Abiotic oil

Walter

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The Russians base much of their oil exploration on the theory of abiotic oil. They are very successful at contuinually finding new oil deposits using this theory. This theory, if proven, would be a boon to our civilization. Imagine an endless supply of oil. We should work on cleaner and more efficient combustion to alleviate pollution caused by burning the oil. (CO2 is not a pollutant)
 

hermanntrude

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Jun 23, 2006
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Newfoundland!
I imagine you could prove or disprove this theory quite easily with a few scientific tests. living things have different ratios of isotopes to non-living things. At least that's what i thought
 

Walter

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http://canadafreepress.com/printpage.php

Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum


Oil is NOT a fossil fuel and AGW is non-science

By Online Monday, July 14, 2008


by Peter J. Morgan
We all grew up believing that oil is a fossil fuel, and just about every day this ‘fact’ is mentioned in newspapers and on TV. However, let us not forget what Lenin said – “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” It was in 1757 that the great Russian scholar Mikhailo V. Lomonosov enunciated the hypothesis that oil might originate from biological detritus. The scientists who first rejected Lomonsov’s hypothesis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were the famous German naturalist and geologist Alexander von Humboldt and the French chemist and thermodynamicist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, who together enunciated the proposition that oil is a primordial material erupted from great depth, and is unconnected with any biological matter near the surface of the Earth.
With the development of chemistry during the nineteenth century, and following particularly the enunciation of the second law of thermodynamics by Clausius in 1850, Lomonosov’s biological hypothesis came inevitably under attack. In science, a hypothesis is merely somebody’s attempt to explain something. It is merely that – an attempt. In the scientific method, a hypothesis is also an open invitation for somebody else to discredit it by using physical evidence to demonstrate that the hypothesis is flawed, or incorrect – that is how scientific knowledge is advanced. Einstein is reputed to have remarked that just one fact was all that was needed to invalidate his theory of relativity.
The great French chemist Marcellin Berthelot particularly scorned the hypothesis of a biological origin for petroleum. Berthelot first carried out experiments involving, among others, a series of what are now referred to as Kolbe reactions and demonstrated the generation of petroleum by dissolving steel in strong acid. He produced the suite of n-alkanes and made it plain that such were generated in total absence of any “biological” molecule or process. Berthelot’s investigations were later extended and refined by other scientists, including Biasson and Sokolov, all of whom observed similar phenomena and likewise concluded that petroleum was unconnected to biological matter.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev also examined and rejected Lomonosov’s hypothesis of a biological origin for petroleum. In contrast to Berthelot who had made no suggestion as to where or how petroleum might have come, Mendeleev stated clearly that petroleum is a primordial material which has erupted from great depth. With extraordinary perception, Mendeleev hypothesised the existence of geological structures which he called “deep faults,” and correctly identified such as the locus of weakness in the crust of the Earth via which petroleum would travel from the depths. After he made that hypothesis, Mendeleev was abusively criticised by the geologists of his time, for the notion of deep faults was then unknown. Today, of course, an understanding of plate tectonics would be unimaginable without recognition of deep faults.
Soon after the end of World War II, the Soviet dictator, Stalin, realized that the then Soviet Union needed its own substantial oil reserves and production system if it was ever again called upon to defend itself against an attacker such as Hitler’s Germany. In 1947, the Soviet Union had, as its petroleum ‘experts’ then estimated, very limited petroleum reserves, of which the largest were the oil fields in the region of the Abseron Peninsula, near the Caspian city of Baku in what is now the independent country of Azerbaijan. At that time, the oil fields near Baku were considered to be “depleting” and “nearing exhaustion.” During World War II, the Soviets had occupied the two northern provinces of Iran, but in 1946, they were forced out by the British. By 1947, the Soviets realised that the American, British, and French were not going to allow them to operate in the Middle East, nor in the petroleum producing areas of Africa, nor Indonesia, nor Burma, nor Malaysia, nor anywhere in the Far East, nor in Latin America. The government of the Soviet Union recognised then that new petroleum reserves would have to be discovered and developed within the U.S.S.R.
Stalin’s response was to set up a task force of top scientists and engineers in a project similar to the Manhattan Project – the top-secret US program to develop the atom bomb during WWII – and initially under the same secrecy, and charged them with the task of finding out what oil was, where it came from and how to find, recover and efficiently refine it.
In 1951, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins was first enunciated by Nikolai A. Kudryavtsev at the All-Union petroleum geology congress. Kudryavtsev analyzed the hypothesis of a biological origin of petroleum, and pointed out the failures of the claims then commonly put forth to support that hypothesis. Kudryavtsev was soon joined by numerous other Russian and Ukrainian geologists, among the first of whom were P. N. Kropotkin, K. A. Shakhvarstova, G. N. Dolenko, V. F. Linetskii, V. B. Porfir’yev, and K. A. Anikiev.
During the first decade of its existence, the modern theory of petroleum origins was the subject of great contention and controversy. Between the years 1951 and 1965, with the leadership of Kudryavtsev and Porfir’yev, increasing numbers of geologists published articles demonstrating the failures and inconsistencies inherent in the old “biogenic origin” hypothesis. With the passing of the first decade of the modern theory, the failure of Lomonosov’s eighteenth century hypothesis of an origin of petroleum from biological detritus in the near-surface sediments had been thoroughly demonstrated, the hypothesis discredited, and the modern theory firmly established.
An important point to be recognised is that the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic petroleum origins was, initially, a geologists’ theory. Kudryavtsev, Kropotkin, Dolenko, Porfir’yev and the developers of the modern theory of petroleum were all geologists.
Their arguments were necessarily those of geologists, developed from many observations, and much data, organized into a pattern, and argued by persuasion.
By contrast, the practice of mainstream, predictive modern science, particularly physics and chemistry, involves a minimum of observation or data, and applies only a minimum of physical law, inevitably expressed with formal mathematics, and argued by compulsion. Such predictive proof of the geologists’ assertions for the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins had to wait almost a half century, for such required the development not only of modern quantum statistical mechanics, but also that of the techniques of many-body theory and the application of statistical geometry to the analysis of dense fluids, designated scaled particle theory.
To recapitulate, Stalin’s team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a ‘fossil fuel’ but is a natural product of planet earth – the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide – two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth’s crust. This continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the ‘death’ of planet earth in millions of years’ time. The high pressure, as well as centrifugal acceleration from the earth’s rotation, causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the earth’s crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields. Oil is still being produced in great abundance, and is a sustainable resource – by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource. All we have to do is develop better geotechnical science to predict where it is and learn how to drill down deep enough to get to it. So far, the Russians have drilled to more than 13 km and found oil. In contrast, the deepest any Western oil company has drilled is around 4.5 km.
A team consisting of Russian scientists and Dr J. F. Kenney, of Gas Resources Corporation, Houston, USA, have actually built a reactor vessel and proven that oil is produced from calcium carbonate and iron oxide, as detailed on the Gas Resources website
This is what Dr Kenney has to say about how he came to be involved:
“In the first instance, the articles on this” (his company’s website http://www.gasresources.com) “are dedicated to the memory of Nikolai Alexandrovich Kudryavtsev, who first enunciated in 19511 what has become the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. After Kudryavtsev, all the rest followed. Secondly, these articles are dedicated generally to the many geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, and petroleum engineers of the former U.S.S.R. who, during the past half century, developed modern petroleum science. By doing so, they raised their country from being, in 1946, a relatively petroleum-poor one, to the greatest petroleum producing and exporting nation in the world today. These articles are dedicated specifically to the late Academician Emmanuil Bogdanovich Chekaliuk, the greatest statistical thermodynamicist ever to have turned his formidable intellect to the problem of petroleum genesis. In the Summer of 1976, during the depths of the cold war and at immeasurable hazard, Academician Chekaliuk chose to respond, across a gulf of political hostility, to an unsolicited letter from an unknown American chief executive officer of a petroleum company headquartered in Houston, Texas. Thenafter and for almost fifteen years, Academician Chekaliuk was my teacher, my collaborator, and my friend. [JFK] 1. Kudryavtsev, N. A. (1951) Petroleum Economy [Neftianoye Khozyaistvo] 9, 17-29.”
Needless to say, the last people to tell us the truth about oil will be the oil producers and oil companies, for they of course have a vested interest in perpetuating the myth that oil is a fossil fuel and that it will soon be exhausted, in order to ratchet up the price for as long as they can. And don’t look to the Russians to enlighten the world with the truth about oil either, for they are surely laughing now that the oil price is approaching $US150 a barrel.
A US Public Service Radio interview with Dr Kenney may be heard on the Gas Resources website.
Some may ask “How come all of this isn’t commonly known?” For the answer, one needs to consider what happened to Galileo when he first put forward the hypothesis that rather than the conventional wisdom that the sun revolved around the earth, the earth revolved around the sun. He was branded a heretic and locked up! You are invited to read an excellent article entitled “Cognitive Processes and the Suppression of Sound Scientific Ideas”, by J. Sacherman 1997, at http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/supress1.html
Some may say “Well, even if oil is a renewable resource, mankind should not burn it because the carbon dioxide so produced causes global warming.” My answer to that is that the idea that mankind’s production of carbon dioxide causes global warming is merely a hypothesis, and this has been thoroughly discredited by Prof. Robert Carter and numerous other scientists. You are invited to view a video of Prof. Robert Carter’s demolition of the “mankind’s production of carbon dioxide causes global warming” hypothesis here where you will see Prof. Carter illustrate five examples of verifiable science that refute the hypothesis. Prof. Carter makes the point that truth in science is never decided by consensus, but if you prefer to believe the pronouncement by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that “2,500 scientists of the United Nation’s IPCC agree that humans are causing a climate crisis”, which is repeated ad nauseam by environmentalists, the press and governments around the world, including ours, then you are invited to read an article at Canada Free Press where Tom Harris and John McLean tell the truth about this deception and point out that “an example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.” In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Almost 60% of the comments received from the 62 expert reviewers of this critical chapter were rejected by the IPCC editors and 55 of the 62 expert reviewers had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial. In my view, seven does not constitute “a consensus of the world’s scientists..” If it’s consensus you want before you decide on what the truth is, then follow the link to The National Post to read about the petition signed by more than 32,000 scientists, more than 9000 of whom hold PhDs. That’s consensus!
 

Walter

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December 02, 2009
Is there an endless supply of oil?

Russ Vaughn

[FONT=times new roman,times]In doing some research on my modest energy investments, I came across a link that led me to a website called Energy Probe where I discovered a very interesting article entitled Endless Oil by Canadian environmentalist, Lawrence Solomon, which if true, could cause anti-fossil fuel Greens to turn hotly red.

According to Solomon, there is new evidence to support Russian and Ukranian geological scientists who are convinced that the time-honored and universally-taught belief that petroleum deposits are derived exclusively from long-dead plants and dinosaurs is about as scientifically sound as the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Rather, they say, hydrocarbons may be developed in an abiotic process by the high temperatures and huge pressures existing far below the earth's 25 mile deep mantle, some 40 to 95 miles beneath our feet. This theory, first proposed in 1877 by Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table (which should vouch for his scientific credentials) has been widely accepted by Russian/Ukranian earth scientists since the early 1950's. According to this abiogenic theory, existing pools of petroleum are being continually replenished and new ones being created as newly-formed hydrocarbons migrate upward through cracks in the mantle.

While the concept has had little past support in the West, an article published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience, co-authored by the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, the Lomonosov State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in Moscow and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, reports research that indicates this process is scientifically viable.

In other words, the world itself may be the world's largest oil producer in an ongoing natural process. If these scientists are right, rather than running out of oil as the doomsayers loudly proclaim, we may have an endless supply.
[/FONT]
 

Trex

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Apr 4, 2007
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The Russians base much of their oil exploration on the theory of abiotic oil. They are very successful at contuinually finding new oil deposits using this theory. This theory, if proven, would be a boon to our civilization. Imagine an endless supply of oil. We should work on cleaner and more effici
ent combustion to alleviate pollution caused by burning the oil. (CO2 is not a pollutant)

The Russians have found zero of there own oil.
I have covered this before.


Quote"Today, Russians laugh at our peak oil theories as they explore, and find, the bounty in the bowels of the Earth. Russia’s reserves have been climbing steadily — according to BP’s annual survey, they stood at 45 billion barrels in 2001, 69 billion barrels in 2004, and 80 billion barrels of late, making Russia an oil superpower that this year produced more oil than Saudi Arabia.
Unquote.

Russians don't explore and find they hire westerners with the skills and technology to explore and find for them.
They can't do it themselves they have neither the skill, the engineering capacity or the existing technology.
The seismic, the drilling rigs, the engineering, the service companies all come from the West.
All the new fields are joint Russian-Multinational oil company operations.
The Russians own the land.
The multinationals (The West) find, drill, complete and monitor the production.
So I fail to see why they would "laugh" about that.

Russian oil output has peaked because Western companies are tired of being screwed over by Russian Mafia and are starting to cut back development.
Granted it's Russia's oil but as soon as the multinationals quit developing it for them production plateau's which it now has.
Russian Oil reserves are about 60 billion BBLs, Canadian reserves by comparison are around 175 billion BBLs.
So that about puts Russian oil in perspective.

Russia does have the largest gas reserves in the world however that's a different kettle of fish.

quote:In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington joined colleagues at the Lomonosov Moscow State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in publishing evidence that hydrocarbons can be produced 40 to 95 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. At these depths — in what’s known as Earth’s Upper Mantle — high temperatures and intense pressures combine to generate hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons then migrate toward the surface of the Earth through fissures in the Earth’s crust, sometimes feeding existing pools of oil, sometimes creating entirely new ones. According to Sweden’s Royal Institute, “fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.”
unquote.

Hogwash.
Every single oil field in Russia is conventionally sourced and trapped.
To repeat myself every single producing oil field in Russia today is geologically understood, delineated and defined as conventionally sourced oil.
Just about all the new fields (like Sakhalin) were defined and produced by Western multinationals and their Western geologists and geophysicists.
So the above theory has not resulted in one, not one, drop of oil actually being produced.
Anywhere let alone Russia.
You will notice the quotes about unconventionally sourced oil flip back and forth between the terms "oil" and "hydrocarbons"
Thats because hydrocarbons can be created deep in the bowels of the earth.
Just not oil.
Oil cannot be created deeper than the existence of sedimentary marine shales.
Period.

Methane can be created in swamps by bacterial action.
Hydrocarbon cow farts and belches are a massive contributor methane in the atmosphere.
Even humans after a long night of cheap draft, pickled eggs and pizza can create hydrocarbon bearing gases.
No oil though.

So the day one drop, just one drop, of "deep" unconventionally sourced oil gets produced is the day I start to believe.

Trex.
 

TenPenny

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Russians don't explore and find they hire westerners with the skills and technology to explore and find for them.

And then they usually find a way to charge the western companies with some criminal offenses, and seize the whole thing for one of the Russian oligarchs.
 

Dexter Sinister

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Google shows plenty of references for the occurrence of oil in igneous and metamorphic rocks around the world, which certainly suggests an abiotic origin, and there are known abiotic processes that can produce it. That doesn't, however, justify the conclusion that *all* oil is of abiotic origin, and it's still true that the bulk of the world's oil is recovered from sedimentary structures, which *does* suggest a biological origin. The science, as far as I know, currently indicates there's room for both.
 

Trex

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Category:Oil companies of Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This list coupled with the results I get if I google for Russian drilling companies, would lead me to believe that while I know a lot of guys who go over seas to Russia to work in the patch, there are also plenty of Russians pulling oil out of the ground, all by their incapable little selves.

A list of Russian oil companies proves exactly what Karrie?
As far as I know most if not all oil production in Russia has to be a JV with a national.

Have you or you're SO been to Russia on business Karrie?

I have.
Their iron is junk, they cant even build a rig with a right angle drive on it from what I have seen.
And any idiot can swing a valve after someone else has done the exploration, the drilling and then completed it.
So production really means nothing.
And as a side note their oil production is starting to fall because they cannot even maintain what Western Expats have already designed and installed for them.

I stand by what I said.
The seismic is from the West.
The geophysics and play workup is from Western Multinationals.
All the decent engineering is from the West.
The rigs are either junk or they bring in a Western one.
And the actual drilling and completion work is all overseen by Schlum, Halliburton, Weatherford and the like.
Why do you think all those guys whom you know, who work over there, go over there in the first place?
I know they keep plugging away ,trying to do it by themselves.
But as often as not they have to make that hated phone call and then guys like me turn up.

And it doesn't just end in Russia.
I have spent a lot of time redoing or fixing Russian crap and screw-ups in other places like Cuba and India.

I am not particularly trying to slag the Russians.
They are pretty good bunch to work with on the whole.
But their oilfield expertise isn't exactly highly regarded.

Now if you want to talk about how they are going to end up controlling the European natural gas distribution and pipeline system.
Now thats a different story and its something they appear to be very good at manoeuvring.

Trex
 
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Trex

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Google shows plenty of references for the occurrence of oil in igneous and metamorphic rocks around the world, which certainly suggests an abiotic origin, and there are known abiotic processes that can produce it. That doesn't, however, justify the conclusion that *all* oil is of abiotic origin, and it's still true that the bulk of the world's oil is recovered from sedimentary structures, which *does* suggest a biological origin. The science, as far as I know, currently indicates there's room for both.

Oil is rarely found where it was produced.
You need a source rock and a trap and then a reservoir rock.
Any intrusive igneous or metamorphic rock could act as a reservoir if it was, for example, vuggy.
Unlikely but possible.
That has nothing to do with abiotic oil theory which states oil is created outside of marine shales.

I dispute this.

Hydrocarbons can indeed be manufactured outside of old marine facies.
Just not oil.

Please provide me with a link to any oil production, anywhere in the world, that is known to be derived from a non-marine,depositional environment.

trex
 

darkbeaver

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"The modern theory of the abiotic deep petroleum origins recognizes that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth. In short, petroleum is not a 'fossil fuel' and has no intrinsic connection with any biological detritus 'in the sediments'." -- Vladimir A. Kutcherov, geologist, August 2008

"There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil." -- Vladimir A. Kutcherov, geologist, September 2009

"One can, then, conceive the production, by purely mineral means, of all natural hydrocarbons. The intervention of heat, of water, and of alkaline metals -- lastly, the tendency of hydrocarbons to unite together to form the more condensed material -- suffice to account for the formation of these curious compounds. Moreover, this formation will be continuous because the reactions which started it are renewed incessantly." -- Marcellin Berthelot, chemist, 1866
 

Trex

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On another note.

Deep oil ( produced from marine shale source rock as no other kind of oil has ever been produced) is a bit of a scarce beast for physical reasons.

High temperature and pressure will "crack" or convert crude oil into other types of hydrocarbons.
Like gases and condensates.

Rule of thumb is that oil cannot exist much below 20,000 feet.

By coincidence I have just returned from a working on a project involving what is sometimes described as the deepest producing oilfield on earth.
Depth of the reservoir was from 20,000 to 22,000 feet.
Bottom hole temperature was 510 F.
Bottom hole pressure was about 17,500 PSI.
Thats a lot of heat and pressure.
And thats still in a plain old sedimentary carbonate reef.

Oil doesn't last long at higher than those kind of temperatures and pressures.
Some of the multinational oil companies are now working on an exploratory basis on oil reservoirs in excess of 30,000 feet.
I am assuming it is a local low temperature gradient area for the oil to still exist at those depths.
And of course the oil is still located in a conventional sedimentary marine shale environment.

Trying to sell the notion that oil can even exist in a far, far deeper and hotter igneous or metamorphic environment is just plain silly.

Trex
 

Dexter Sinister

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Please provide me with a link to any oil production, anywhere in the world, that is known to be derived from a non-marine,depositional environment.
I can't, I don't think there is any. I don't see that I need to either, I made no such claim. I said only that oil is known to occur in igneous and metamorphic rock around the world, and you clearly know enough about petroleum geology to know that.