Endless Oil???????????
 

Russian research has shown that the Earth doesn’t need dinosaurs to produce oil
Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars? The assumption that they do, along with other dead matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. Our geologists are taught fossil fuel theory in our schools; our energy companies search for fossil fuels by divining where the dinosaurs lay down and died. Sooner or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels, virtually everyone believes.

Except in Russia and Ukraine. What is to us a matter of scientific certainty is by no means accepted there. Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth’s 25-mile deep crust. This theory — first espoused in 1877 by Dmitri Mendeleev, who also developed the periodic table — was rejected by geologists of the day because he postulated that the Earth’s crust had deep faults, an idea then considered absurd. Mendeleev wouldn’t be vindicated by his countrymen until after the Second World War when the then-Soviet Union, shut out of the Middle East and with scant petroleum reserves of its own, embarked on a crash program to develop a petroleum industry that would allow it to fend off the military and economic challenges posed by the West.

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. Some oil auditing firms estimate Russia’s reserves at up to 200 billion barrels. Despite Russia’s success in exploration, most of those in the west who have known about the Russian-Ukrainian theories have dismissed them as beyond the Pale. This week, the Russian Pale can be found awfully close to home.

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.”

The Institute’s lead author, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology, is even more brash at the implications of his findings: “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” he delights. Kutcherov’s technique involves dividing the world into a fine-meshed grid that maps cracks (or migration channels) under the Earth’s crust, through which the hydrocarbons can bubble up to the surface. His advice: Drill where the cracks meet. Doing this, he predicts, will dramatically reduce the likelihood of dry wells. Kutcherov expects the success rate of drillers to more than triple, from 20% to 70%, saving billions in exploration costs while opening up vast new areas of the planet — most of which has never been deemed to have promise — to exploration.

The Nature study follows Kutcherov’s previous work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that created hydrocarbons out of water, calcium carbonate and iron — products in the Earth’s mantle. By superheating his ingredients in a pressure chamber at 30,000 times atmospheric pressure, simulating the conditions in the Earth’s mantle, Kutcherov’s alchemy converted 1.5% of his concoction into hydrocarbons — gases such as methane as well as components of heavier oils. The implication of this research, which suggests that hydrocarbons are continuously generated through natural processes? Petroleum is a sustainable resource that will last as long as Planet Earth.

Financial Post
lawrencesolomon@nextcity.comLawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...dless-oil.aspx

Oh boy. Now we can pave the entire surface of the planet.

I find the fossil theory to be much more likely.

Why? because it is what we have been taught?

I prefer to keep an open mind, it does seem possible that
the earth could produce oil

Hot damn, I'm buying me a truck with a bigger motor!:D

The oil may be endless, but the ozone is not:(

I've got a nice V-10 4x4 Excursion I'll make you a hell of a deal on!!

About 5 yrs ago I read some articles making the same case for oil deposits in the USA. My recollection is that the argument was based on previously played out oil wells which began producing again. I too think we need to keep an open mind on the mechanism by which oil is formed. Don't know how much it effects reasonably accessible oil supplies.

Does it need to be "reasonably accessible"?

If a way can be determined to drill for oil, beyond the pale so to speak,
wouldn't it be advantagous to go to extreme measures for a well that
would never dry up?

Yes, I think it does need to be reasonably accessible. An endless supply of oil on Mars wouldn't do us much good.

Maybe it is, what do the Russians think?:D

Methinks Putin's czars are different than Obama's :)

Interesting theory and it brings up something that i've always found curious about the current theory.....How does so much bio-mass manage to pile up in such huge quantities and pool up underground?

This has been known for about the last ten years, but oddly it doesn't get publicized or taught very much. We're not running out of oil, fellas. Sorry. I remember being a student in the 70's and being taught that there's only twenty years of oil left (during the oil crunch; yes, I remember being with my parents and waiting in lines and getting gas on odd and even number days that corresponded with the last digit of your Texas license plate). Thirty five years later, and they're still teaching that we only have 20 years of oil left. C'mon, people, wake up.

This idea has been floating around for years along with conspiracy theories about how it has been kept secret by the major oil companies etc, etc.

I can guarantee one thing about the Russians - they lie. We have to trust them when they report their reserves. In the United States, we invented the oil industry, in Pennsylvania and West Virginia back in the day. Do you know how difficult it is to get accurate data from the Appalachian states on their historical production figures? Unbelievably difficult. So trusting the Russians (or any third world country) is unwise. In the parts of the world unfriendly to us, we try to ESTIMATE how much they produce but tracking tankers by satellite. They have no record keeping, filing requirements, SEC regulations, reserve guidelines....

The deep oil stories fall apart once you start to analyze the logistics of drilling 25,000 foot wells. ALmost all deep wells that produce are gas wells. Oil will not flow from that depth unless the reservoir pressure is HUGE. And if it does, friction losses in the tubulars will eat you up. And you can't use artificial lift either. Rod pumps are good to about 12,000 feet, submersibles to about 14,000. 25,000 - forget about it!

And when all else fails, ask how much the well would cost. And there are only a handful of rigs in the world that can drill that deep. When you get into high pressure and temperature, things go bad fast. My company drilled a 33,000 test in Oklahoma in 1974. Took a year. Cost $7 million. Liquid sulphur flowed in the wellbore and solidified on the way up, end of story.

And you have to figure out WHERE to drill. I am not sure if seismic can image that deep or not.

I read an article a few years back saying the U.S. had 10 years left. It was written in 1945.

The problem is not where it is per se. It is important where it is in *relation* to the nutballs that hate our guts.