(Or How Ruppert's 'Peak Oil' Pile is Gaining Tonnage)
By Dave McGowan <dave@davesweb.cnchost.com>
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/davemcgowanstalinandabioticoil05mar05.shtml
March 5, 2005
Original Title
Stalin And Abiotic Oil
This story really begins in 1946, just after the close of
World War II, which had illustrated quite effectively that oil was integral
to waging modern, mechanized warfare. Stalin, recognizing the importance
of oil, and recognizing also that the Soviet Union would have to be self
sufficient, launched a massive scientific undertaking that has been compared,
in its scale, to the Manhattan Project. The goal of the Soviet project was
to study every aspect of petroleum, including how it is created, how reserves
are generated, and how to best pursue petroleum exploration and extraction.
The challenge was taken up by a wide range of scientific disciplines, with
hundreds of the top professionals in their fields contributing to the body
of scientific research. By 1951, what has been called the Modern Russian-Ukrainian
Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was born. A healthy amount of
scientific debate followed for the next couple of decades, during which
time the theory, initially formulated by geologists, based on observational
data, was validated through the rigorous quantitative work of chemists,
physicists and thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory
has been accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific
community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally thousands
of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.
For over fifty years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have added to this
body of research and refined the Russian-Ukrainian theories. And for over
fifty years, not a word of it has been published in the English language
(except for a fairly recent, bastardized version published by astronomer
Thomas Gold, who somehow forgot to credit the hundreds of scientists whose
research he stole and then misrepresented).
This is not, by the way, just a theoretical model that the Russians and
Ukrainians have established; the theories were put to practical use, resulting
in the transformation of the Soviet Union - once regarded as having limited
prospects, at best, for successful petroleum exploration - into a world-class
petroleum producing, and exporting, nation.
J.F. Kenney spent some 15 years studying under some of the Russian and Ukrainian
scientists who were key contributors to the modern petroleum theory. When
Kenney speaks about petroleum origins, he is not speaking as some renegade
scientist with a radical new theory; he is speaking to give voice to an
entire community of scientists whose work has never been acknowledged in
the West. Kenney writes passionately about that neglected body of research:
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)
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.
It appears that, unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been, for
quite some time now, two competing theories concerning the origins of petroleum.
One theory claims that oil is an organic 'fossil fuel' deposited in finite
quantities near the planet's surface. The other theory claims that oil is
continuously generated by natural processes in the Earth's magma. One theory
is backed by a massive body of research representing fifty years of intense
scientific inquiry. The other theory is an unproven relic of the eighteenth
century. One theory anticipates deep oil reserves, refillable oil fields,
migratory oil systems, deep sources of generation, and the spontaneous venting
of gas and oil. The other theory has a difficult time explaining any such
documented phenomena.
So which theory have we in the West, in our infinite wisdom, chosen to embrace?
Why, the fundamentally absurd 'Fossil Fuel' theory, of course -- the same
theory that the 'Peak
Oil' doomsday warnings are based on.
I am sorry to report here, by the way, that in doing my homework, I never
did come across any of that "hard science" documenting 'Peak Oil'
that Mr. Strahl referred to. All the 'Peak Oil' literature that I found,
on Ruppert's site and elsewhere, took for granted that petroleum is a non-renewable
'fossil fuel.' That theory is never questioned, nor is any effort made to
validate it. It is simply taken to be an established scientific fact, which
it quite obviously is not.
So what do Ruppert and his resident experts have to say about all of this?
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, identified as the "FTW Contributing
Editor for Energy," has written:
"There is some speculation that oil is abiotic
in origin -- generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead
of an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless."
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
Here is a question that I have for both Mr. Ruppert and Mr.
Pfeiffer: Do you consider it honest, responsible journalism to dismiss a
fifty year body of multi-disciplinary scientific research, conducted by
hundreds of the world's most gifted scientists, as "some speculation"?
Another of FTW's prognosticators, Colin Campbell, is described
by Ruppert as "perhaps the world's foremost expert on oil." He
was asked by Ruppert, in an interview,
"what would you say to the people who insist that
oil is created from magma ...?"
Before we get to Campbell's answer, we should first take note
of the tone of Ruppert's question. It is not really meant as a question
at all, but rather as a statement, as in 'there is really nothing you can
say that will satisfy these nutcases who insist on bringing up these loony
theories.'
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
Campbell's response to the question was an interesting one:
"No one in the industry gives the slightest credence
to these theories."
Why, one wonders, did Mr. Campbell choose to answer the question
on behalf of the petroleum industry? And does it come as a surprise to anyone
that the petroleum industry doesn't want to acknowledge abiotic theories
of petroleum origins? Should we have instead expected something along these
lines?:
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com
The Center for an Informed America
NEWSLETTER #52
March 13, 2004
Cop v CIA (Center for an Informed America)
The Most Important Center for an Informed America
Story in Two Years...
On February 29, 2004, I received the following e-mail message from Michael
Ruppert of From the Wilderness:
I challenge you to an open, public debate on the subject of Peak Oil; any
time, any place after March 13th 2004. I challenge you to bring scientific
material, production data and academic references and citations for your
conclusions like I have. I suggest a mutually acceptable panel of judges
and I will put up $1,000 towards a purse to go to the winner of that debate.
I expect you to do the same. And you made a dishonest and borderline libelous
statement when you suggested that I am somehow pleased that these wars of
aggression have taken place to secure oil. My message all along has been,
"Not in my name!" Put your money where your mouth is. But first
I suggest you do some homework. Ad hominem attacks using the word "bullshit",
unsupported by scientific data are a sign of intellectual weakness (at best).
I will throw more than 500 footnoted citations at you from unimpeachable
sources. Be prepared to eat them or rebut them with something more than
you have offered.
Wow! How does high noon sound?
Before I get started here, Mike, I need to ask you just one quick question:
are you sure it was only a "borderline libelous statement"? Because
I was really going for something more unambiguously libelous. I'll see if
I can do better on this outing. Let me know how I do.
Several readers have written to me, incidentally, with a variation of the
following question: "How can you say that Peak Oil is being promoted
to sell war when all of the websites promoting the notion of Peak Oil are
stridently anti-war?"
But of course they are. That, you see, is precisely the point. What I was
trying to say is that the notion of 'Peak Oil' is being specifically marketed
to the anti-war crowd -- because, as we all know, the pro-war crowd doesn't
need to be fed any additional justifications for going to war; any of the
old lies will do just fine. And I never said that the necessity of war was
being overtly sold. What I said, if I remember correctly, is that it is
being sold with a wink and a nudge.
The point that I was trying to make is that it would be difficult to imagine
a better way to implicitly sell the necessity of war, even while appearing
to stake out a position against war, than through the promotion of the concept
of 'Peak Oil.' After September 11, 2001, someone famously said that if Osama
bin Laden didn't exist, the US would have had to invent him. I think the
same could be said for 'Peak Oil.'
I also need to mention here that those who are selling 'Peak Oil' hysteria
aren't offering much in the way of alternatives, or solutions. Ruppert,
for example, has stated flatly that "there is no effective replacement
for what hydrocarbon energy provides today." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html)
The message is quite clear: "we're running out of oil soon; there is
no alternative; we're all screwed." And this isn't, mind you, just
an energy problem; as Ruppert has correctly noted, "Almost every current
human endeavor from transportation, to manufacturing, to plastics, and especially
food production is inextricably intertwined with oil and natural gas supplies."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)
If we run out of oil, in other words, our entire way of life will come crashing
down. One of Ruppert's "unimpeachable sources," Colin Campbell,
describes an apocalyptic future, just around the corner, that will be characterized
by "war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction
of homo sapiens." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)
My question is: if Ruppert is not selling the necessity of war, then exactly
what is the message that he is sending to readers with such doomsday forecasts?
At the end of a recent posting, Ruppert quotes dialogue from the 1975 Sidney
Pollack film, Three Days of the Condor: (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html)
Higgins: ...It's simple economics. Today it's oil,
right? In 10 or 15 years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now
what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Turner: Ask them.
Higgins: Not now - then. Ask them when they're running
out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask
them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known
hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want
us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them.
The message there seems pretty clear: once the people understand
what is at stake, they will support whatever is deemed necessary to secure
the world's oil supplies. And what is it that Ruppert is accomplishing with
his persistent 'Peak Oil' postings? He is helping his readers to understand
what is allegedly at stake.
Elsewhere on his site, Ruppert warns that "Different regions of the
world peak in oil production at different times ... the OPEC nations of
the Middle East peak last. Within a few years, they -- or whoever controls
them -- will be in effective control of the world economy, and, in essence,
of human civilization as a whole." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)
Within a few years, the Middle East will be in control of all of human civilization?!
Try as I might, I can't imagine any claim that would more effectively rally
support for a U.S. takeover of the Middle East. The effect of such outlandish
claims is to cast the present war as a war of necessity. Indeed, a BBC report
posted on Ruppert's site explicitly endorses that notion: "It's not
greed that's driving big oil companies - it's survival." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040403_oil_war_bbc.html)
On the very day that Ruppert's challenge arrived, I received another e-mail,
from someone I previously identified - erroneously, it would appear - as
a "prominent critic" of Michael Ruppert. In further correspondence,
the writer, Jeff Strahl, explained that he is (a) not a
critic of Ruppert in general, but rather a critic only of Ruppert's stance
on certain aspects of the 9-11 story, and (b) not all that prominent. This
is what Mr. Strahl had to say:
"I'm a participant in a relatively new website (http://911research.wtc7.net),
which has done lots of work regarding the WTC and Pentagon side of the
9/11 events, especially the physical evidence which reveals
the official story as a complete hoax. Under "talks"
you'll find a slide show I've done (and will do again) in public on the
Pentagon aspects. This is all simply to let you know I'm far from an apologist
for the status quo. Nor am I an apologist for Mike Ruppert, with whom
in fact I got into a donnybrook of a fight on public email lists over
his denial of the relevancy of physical evidence and the fact that an
article full of disinformation about the WTC collapse, written 9/13/01,
was still on his website, unedited or corrected, two years later. He finally
gave in and printed a (sort of) retraction.
That said, I have to take issue with your stance re Peak
Oil, something you say you wish were true, but deny, not on the basis
of any information, but on the basis that you seem to think it's too good
to be true, and that it's all info presented by Ruppert, which you thus
suspect since you suspect Ruppert. Matter of fact, Peak Oil was predicted
by an oil geologist, King Hubbert, way back in the mid '60s, before Ruppert
was even in college. It's been pursued since then by lots of people in
the science know-how, including Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Richard Heinberg,
Colin Campbell and Kenneth Deffeyes. The information is quite clear, global
oil production has either peaked in the last couple of years or will do
so in the next couple, as Hubbert predicted decades ago (He predicted
Peak Oil in the US as happening in the early '70s, was laughed at, but
his prediction came true right on schedule). The science here is quite
hard, facts are available from lots of sources. Perhaps Hubbert was part
of a long-planned disinfo campaign that was planned way back in the '60s,
and all the others are part of that plot. I find it hard to believe that,
and I am quite a skeptic."
As for the relevancy of physical evidence, it would appear
that that is another bone that I have to pick with Mr. Ruppert. But I will
save that for another time. For now, the issue is 'Peak Oil' (which, as
you can see, I am continuing to enclose in quotation marks, which is, as
regular readers know, how I identify things that don't actually exist).
For the record, I never said that Michael Ruppert was the only one presenting
information about 'Peak Oil.' I said that he was the most prominent of those
promoting the idea. I also never implied that Ruppert came up with the idea
on his own. I am aware that the theory has a history. The issue here, however,
is the sudden prominence that 'Peak Oil' has attained.
Lastly, let me say that, unlike you, Jeff, I am enough of a skeptic to believe
that an ambitious, well-orchestrated disinformation campaign, possibly spanning
generations, should never arbitrarily be ruled out. I am also enough of
a skeptic to suspect that when a topic I have covered generates the volume
of e-mail that my 'Peak Oil' musings have generated, then I must have managed
to step into a pretty big pile of shit. What I did not realize, until I
decided to take Mr. Ruppert's advice and "do some homework," was
that it was a much bigger pile than I could have imagined.
I read through some, but certainly not all, of the alleged
evidence that Ruppert has brought to the table concerning 'Peak Oil.' Since
I have no interest in financially supporting his cause, I am not a paid
subscriber and can therefore not access the 'members only' postings. But
I doubt that I am missing much. The postings that I did read tended to be
extremely redundant and, therefore, a little on the boring side.
Ruppert's arguments range from the vaguely compelling to the downright bizarre.
One argument that pops up repeatedly is exemplified by this Ruppert-penned
line: "One of the biggest signs of the reality of Peak Oil over the
last two decades has been a continual pattern of merger-acquisition-downsizing
throughout the industry."
Really? And is that pattern somehow unique to the petroleum industry? Or
is it a pattern that has been followed by just about every major industry?
Is the consolidation of the supermarket industry a sign of the reality of
Peak Groceries? And with consolidation of the media industry, should we
be concerned about Peak News? Or should we, perhaps, recognize that a pattern
of monopoly control - characterized by mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing
- represents nothing more than business as usual throughout the corporate
world?
Another telling sign of 'Peak Oil,' according to Ruppert and Co., is sudden
price hikes on gas and oil. Of course, that would be a somewhat more compelling
argument if the oil cartels did not have a decades-long history of constantly
feigning shortages to foist sudden price increases on consumers (usually
just before peak travel periods). Contrary to the argument that appears
on Ruppert's site, it is not need that is driving the oil industry, it is
greed.
In what is undoubtedly the most bizarre posting that Ruppert offers in support
of his theory, he ponders whether dialogue from an obscure 1965 television
series indicates that the CIA knew as far back as the 1960s about the coming
onset of 'Peak Oil.' (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/042003_secret_agent_man.html)
Even if that little factoid came from a more, uhmm, credible source, what
would the significance be? Hasn't the conventional wisdom been, for many
decades, that oil is a 'fossil fuel,' and therefore a finite, non-renewable
resource? Since when has it been an intelligence community secret that a
finite resource will someday run out?
A few readers raised that very issue in questioning my recent 'Peak Oil'
rants. "Even if we are not now in the era of Peak Oil," the argument
generally goes, "then surely we will be soon. After all, it is inevitable."
And conventional wisdom dictates that it is, indeed, inevitable. But if
this website has one overriding purpose, it is to question conventional
wisdom whenever possible.
There is no shortage of authoritatively stated figures on the From the Wilderness
website: billions of barrels of oil discovered to date; billions of barrels
of oil produced to date; billions of barrels of oil in known reserves; billions
of barrels of oil consumed annually. Yadda, yadda, yadda. My favorite figure
is the one labeled, in one posting, "Yet-to-Find." That figure,
150 billion barrels (a relative pittance), is supposed to represent the
precise volume of conventional oil in all the unknown number of oil fields
of unknown size that haven't been discovered yet. Ruppert himself has written,
with a cocksure swagger, that "there are no more significant quantities
of oil to be discovered anywhere ..."(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html)
A rather bold statement, to say the least, considering that it would seem
to be impossible for a mere mortal to know such a thing.
Ruppert's figures certainly paint a scary picture: rapid oil consumption
+ diminishing oil reserves + no new discoveries = no more oil. And sooner,
rather than later. But is the 'Peak Oil' argument really valid? It seems
logical -- a non-renewable resource consumed with a vengeance obviously
can't last for long. The only flaw in the argument, I suppose, would be
if oil wasn't really a 'fossil fuel,' and if it wasn't really a non-renewable
resource.
"Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil
is finite, and that it was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface
in a process that took millions of years." So said the Wall Street
Journal in April 1999 (Christopher Cooper "Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana
Prods Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning," Wall Street Journal, April
16, 1999). It therefore logically follows that conventional wisdom also
says that oil will reach a production peak, and then ultimately run out.
(http://www.oralchelation.com/faq/wsj4.htm)
As I said a few paragraphs ago, the purpose of this website
is to question conventional wisdom -- by acquainting readers with stories
that the media overlook, and with viewpoints that are not allowed in the
mainstream. It was my understanding that From the Wilderness, and other
'alternative' websites, had a similar goal.
But is 'Peak Oil' really some suppressed, taboo topic? If it is, then why,
as I sit here typing this, with today's (March 7, 2004) edition of the Los
Angeles Times atop my desk, are the words "Running Out of Oil -- and
Time" staring me in the face from the front page of the widely read
Sunday Opinion section? The lengthy piece, penned by Paul Roberts,
is replete with dire warnings of the coming crisis. Save for the fact that
the words 'Peak Oil' are not routinely capitalized, it could easily pass
for a From the Wilderness posting.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-roberts7mar07,1,107339.story)
The Times also informed readers that Roberts has a new book due out in May,
entitled The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Scary
stuff. Beating Robert's book to the stores will be Colin Campbell's
The Coming Oil Crisis, due in April. Both titles will have to compete
for shelf space with titles such as Richard Heinberg's
The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies,
published April of last year; David Goodstein's Out
of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil, which just hit the shelves last
month; and Kenneth Deffeyes' Hubbert's Peak: The Impending
World Oil Shortage, published October 2001. The field is getting a
bit crowded, but sales over at Amazon.com remain strong for most of the
contenders.
The wholesale promotion of 'Peak Oil' seems to have taken off immediately
after the September 11, 2001 'terrorist' attacks, and it is now really starting
to pick up some steam.
I guess the cat is pretty much out of the bag on this one. Everyone can
cancel their subscriptions to From the Wilderness and pocket the $35 a year,
since you can read the very same bullshit for free in the pages of the Los
Angeles Times.
Interestingly enough, there is another story about oil that, unlike the
'Peak Oil' story, actually has been suppressed. It is a story that very
few, if any, of my readers, or of Michael Ruppert's readers, are likely
aware of. But before we get to that story, let's first briefly review what
we all 'know' about oil.
As anyone who stayed awake during elementary school science class knows,
oil comes from dinosaurs. I remember as a kid (calm down, folks; there will
be no Brady Bunch references this week) seeing some kind of 'public service'
spot explaining how dinosaurs "gave their all" so that we could
one day have oil. It seemed a reasonable enough idea at the time -- from
the perspective of an eight-year-old. But if, as an adult, you really stop
to give it some thought, doesn't the idea seem a little, uhmm ... what's
the word I'm looking for here? ... oh yeah, I remember now ... preposterous?
How could dinosaurs have possibly created the planet's vast oil fields?
Did millions, or even billions, of them die at the very same time and at
the very same place? Were there dinosaur Jonestowns on a grand scale occurring
at locations all across the planet? And how did they all get buried so quickly?
Because if they weren't buried right away, wouldn't they have just decomposed
and/or been consumed by scavengers? And how much oil can you really squeeze
from a pile of parched dinosaur skeletons?
Maybe there was some type of cataclysmic event that caused the sudden extinction
of the dinosaurs and also buried them -- like the impact of an asteroid
or a comet. But even so, you wouldn't think that all the dinosaurs would
have been huddled together waiting to become oil fields. And besides, scientists
are now backing away from the mass extinction theory (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-extinction6mar06,1,3634810.story).
The Wall Street Journal article previously cited noted that it "would
take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs to account for the estimated 660
billion barrels of oil in the [Middle East]." I don't know what the
precise dinosaur-carcass-to-barrel-of-oil conversion rate is, but it does
seem like it would take a hell of a lot of dead dinosaurs. Even if we generously
allow that a single dinosaur could yield 5 barrels of oil (an absurd notion,
but let's play along for now), more than 130 billion dinosaurs would have
had to be simultaneously entombed in just one small region of the world.
But were there really hundreds of billions of dinosaurs roaming the earth?
If so, then one wonders why there is all this talk now of overpopulation
and scarce resources, when all we are currently dealing with is a few billion
humans populating the same earth.
And why the Middle East? Was that region some kind of Mecca for dinosaurs?
Was it the climate, or the lack of water and vegetation, that drew them
there? Of course, the region could have been much different in prehistoric
times. Maybe it was like the Great Valley in the Land Before Time movies.
Or maybe the dinosaurs had to cross the Middle East to get to the Great
Valley, but they never made it, because they got bogged down in the desert
and ultimately became (through, I'm guessing here, some alchemical process)
cans of 10W-40 motor oil.
Another version of the 'fossil fuel' story holds that microscopic animal
carcasses and other biological matter gathered on the world's sea floors,
with that organic matter then being covered over with sediment over the
course of millions of years. You would think, however, that any biological
matter would decompose long before being covered over by sediment. But I
guess not. And I guess there were no bottom-feeders in those days to clear
the ocean floors of organic debris. Fair enough. But I still don't understand
how those massive piles of biological debris, some consisting of hundreds
of billions of tons of matter, could have just suddenly appeared, so that
they could then sit, undisturbed, for millions of years as they were covered
over with sediment. I can understand how biological detritus could accumulate
over time, mixed in with the sediment, but that wouldn't really create the
conditions for the generation of vast reservoirs of crude oil. So I guess
I must be missing something here.
The notion that oil is a 'fossil fuel' was first proposed by Russian scholar
Mikhailo Lomonosov in 1757. Lomonosov's rudimentary hypothesis, based on
the limited base of scientific knowledge that existed at the time, and on
his own simple observations, was that "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."
Two and a half centuries later, Lomonosov's theory remains as it was in
1757 -- an unproved, and almost entirely speculative, hypothesis. Returning
once again to the Wall Street Journal, we find that, "Although the
world has been drilling for oil for generations, little is known about the
nature of the resource or the underground activities that led to its creation."
A paragraph in the Encyclopedia Britannica concerning the origins of oil
ends thusly: "In spite of the great amount of scientific research ...
there remain many unresolved questions regarding its origins."
Does that not seem a little odd? We are talking here, after all, about a
resource that, by all accounts, plays a crucial role in a vast array of
human endeavors (by one published account, petroleum is a raw ingredient
in some 70,000 manufactured products, including medicines, synthetic fabrics,
fertilizers, paints and varnishes, acrylics, plastics, and cosmetics). By
many accounts, the very survival of the human race is entirely dependent
on the availability of petroleum. And yet we know almost nothing about this
most life-sustaining of the earth's resources. And even though, by some
shrill accounts, the well is about to run dry, no one seems to be overly
concerned with understanding the nature and origins of so-called 'fossil
fuels.' We are, rather, content with continuing to embrace an unproved 18th
century theory that, if subjected to any sort of logical analysis, seems
ludicrous.
On September 26, 1995, the New York Times
ran an article headlined "Geochemist Says Oil Fields May Be Refilled
Naturally." Penned by Malcolm W. Browne, the piece appeared on page
C1.
" Could it be that many of the world's oil fields are
refilling themselves at nearly the same rate they are being drained by
an energy hungry world? A geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
in Massachusetts ... Dr. Jean K. Whelan ... infers that oil is moving
in quite rapid spurts from great depths to reservoirs closer to the surface.
Skeptics of Dr. Whelan's hypothesis ... say her explanation remains to
be proved ...
Discovered in 1972, an oil reservoir some 6,000 feet beneath Eugene Island
330 [not actually an island, but a patch of sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico]
is one of the world's most productive oil sources ... Eugene Island 330
is remarkable for another reason: it's estimated reserves have declined
much less than experts had predicted on the basis of its production rate.
"It could be," Dr. Whelan said, "that at some sites, particularly
where there is a lot of faulting in the rock, a reservoir from which oil
is being pumped might be a steady-state system -- one that is replenished
by deeper reserves as fast as oil is pumped out" ...
The discovery that oil seepage is continuous and extensive from many ocean
vents lying above fault zones has convinced many scientists that oil is
making its way up through the faults from much deeper deposits ... A recent
report from the Department of Energy Task Force on Strategic Energy Research
and Development concluded from the Woods Hole project that "there
new data and interpretations strongly suggest that the oil and gas in
the Eugene Island field could be treated as a steady-state rather than
a fixed resource." The report added, "Preliminary analysis also
suggest that similar phenomena may be taking place in other producing
areas, including the deep-water Gulf of Mexico and the Alaskan North Slope"
... There is much evidence that deep reserves of hydrocarbon fuels remain
to be tapped."
This compelling article raised a number of questions, including:
how did all those piles of dinosaur carcasses end up thousands of feet beneath
the earth's surface? How do finite reservoirs of dinosaur goo become "steady-state"
resources? And how does the fossil fuel theory explain the continuous, spontaneous
venting of gas and oil?
The Eugene Island story was revisited by the media three-and-a-half years
later, by the Wall Street Journal (Christopher Cooper "Odd Reservoir
Off Louisiana Prods Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning," Wall
Street Journal, April 16, 1999). (http://www.oralchelation.com/faq/wsj4.htm)
Something mysterious is going on at Eugene
Island 330.
"Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the
coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a
while. it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery,
Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989,
production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes
reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000
barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million
barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field
say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different
from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island
is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles
below the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility
that oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be.
...
Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution in Massachusetts ... says, "I believe there is a huge
system of oil just migrating" deep underground. ... About 80 miles
off the Louisiana coast, the underwater landscape surrounding Eugene Island
is otherworldly, cut with deep fissures and faults that spontaneously
belch gas and oil."
So now we are talking about a huge system of migrating dinosaur
goo that is miles beneath the Earth's surface! Those dinosaurs were rather
crafty, weren't they? Exactly three years later (to the day), the media
once again paid a visit to the Gulf of Mexico. This time, it was Newsday
that filed the report (Robert Cooke "Oil Field's Free Refill,"
Newsday, April 19, 2002). (http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pkt/2002II/msg00071.html)
"Deep underwater, and deeper underground, scientists
see surprising hints that gas and oil deposits can be replenished, filling
up again, sometimes rapidly.
Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf
of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum
surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean that current
estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low. ..
. chemical oceanographer Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt [said] "They
are refilling as we speak. But whether this is a worldwide phenomenon,
we don't know" ...
Kennicutt, a faculty member at Texas A&M University, said it is now
clear that gas and oil are coming into the known reservoirs very rapidly
in terms of geologic time. The inflow of new gas, and some oil, has been
detectable in as little as three to 10 years. In the past, it was not
suspected that oil fields can refill because it was assumed that oil was
formed in place, or nearby, rather than far below.
According to marine geologist Harry Roberts, at Louisiana State University
... "You have a very leaky fault system that does allow it (petroleum)
to migrate in. It's directly connected to an oil and gas generating system
at great depth." ...
"There already appears to be a large body of evidence consistent
with ... oil and gas generation and migration on very short time scales
in many areas globally" [Jean Whelan] wrote in the journal Sea Technology
...
Analysis of the ancient oil that seems to be coming up from deep below
in the Gulf of Mexico suggests that the flow of new oil "is coming
from deeper, hotter [sediment] formations" and is not simply a lateral
inflow from the old deposits that surround existing oil fields, [Whelan]
said."
Now I'm really starting to get confused. Can someone please
walk me through this? What exactly is an "oil and gas generating system"?
And how does such a system generate oil "on very short time scales"?
Is someone down there right now, even as I type these words, forklifting
dinosaur carcasses into some gigantic cauldron to cook up a fresh batch
of oil?
Desperate for answers to such perplexing questions, I turned for advice
to Mr. Peak Oil himself, Michael Ruppert, and this is what I found: "oil
... is the result of climactic conditions that have existed at only one
time in the earth's 4.5 billion year history." I'm guessing that that
"one time" - that one golden window of opportunity to get just
the right mix of dinosaur stew - isn't the present time, so it doesn't seem
quite right, to me at least, that oil is being generated right now.
In June 2003, Geotimes paid a visit to the Gulf of Mexico ("Raining
Hydrocarbons in the Gulf"), and the story grew yet more compelling.
http://www.geotimes.org/june03/NN_gulf.html
"Below the Gulf of Mexico, hydrocarbons flow upward
through an intricate network of conduits and reservoirs ... and this is
all happening now, not millions and millions of years ago, says Larry
Cathles, a chemical geologist at Cornell University. "We're dealing
with this giant flow-through system where the hydrocarbons are generating
now, moving through the overlying strata now, building the reservoirs
now and spilling out into the ocean now," Cathles says. ...
Cathles and his team estimate that in a study area of about
9,600 square miles off the coast of Louisiana [including Eugene Island
330], source rocks a dozen kilometers [roughly seven miles] down have
generated as much as 184 billion tons of oil and gas -- about 1,000 billion
barrels of oil and gas equivalent. "That's 30 percent more than we
humans have consumed over the entire petroleum era," Cathles say.
"And that's just this one little postage stamp area; if this is going
on worldwide, then there's a lot of hydrocarbons venting out."
Dry oil wells spontaneously refilling? Oil generation and migration systems?
Massive oil reserves miles beneath the earth's surface? Spontaneous venting
of enormous volumes of gas and oil? (Roberts noted that - and this isn't
really going to please the environmentalists, but I'm just reporting the
facts, ma'am - "natural seepage" in areas like the Gulf of Mexico
"far exceeds anything that gets spilled" by the oil industry.
And those natural emissions have been pumped into our oceans since long
before there was an oil industry.)
The all too obvious question here is: how is any of that explained by a
theory that holds that oil and gas are 'fossil fuels' created in finite
quantities through a unique geological process that occurred millions of
years ago?
Why do we insist on retaining an antiquated theory that is so obviously
contradicted by readily observable phenomena? Is the advancement of the
sciences not based on formulating a hypothesis, and then testing that hypothesis?
And if the hypothesis fails to account for the available data, is it not
customary to either modify that hypothesis or formulate a new hypothesis
-- rather than, say, clinging to the same discredited hypothesis for 250
years?
In August 2002, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
published a study authored by J.F. Kenney, V.A. Kutchenov, N.A. Bendeliani
and V.A. Alekseev. The authors argued, quite compellingly, that oil is not
created from organic compounds at the temperatures and pressures found close
to the surface of the earth, but rather is created from inorganic compounds
at the extreme temperatures and pressures present only near the core of
the earth (http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm).
As Geotimes noted ("Inorganic Origin of Oil: Much Ado About Nothing?,"
Geotimes, November 2002), the journal "published the paper at the request
of Academy member Howard Reiss, a chemical physicist at the University of
California at Los Angeles. As per the PNAS guidelines for members communicating
papers, Reiss obtained reviews of the paper from at least two referees from
different institutions (not affiliated with the authors) and shepherded
the report through revisions." (http://www.geotimes.org/nov02/NN_oil.html)
I mention that because I happened to read something that Michael Ruppert
wrote recently that seems pertinent: "In real life, it is called 'the
proof is in the pudding.' In scientific circles, it is called peer review,
and it usually involves having your research published in a peer-reviewed
journal. It is an often-frustrating process, but peer-reviewed articles
ensure the validity of science." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html)
It would seem then that we can safely conclude that what Kenney, et. al.
have presented is valid science, since it definitely was published in a
peer-reviewed journal. And what that valid science says, quite clearly,
is that petroleum is not by any stretch of the imagination a finite resource,
or a 'fossil fuel,' but is in fact a resource that is continuously generated
by natural processes deep within the planet.
Geotimes also noted that the research paper "examined thermodynamic
arguments that say methane is the only organic hydrocarbon to exist within
Earth's crust." Indeed, utilizing the laws of modern thermodynamics,
the authors constructed a mathematical model that proves that oil can not
form under the conditions dictated by the 'fossil fuel' theory.
I mention that because of something else I read on Ruppert's site. Listed
as #5 of "Nine Critical Questions to Ask About Alternative Energy"
is: "Most of the other questions in this list can be tied up into this
one question: does the invention defy the Laws of Thermodynamics? If the
answer is yes, then something is wrong." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html)
Well then, Mr. Ruppert, I have some very bad news for you, because something
definitely is wrong -- with your 'Peak Oil' theory. Because here we have
a published study, subjected to peer review (thus assuring the "validity"
of the study), that demonstrates, with mathematical certainty, that it is
actually the 'fossil fuel' theory that defies the laws of thermodynamics.
It appears then that if we follow Ruppert's Laws, we have to rule out fossil
fuels as a viable alternative to petroleum.
Reaction to the publication of the Kenney study was swift. First to weigh
in was Nature
(Tom Clarke "Fossil Fuels Without the Fossils: Petroleum: Animal,
Vegetable or Mineral?," Nature News Service, August 14, 2002).
"Petroleum - the archetypal fossil fuel - couldn't
have formed from the remains of dead animals and plants, claim US and
Russian researchers. They argue that petroleum originated from minerals
at extreme temperatures and pressures. Other geochemists say that the
work resurrects a scientific debate that is almost a fossil itself, and
criticize the team's conclusions.
The team, led by J.F. Kenney of the Gas Resources Corporation
in Houston, Texas, mimicked conditions more than 100 kilometres below
the earth's surface by heating marble, iron oxide and water to around
1500° C and 50,000 times atmospheric pressure.
They produced traces of methane, the main constituent of
natural gas, and octane, the hydrocarbon molecule that makes petrol. A
mathematical model of the process suggests that, apart from methane, none
of the ingredients of petroleum could form at depths less than 100 kilometres."
The geochemist community, and the petroleum industry, were
both suitably outraged by the publication of the study. The usual parade
of experts was trotted out, of course, but a funny thing happened: as much
as they obviously wanted to, those experts were unable to deny the validity
of the research. So they resorted to a very unusual tactic: they reluctantly
acknowledged that oil can indeed be created from minerals, but they insisted
that that inconvenient fact really has nothing to do with the oil that we
use.
Showing that oil can also form without a biological origin does not disprove
[the 'fossil fuel'] hypothesis. "It doesn't discredit anything,"
said a geochemist who asked not to be named. ... "
No one disputes that hydrocarbons can form this way,"
says Mark McCaffrey, a geochemist with Oil Tracers LLC, a petroleum-prospecting
consultancy in Dallas, Texas. A tiny percentage of natural oil deposits
are known to be non-biological, but this doesn't mean that petrol isn't
a fossil fuel, he says. "
I don't know anyone in the petroleum community who really
takes this prospect seriously," says Walter Michaelis, a geochemist
at the University of Hamburg in Germany. "
So I guess the geochemist community is a petulant lot. They
did "concede," however, that oil "that forms inorganically
at the high temperatures and massive pressures close to the Earth's mantle
layer could be forced upwards towards the surface by water, which is denser
than oil. It can then be trapped by sedimentary rocks that are impermeable
to oil."
What they were acknowledging, lest anyone misunderstand,
is that the oil that we pump out of reservoirs near the surface
of the earth, and the oil that is spontaneously and continuously generated
deep within the earth, could very well be the same oil. But even
so, they insist, that is certainly no reason to abandon, or even question,
our perfectly ridiculous 'fossil fuel' theory.
Coverage by New Scientist
of the 'controversial' journal publication largely mirrored the coverage
by Nature (Jeff Hecht "You Can Squeeze Oil Out of a Stone,"
New Scientist, August 17, 2002).
"Oil doesn't come from dead plants and animals, but
from plain old rock, a controversial new study claims.
The heat and pressure a hundred kilometres underground produces hydrocarbons
from inorganic carbon and water, says J.F. Kenney, who runs the Gas Resources
Corporation, an oil exploration firm in Houston. He and three Russian
colleagues believe all our oil is made this way, and untapped supplies
are there for the taking.
Petroleum geologists already accept that some oil forms like this. "Nobody
ever argued that there are no inorganic sources," says Mike Lewan
of the US Geological Survey. But they take strong issue with Kenney's
claim that petroleum can't form from organic matter in shallow rocks."
Geotimes chimed in as well, quoting Scott Imbus,
an organic geochemist for Chevron Texaco Corp., who explained that the Kenney
research is "an excellent and rigorous treatment of the theoretical
and experimental aspects for abiotic hydrocarbon formation deep in the Earth.
Unfortunately, it has little or nothing to do with the origins of commercial
fossil fuel deposits."
What we have here, quite clearly, is a situation wherein the West's leading
geochemists (read: shills for the petroleum industry) cannot impugn the
validity of Kenney's unassailable mathematical model, and so they have,
remarkably enough, adopted the unusual strategy of claiming that there is
actually more than one way to produce oil. It can be created under extremely
high temperatures and pressures, or it can be created under relatively low
temperatures and pressures. It can be created organically, or it can be
created inorganically. It can be created deep within the Earth, or it can
be created near the surface of the Earth. You can make it with some rocks.
Or you can make it in a box. You can make it here or there. You can make
it anywhere.
While obviously an absurdly desperate attempt to salvage the 'fossil fuel'
theory, the arguments being offered by the geochemist community actually
serve to further undermine the notion that oil is an irreplaceable 'fossil
fuel.' For if we are now to believe that petroleum can be created under
a wide range of conditions (a temperature range, for example, of 75°
C to 1500° C), does that not cast serious doubt on the claim that conditions
favored the creation of oil just "one time in the earth's 4.5 billion
year history"?
A more accurate review of Kenney's work appeared in The
Economist ("The Argument Needs Oiling," The Economist,
August 15, 2002).
" Millions of years ago, tiny animals and plants died.
They settled at the bottom of the oceans. Over time, they were crushed
beneath layers of sediment that built up above them and eventually turned
into rock. The organic matter, now trapped hundreds of metres below the
surface, started to change. Under the action of gentle heat and pressure,
and in the absence of air, the biological debris turned into oil and gas.
Or so the story goes.
In 1951, however, a group of Soviet scientists led by Nikolai Kudryavtsev
claimed that this theory of oil production was fiction. They suggested
that hydrocarbons, the principal molecular constituents of oil, are generated
deep within the earth from inorganic materials. Few people outside Russia
listened. But one who did was J. F. Kenney, an American who today works
for the Russian Academy of Sciences and is also chief executive of Gas
Resources Corporation in Houston, Texas. He says it is nonsense to believe
that oil derives from "squashed fish and putrefied cabbages."
This is a brave claim to make when the overwhelming majority of petroleum
geologists subscribe to the biological theory of origin. But Dr Kenney
has evidence to support his argument.
In this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he claims
to establish that it is energetically impossible for alkanes, one of the
main types of hydrocarbon molecule in crude oil, to evolve from biological
precursors at the depths where reservoirs have typically been found and
plundered. He has developed a mathematical model incorporating quantum
mechanics, statistics and thermodynamics which predicts the behaviour
of a hydrocarbon system. The complex mixture of straight-chain and branched
alkane molecules found in crude oil could, according to his calculations,
have come into existence only at extremely high temperatures and pressures-far
higher than those found in the earth's crust, where the orthodox theory
claims they are formed.
To back up this idea, he has shown that a cocktail of alkanes (methane,
hexane, octane and so on) similar to that in natural oil is produced when
a mixture of calcium carbonate, water and iron oxide is heated to 1,500°
C and crushed with the weight of 50,000 atmospheres. This experiment reproduces
the conditions in the earth's upper mantle, 100 km below the surface,
and so suggests that oil could be produced there from completely inorganic
sources."
Kenney's theories, when discussed at all, are universally
described as "new," "radical," and "controversial."
In truth, however, Kenney's ideas are not new, nor original, nor radical.
Though no one other than Kenney himself seems to want to talk about it,
the arguments that he presented in the PNAS study are really just the tip
of a very large iceberg of suppressed scientific research.
This story really begins in 1946, just after the close of World War II,
which had illustrated quite effectively that oil was integral to waging
modern, mechanized warfare. Stalin, recognizing the importance of oil, and
recognizing also that the Soviet Union would have to be self sufficient,
launched a massive scientific undertaking that has been compared, in its
scale, to the Manhattan Project. The goal of the Soviet project was to study
every aspect of petroleum, including how it is created, how reserves are
generated, and how to best pursue petroleum exploration and extraction.
The challenge was taken up by a wide range of scientific disciplines, with
hundreds of the top professionals in their fields contributing to the body
of scientific research. By 1951, what has been called the Modern Russian-Ukrainian
Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was born. A healthy amount of
scientific debate followed for the next couple of decades, during which
time the theory, initially formulated by geologists, based on observational
data, was validated through the rigorous quantitative work of chemists,
physicists and thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory
has been accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific
community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally thousands
of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.
For over fifty years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have added to this
body of research and refined the Russian-Ukrainian theories. And for over
fifty years, not a word of it has been published in the English language
(except for a fairly recent, bastardized version published by astronomer
Thomas Gold, who somehow forgot to credit the hundreds of scientists whose
research he stole and then misrepresented).
This is not, by the way, just a theoretical model that the Russians and
Ukrainians have established; the theories were put to practical use, resulting
in the transformation of the Soviet Union - once regarded as having limited
prospects, at best, for successful petroleum exploration - into a world-class
petroleum producing, and exporting, nation.
J.F. Kenney spent some 15 years studying under some of the Russian and Ukrainian
scientists who were key contributors to the modern petroleum theory. When
Kenney speaks about petroleum origins, he is not speaking as some renegade
scientist with a radical new theory; he is speaking to give voice to an
entire community of scientists whose work has never been acknowledged in
the West. Kenney writes passionately about that neglected body of research:
"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)
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"
( http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm
).
It appears that, unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually
been, for quite some time now, two competing theories concerning the origins
of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is an organic 'fossil fuel' deposited
in finite quantities near the planet's surface. The other theory claims
that oil is continuously generated by natural processes in the Earth's magma.
One theory is backed by a massive body of research representing fifty years
of intense scientific inquiry. The other theory is an unproven relic of
the eighteenth century. One theory anticipates deep oil reserves, refillable
oil fields, migratory oil systems, deep sources of generation, and the spontaneous
venting of gas and oil. The other theory has a difficult time explaining
any such documented phenomena.
So which theory have we in the West, in our infinite wisdom, chosen to embrace?
Why, the fundamentally absurd 'Fossil Fuel' theory, of course -- the same
theory that the 'Peak Oil' doomsday warnings are based on.
I am sorry to report here, by the way, that in doing my homework, I never
did come across any of that "hard science" documenting 'Peak Oil'
that Mr. Strahl referred to. All the 'Peak Oil' literature that I found,
on Ruppert's site and elsewhere, took for granted that petroleum is a non-renewable
'fossil fuel.' That theory is never questioned, nor is any effort made to
validate it. It is simply taken to be an established scientific fact, which
it quite obviously is not.
So what do Ruppert and his resident experts have to say about all of this?
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, identified as the "FTW Contributing Editor for
Energy," has written: "There is some speculation that oil is abiotic
in origin -- generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead of
an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_oil_recession.html)
Here is a question that I have for both Mr. Ruppert and Mr. Pfeiffer: Do
you consider it honest, responsible journalism to dismiss a fifty year body
of multi-disciplinary scientific research, conducted by hundreds of the
world's most gifted scientists, as "some speculation"?
Another of FTW's prognosticators, Colin Campbell, is described by Ruppert
as "perhaps the world's foremost expert on oil." He was asked
by Ruppert, in an interview, "what would you say to the people who
insist that oil is created from magma ...?" Before we get to Campbell's
answer, we should first take note of the tone of Ruppert's question. It
is not really meant as a question at all, but rather as a statement, as
in "there is really nothing you can say that will satisfy these nutcases
who insist on bringing up these loony theories." (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)
Campbell's response to the question was an interesting one: "No one
in the industry gives the slightest credence to these theories." Why,
one wonders, did Mr. Campbell choose to answer the question on behalf of
the petroleum industry? And does it come as a surprise to anyone that the
petroleum industry doesn't want to acknowledge abiotic theories of petroleum
origins? Should we have instead expected something along these lines?:
"Hey, everybody ... uhhh ... you know how we always talked about oil
being a fossil fuel? And ... uhmm ... you know how the entire profit structure
of our little industry here is built upon the presumption that oil is a
non-renewable, and therefore very valuable, resource?
And remember all those times we talked about shortages so that we could
gouge you at the pumps? Well ... guess what, America? You've been Punk'd!"
For the sake of accuracy, I think we need to modify Mr. Campbell's response,
because it should probably read: no one in the petroleum industry will publicly
admit giving any credence to abiotic theories. But is there really any doubt
that those who own and control the oil industry are well aware of the true
origins of oil? How could they not be?
Surely there must be a reason why there appears to be so little interest
in understanding the nature and origins of such a valuable, and allegedly
vanishing, resource. And that reason can only be that the answers are already
known. The objective, of course, is to ensure that the rest of us don't
find those answers. Why else would we be encouraged, for decades, to cling
tenaciously to a scientific theory that can't begin to explain the available
scientific evidence? And why else would a half-century of research never
see the light of day in Western scientific and academic circles?
Maintaining the myth of scarcity, you see, is all important. Without it,
the house of cards comes tumbling down. And yet, even while striving to
preserve that myth, the petroleum industry will continue to provide the
oil and gas needed to maintain a modern industrial infrastructure, long
past the time when we should have run out of oil. And needless to say, the
petroleum industry will also continue to reap the enormous profits that
come with the myth of scarcity.
How will that difficult balancing act be performed? That is where, it appears,
the 'limited hangout' concerning abiotic oil will come into play.
Perhaps the most telling quote to emerge from all of this came from Roger
Sassen, identified as the deputy director of Resource Geosciences, a research
group out of Texas A&M University: "The potential that inorganic
hydrocarbons, especially methane and a few other gasses, might exist at
enormous depth in the crust is an idea that could use a little more discussion.
However, not from people who take theories to the point of absurdity. This
is an idea that needs to be looked into at some point as we start running
out of energy. But no one who is objective discusses the issue at this time."
The key point there (aside from Sassen's malicious characterization of Kenney)
is his assertion that no one is discussing abiotic oil at this time. And
why is that? Because, you see, we first have to go through the charade of
pretending that the world has just about run out of 'conventional' oil reserves,
thus justifying massive price hikes, which will further pad the already
obscenely high profits of the oil industry. Only then will it be fully acknowledged
that there is, you know, that 'other' oil.
"We seem to have plum run out of that fossil fuel that y'all liked
so much, but if you want us to, we could probably find you some mighty fine
inorganic stuff. You probably won't even notice the difference. The only
reason that we didn't mention it before is that - and may God strike me
dead if I'm lying - it is a lot more work for us to get to it. So after
we charged you up the wazoo for the 'last' of the 'conventional' oil, we're
now gonna have to charge you even more for this really 'special' oil. And
with any luck at all, none of you will catch on that it's really the same
oil."
And that, dear readers, is how I see this little game playing out. Will
you be playing along?
A few final comments are in order here about 'Peak Oil' and
the attacks of September 11, 2001, which Ruppert has repeatedly claimed
are closely linked. In a recent posting, he bemoaned the fact that activists
are willing to "Do anything but accept the obvious reality that for
the US government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attacks of 9/11,
something really, really bad must be going on." That something really,
really bad, of course, is 'Peak Oil.'
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html)
To demonstrate the dubious nature of that statement, all one need do is
make a couple of quick substitutions, so that it reads: "for the German
government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attack on the Reichstag,
something really, really bad must have been going on." Or, if you are
the type that bristles at comparisons of Bush to Hitler, try this one: "for
the US government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attack on the
USS Maine, something really, really bad must have been going on."
The reality is that the attacks of September 11, and the post-September
11 military ventures, cannot possibly be manifestations of 'Peak Oil' because
the entire concept of "Peak Oil' is meaningless if oil is not a finite
resource. I am not saying, however, that oil and gas were not key factors
behind the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The distinction
that I am making is that it is not about need (case in point: there is certainly
nothing in Haiti that we need). It is, as always, about greed.
Greed and control -- control of the output of oil fields that will continue
to yield oil long after reserves should have run dry.
One final note, this one directed at Michael Ruppert: I of course accept
your challenge to participate in a public debate. However, I fail to see
any benefit in limiting the audience of that debate to a "mutually
acceptable panel of judges." I suggest we make this a truly public
debate, available to anyone who wants to follow along. The debate, in other
words, has already begun. Consider this my opening argument.
By the way, this isn't about 'winning,' and it isn't about a 'purse.' It's
about the free and open exchange of ideas and information. It's about the
pursuit of the truth, wherever that path may lead. And it's about presenting
all the available information to readers, so that each of them can determine,
for themselves, where that truth lies. To demonstrate my commitment to those
goals, I will gladly post, exactly as it is received, any response/rebuttal
to this missive that you should feel inclined to send my way. I will leave
it to my readers to decide who 'wins' this debate. Will you be extending
the same courtesy to your readers?
* There is a close parallel here with the diamond industry. It is a relatively
open secret that the diamond market is an artificial one, created by an
illusion of scarcity actively cultivated by DeBeers, which has monopolized
the diamond industry for generations. As Ernest Oppenheimer of DeBeers said,
nearly a century ago, "Common sense tells us that the only way to increase
the value of diamonds is to make them scarce -- that is, reduce production."
And that is exactly what the company has done for decades now.
There are reportedly nearly one billion diamonds produced every year, and
that is only a fraction of what could be produced. Diamonds are not, conventional
wisdom to the contrary, a scarce resource, and they are therefore not intrinsically
valuable. Without the market manipulation, experts estimate that the true
value of diamonds would be roughly $30 per carat.
Interestingly enough, Soviet researchers have noted that diamonds are the
result of the same processes that create petroleum: "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." (Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, 1968)
So what we appear to have here are two resources, both of which are created
in abundance by natural geothermal processes, and both of which are marketed
as scarce and valuable commodities, creating two industries awash in obscene
profits.
Dave McGowan
Comments
From Harry Mason
orbitx@bigpond.com
3-5-5
I think this guy is a tad unfair to Thomas Gold (recently deceased) re Inorganic
Oil. Gold definitely does refer to thel Russian authors of Abiotic Oil theories.
Many of Gold's articles can be found on the web at http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/index.html
I had a long and fascinating e-mail correspondence with Tom Gold re the
Inorganic Oil thesis and related matters over the last few years. He always
credited previous workers and co-workers in the field.
Possibly a lack of translation from Russian to English led to fewer Soviet
researchers being credited than should have been ???
BUT Gold also credited early British researchers in this field who were
working on the subject from the turn of the Century - well before 1946 -
something this guy does not cover ..................
Thus theories of Abiogenic oil did not start exclusively in the Peoples
Republic of Stalin circa 1946.
BUT Soviet research certainly massively advanced the inorganic oil thesis
whilst Western science largely ignored it.
It is incorrect to state (see below) "It appears that, unbeknownst
to Westerners, there have actually been, for quite some time now, two competing
theories concerning the origins of petroleum." . Many western geo-scientists
are aware of the thesis - we were taught the basics at University College
London in 1965.
It is more correct to say the subject is not well funded in the West and
thus poorly disseminated in our scientific literature - largely due to deeply
instilled negative views in the western oil industry geo-scientific community
- probably created by Rockerfella Big Oil "peer" pressure.
The full text below re Michael Rupert and Peak Oil is worth reading.
Rupert's angle is obviously Rockerfella spin and largely bullshit.
Oil is in tight supply because of limited exploration expenditure AND similarly
low level expenditures on oil field and refinery development over the last
20 years - NOT because we have no more giant fields. But nonetheless it
IS in tight supply
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