Okay, so I’m reading this article on “peak oil,” (a good read, by the way) and it’s full of numbers, including trillions and hundreds of millions of barrels of oil. And I recall reading that oil came from dinosaurs, so I quickly go to Wikipedia, which says that no, it’s mostly plant matter. But I’m thinking: Who the heck do they think they’re kidding? How freaking much plant matter would have to have been pushed down through the layers of the earth to become petroleum? I mean, let’s not forget the solid-to-liquid ratio, which would mean that for every barrel of oil, you’d have to have a whole lot more plant matter to create that liquid barrel.
I want a new theory, please, because I’m not buying this one.
Wait a minute! I’ve found one!
The hypothesis of abiogenic petroleum origin holds that petroleum is formed by non-biological processes deep in the earth’s crust and mantle.
It contradicts the more widely-held view that petroleum is a fossil fuel produced from the remains of ancient living organisms.
This hypothesis dates to the 19th century, when the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot and the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev proposed it, and was revived in the 1950s.
The modern scientific consensus on abiogenic petroleum is that there is evidence for it being possible to produce petrochemicals according to the mechanisms proposed in the hypothesis. Some direct evidence from certain locations can only be explained as abiogenic production of petroleum compounds. However, most modern geologists do not support the hypothesis that abiogenic sources of oil can account for the vast majority of petroleum deposits within the Earth.
A variation of the abiogenic theory includes alteration by microbes similar to those which form the basis of the ecology around deep hydrothermal vents. The deep biogenic petroleum theory proposes, mostly after the work of Thomas Gold, that the ‘’deep hot biosphere’’ may be the source of some petroleum products and biomarkers.
One prediction of most abiogenic theories is that other planets of the solar system or their moons have large petroleum oceans, either from hydrocarbons present at the formation of the solar system, or from subsequent chemical reactions.
Now that makes a heck of a lot more sense. I’m just not seein’ the dinosaur thing.
“I want a new theory, please, because I’m not buying this one.”
Would it help any if you knew that oil deposits often include specific organic molecules that could only have come from decaying plants? And that these chemicals can be used to tell how old the oil is? As one example, see this article about dating oil deposits.
But how? I’m trying to imagine the sheer tonnage of plant life that would have had to die and be converted to oil, and that’s where I have the problem.
Don’t get me wrong — I am in no way a scientist — but I like to be able to wrap my brain around something in a way that I can understand it. And boy, the PR guys need some work with this one. I swear, I thought that “fossil fuels” meant we were using oil from dead dinosaurs. And I am far from an unread, uneducated person.
I’ve read about abiogenic petroleum, and there are some who mainain that the process is current and ongoing, meaning, the deep subterranean oil-producing chemistry is constantly producing new reserves.
May those new reserves reach the surface by way of non-Islamic, non-Jihadi territories. How about Israel, for a change?
Meryl,
“But how? I’m trying to imagine the sheer tonnage of plant life that would have had to die and be converted to oil, and that’s where I have the problem.”
That’s reasonable. It does take a tremendous amount of plant matter to equate to all the known petroleum — not to mention all the known coal deposits, which are also from fossilized vegetation, and all the oil that’s been lost over time as it leaked from those underground reservoirs.
What makes it possible is time. Most people don’t understand the sheer scale of geologic time. I like to illustrate it this way: No human lives who witnessed the American Civil War 140 years ago. You would have to go back at least four generations from the oldest living man to find someone who lived through the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago. You’d have to go back another 40 generations to find anyone who saw a Roman army in battle. That Roman would have to go back twice as far from his time to find an ancestor who might have seen the Great Pyramid being built. And all of that is just the span of recorded human history — a mere five thousand years.
Well, geologic time is measured in millions of years, not just thousands. We think of the dinosaurs as one great group, Tyrannosaurus and Brachiosaurus and so on, all in one breath. Yet the reality is that T. rex lived closer to our time (65 million years ago) than it did to that of Apatosaurus (150 million years ago), and it’s as far back again to the time of the first dinosaurs (around 220 million years ago). And even before that, it’s another 300 million years to the Cambrian “explosion” of multicelled animal life.
That’s a LOT of time!
This webpage gives what look like ballpark numbers on how much plant material it takes to make a gallon of petroleum. The numbers look impossible, until you inject geologic time. Then they merely look mind-boggling. :-)
Oh, one other thought: Thomas Gold’s “deep hot biosphere” theory makes some solid predictions as to where oil deposits might be found. Those predictions can be compared to what the conventional theory says, and the differences can be tested. Several test wells have been drilled in places that Gold says there should be oil but conventional theory says there shouldn’t. So far, none of the test wells has found any oil. However, conventional theory continues to find new oilfields. Gold’s theory is interesting and fun to think about, and it would be very nice if he was right and oil supplies were effectively unlimited, but all the available evidence says he’s wrong. Not stupid, not evil, not a con artist or a snake-oil salesman. Not even a crackpot. Just wrong. Wrong from the very best of motives. But still wrong.
Abiogenic oil is a cute idea, and mostly being pushed by oil company apologists who don’t want to waste money and time conserving and working on alternate fuels because “according to this theory it’s a renewable resource which will last forever.”
There may be a reason why this theory came up in the 19th century and has been superceded by newer and better science; because it’s wrong, maybe?
I’ts also intriguing that for a theory that was “revived in the 50’s” someone relatively literate who reads the headlines in the science section never heard of this idea of abiogenic oil until last week from a caller on a talk-show using it as proof that environmentalists were dupes; then it’s mentioned here. Just seems to me that it sounds funny in the whole story…
Wolfwalker: thanks, it makes much more sense now. I don’t think I was thinking in terms of millions of years. More like in terms of last year’s mulch, probably.
Doc, I found it when I was researching fossil fuels. It’s in the Wikipedia entry, which is what I often use as a starting point. (Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable.)
Wikipedia is also becoming notoriously politicized by people who post entries for purposes other than adding fact…a pity, since it has such great potential; entries really ought to be vetted…
I think the mistake is thinking that an encyclopedia written with no editors has any sort of potential at all.
The noise-to-signal ratio makes the overall project pretty worthless.
And I make that statement going by my decades of experience with internet users. Yes, you have the stalwart, steadfast, optimistic purveyors of truth who generally drive projects like these.
Then you have the rest of the world, who screw them up.
The thing about the internet: Anyone can say anything they like. You have to be a really discerning reader in order to drill down through the mounds of misinformation and get at the truth.