. You aware of how much biomass equivalent we consume in the form of oil every year? The amount would be staggering if converted into forests. Also, deposits of things like coal (which we know is organic in origin) are much closer to the surface, oil seems strange in comparison.
On the other hand.. the earth's core has an aweful lot of iron in it, and iron is a carbon sponge. The crust of the earth contains alot of hydrogen compounds. It makes at least a little sense that the boundary of the two would produce pools of hydrocarbon gases.
are incredibly expensive, I was about to say. :)
Got a link?
You have eight abiotic links, but only a couple are about abiotic oil.
Buy an automobile with a diesel engine. Then, over the next few years, as biodiesel retail pumps become more common and even ubiquitous across North America, you can run your vehicle on fuel fuel distilled from soybeans, or even better, from rapeseed, both of which can be grown across great stretches of this continent. And if petroleum-based fertilizers push comes to petroleum depletion shove, fertilizers based on other chemical sources will be put into mass use.
Then you won't have to worry at oil about whether petroleum is or is not abiotic, how much it might cost to obtain petroleum from deep in the earth's mantle, if that is the case, and how many decades it might take before any such source is available at all.
But one thing is certain. It has to be easier and cheaper to drive a vehicle powered by something planted, grown, harvested and distilled in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, than it is to pump it out of the ground in the Middle East, with hostile ragheads setting fire to the local pipelines, then shipping it to the USA in supertankers, then refining it in locations where the next hurricane in the gulf states might end production for most of a month.
To say nothing of the cost and complexity of pulling heavy oil from sand and shale formations in Colorado and Canada, and converting this stuff into a product approximating the easily refined light oil that they are running out of this very decade.
Or be stubborn and ignore all this, and maybe you will find yourself riding around metro Big D on the back of a Vespa, like Stefi and I once saw all over the sad streets of Naples, Italy.
Or if things really get tough, think how far can you pedal a bicycle down a road around southeastern Michigan in January.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The problem I have with most Biogenic Proponents (BPs) is that they talk as if it's a settled bet that they're right. They continually put the onus on the Abiogenic Proponents (APs) to prove them wrong, yet their defense of the Biogenic Process is sketchy at best. BPs argue that the n-alkane series in petroleum has an abundance of odd-numbered carbon chains which is also found in living systems, that the same organic compounds can be found in both petroleum and biological matter, and that there are certain chemicals of a strictly biological origin, biomarkers, found in petroleum that cannot be easily recreated using thermophilic bacteria, and yet if you add a bunch of ferns, lichens, and moss to the mix it all makes sense, and this is proof of the Biogenic process.
All of these arguments can be refuted by pointing out that the abundance of odd-numbered carbon chains is a trait of all linear hydrocarbons, not just organics. That the same organic compounds they claim can only come from organics can also be found in meteorites, and that those biomarkers - often the silver bullet of a BPs argument - are also manufactured by a variety of extremophile bacterium and that at least one biomarker, sterane, is actually the byproduct of a methane eating proteobacteria found deep in the crust.
Let's not forget the "Cool Earth" theory of planetary formation. Recent testing of the oldest rock on the planet, a zircon just over 4.4 billion years old, indicates that the Earth's formation temperature was much cooler than we'd previously thought, in fact it was low enough to allow for the presence of liquid water. The Earth didn't get a "hot" volcanic core until radioactive matter collected in the bowels of the planet. This is supported by the Cassini-Huygens mission to Titan that found an abundance of hydrocarbons present in the form of methane. The "Cool Earth" formation theory supports the Abiogenic Formation theory perfectly. See if the Earth was hot when it was formed, then the methane and other hydrocarbons would have outgassed and been oxidized into carbon dioxide and water and there would be no carbon remaining within the crust, and liquid petroleum would have to be the result of a biogenic process. However if it was in fact cool enough to allow for the existence of liquid water on the surface, then all of the methane and hydrocarbons would have been trapped within the crust and an abiogenic formation process makes more sense.
Robert Robinson, Nobel Laureate in chemistry, studied the chemical composition of liquid petroleum for years and came to the conclusion that it was far to rich in Hydrogen to be of an organic origin: "Actually it cannot be too strongly emphasized that petroleum does not present the composition picture expected from modified biogenic products, and all the arguments from the constituents of ancient oils fit equally well, or better, with the conception of a primordial hydrocarbon mixture to which bio-products have been added." (1963)
And finally like my cousin Jim says, "There are oil fields thought to be played out years ago that now have saleable amounts of oil in them. If it ain't abiogenic someone want to tell me how the Dinosaurs are getting down there?"
The thing that get's me going on this subject is that the Biogenic proponents usually adopt this dismissive attitude regarding any Abiogenic arguments. Many Biogenic Proponents belittled Gold's claim that he would find oil drilling as deep as he did in Sweden, and while he wasn't able to sink a commercially viable well he was able to recover 80 barrels of oil before the well became too clogged. Of course the fact that according to Biogenic theory there should have been no oil there at all never get's mentioned.
Also there have been several wells sunk into basement resevoirs in Asia, some drilled directly into granite, and elsewhere around the world.
Personally I don't see why the two must be treated as mutually exclusive. I can accept that liquid petroleum has both a biogenic and an abiogenic origin.
(1)ratios of carbon and other isotopes in oil, (2)presence of helium,
(3)refilling of oil wells,
(4)existence of oil in granite regions.
Also, I think he mentioned a flaw of the prevailing theory. If you cook plants under pressure you don't get hydrocarbons. The chemistry doesn't work.
Sorry, haven't got my copy to check these and I don't have any http refs.