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Forums - General - Fossils Not Necessary For Oil and Natural Gas

NJ5 on 13 September 2009
mrstickball said:
NJ5 said:
ManusJustus said:
NJ5 said:
I will read that later, but as for the hydrocarbons in Titan I thought those were methane, which is known to result from simply joining hydrogen and carbon.


Also... I thought I read somewhere that virtually all the oil that has been found contains biological signatures.

Natural gas and methane are the same thing (CH4).

I hadn't heard about biological signatures, do you have more information on that?

It has been a long time since I read about the "abiotic oil" theories, but I'll try to find some sources later on.

But think about it... if oil and natural gas were truly being formed abiotically in significant quantities, why are they harder and harder to find?

My thoughts would be that they aren't occuring naturally in significant quantities quickly. We're looking at processes that may take a long time to build up in sizable deposits.

As for why deposits are harder and harder to find - it's entirely dependant on the technology of finding deposits. Every year, we develop new technologies to extract deposits from areas that were initially impossible to drill in, or detect. Oil shale is a great example. America has billions of barrels in reserve of it, but doesn't choose to (or wants to) extract it due to economic and environmental reasons.

It's true that technology improves extraction, but oil discoveries and drilling are still much lower than consumption.

Oil shale hasn't been proven to be feasible in terms of oil extraction AFAIK. It can be extracted but not necessarily giving more energy than its extraction consumes.

 



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d21lewis on 13 September 2009
highwaystar101 said:
I want nuclear fusion... I think it deserves a lot more funding than it gets.

That's where I work now --at a nuclear power plant.  I agree with your post, too.  I had a lot of preconcieved notions about nuclear energy, but most of them have been dispelled.  It's the way of the future!



mrstickball on 13 September 2009
d21lewis said:
highwaystar101 said:
I want nuclear fusion... I think it deserves a lot more funding than it gets.

That's where I work now --at a nuclear power plant.  I agree with your post, too.  I had a lot of preconcieved notions about nuclear energy, but most of them have been dispelled.  It's the way of the future!

+1.

Nuclear is the wave of the non-renewable future. Far better, cheaper, and cleaner than alternatives. Lots of materials available for use, and when we get to commercially-feasible reactors, a few dozen tons can power the earth.

BTW, are you security at a reactor now, d21? Any cool stories for us? I know an engineer that works at a reactor in Ohio. Great stories.



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famousringo on 13 September 2009

I find this a little alarming, actually, because it suggests that the carbon released by harvesting and burning non-fossil hydrocarbons has never been in the biosphere before.

From the perspective of energy supply, this discovery might lead to new discoveries and lower costs, but I doubt that it would actually increase peak production. It'll probably just ease the decline in oil discoveries, like the past 50 years of technological improvements.

Whether oil creation is abiotic or not is largely irrelevant. It's a geological process whether it requires fossil matter or not, and as such it is measured in millions of years. Our consumption of hydrocarbons is measured in decades. The Earth can't possibly manufacture this stuff at a pace which meets our demands.



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NJ5 on 14 September 2009
famousringo said:
I find this a little alarming, actually, because it suggests that the carbon released by harvesting and burning non-fossil hydrocarbons has never been in the biosphere before.

(...)

I don't think it suggests that, in fact the article doesn't even talk about the source of carbon for this alleged process.

 



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famousringo on 14 September 2009
NJ5 said:
famousringo said:
I find this a little alarming, actually, because it suggests that the carbon released by harvesting and burning non-fossil hydrocarbons has never been in the biosphere before.

(...)

I don't think it suggests that, in fact the article doesn't even talk about the source of carbon for this alleged process.

 

From the article:

He adds that there is no way that fossil oil, with the help of gravity or other forces, could have seeped down to a depth of 10.5 kilometers in the state of Texas, for example, which is rich in oil deposits.

Sure sounds like he's saying this stuff has been trapped underground since before complex life on Earth to me. I don't think he's quite proved this yet, this is just his hypothesis and his recent research leaves his hypothesis plausible. But if he's right, I think it's cause for some concern.

I guess it's all just academic. Those hydrocarbons are going to get burned whether they're abiotic or not, and their carbon will be released into the biosphere whether it's a return trip or a new destination.



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