Talk:Abiogenic petroleum origin

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[edit] Very good!

Notice: This section of discussion has been altered by many alterations of old comments. Comments might have been created as replies to preceding text which has been altered, thus changing the original meaning of the discussion. (SEWilco 03:19, 16 September 2006 (UTC))

Only a fool (misinformed) geologist would believe that oil and black coal come from organic detritus from surface. Natural hydrocarbons, of course, come from earth's mantle and they are reworked by bacteria (Deep Hot Biosphere) at low pressure at surface or shallow levels in the crust. Geologists first need understand geochemistry and cosmological origin and partition of the chemical elements and apply to earth's formation by accretion and its evolution.

Geologists know enough about geochemistry to know that if oil is buried too deep, it will be destroyed by high temperatures. There is considerable evidence that this has happened in deep formations. Below a certain depth, below the "oil window", all you get is natural gas, maybe. Project LITHOPROBE, which has probed the lithosphere under the prolific Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, has found large reserves of graphite. It may have been oil at one time, but it's pencil lead now. However, one step harder than graphite is diamond, so now they're drilling for diamonds. It's very exciting. RockyMtnGuy 14:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
We find tree stumps, twigs, and imprints of leaves in coal seams. This is not a theoretical observation, where I live we have about 2 trillion tons of coal, both my grandfathers had their own personal coal mines, and my father had a dozen petrified tree stumps decorating his front lawn, dug out of the local coal deposits. If you want to check for yourself, I can lend you a shovel and show you where to dig. You won't have to dig far - my front driveway is sitting right on a coal seam. Of course, after we struck oil and gas there was no demand for coal anymore, but the coal is still there. RockyMtnGuy 19:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, fossils in coal and biomarkers in oil certainly exist--but this correlation doesn't conclusively demonstrate cause. Fossils are found in sandstone too, but nobody would say the sandstone is biogenic. One major problem in a lot of this discourse is that both supporters of mainstream geology and supporters of an abiogenic hypothesis tend to assume that the two are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, both assertions are supported by observation. The argument is about which one is more prevalent, and the answer to that will have to await further research. I wouldn't place any bets on an abiogenic hypothesis, but we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand either. As far as I can tell, some versions of the hypothesis explain observed phenomena reasonably well, make predictions that could lead to future work, and are open to both falsification and verification. It's certainly more scientific than The Aquatic Ape Theory anyway! Aelffin 17:24, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Leaving aside the aquatic ape theory, which I agree is all wet, let's not stray too far from the observable facts. Anybody who thinks that coal has inorganic origins hasn't looked at it very closely. Check out the Wikipedia article on coal, particularily the part about macerals in lignite. Coal comes in a series of ranks including anthracite, bituminous and lignite. Lignite, the softest form, still has quite a lot of identifiable plant material in it. Go one step softer than lignite, and you've got peat, which is plant material that hasn't turned into coal, yet. But bury it deep enough for long enough, and it will.

Reading some of the comments in this article, I get the impression that a lot of people come out of educational systems that left out a lot of important facts about how this green Earth of ours got to be the way it is. This isn't rocket science - people figured out a lot of it centuries ago. Like how to convert plant material into oil, for instance. RockyMtnGuy 05:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Right, but we can't be glib about it; we have to spell out our arguments carefully, or we make science look like kneejerk reaction. The fact that organic matter is found in coal is not in itself a sufficient argument that coal is biogenic. Now, if you go on to say that this observation correlates with a systematic chemical and physical alteration which is consistent with chemical studies of altering plant matter and is itself a function of depth, plus the association of coal with swamp deposits and lack of association with marine or eolian deposits....etc. Once you've spelled out all of this, then you've got a solid argument for a biogenic origin of coal. But you can't just turn around and apply this argument wholesale to petroleum. The facts are different and frankly, case for petroleum is much less solid--no pun intended. Now, I agree with you that science education is really shoddy, but we're not doing scientists any favors by defending the mainstream with poor epistemology.
A better approach, IMHO, is to humor the detractors and treat them like rational beings no matter how ignorant they come accross. It's both tactically wiser and closer to the way working scientists do things. Aelffin 14:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I will not be an apologetic wikipedian about this bullshit. We should NOT treat these tinfoil hat brigade loons who believe that petroleum boils up from the mantle and hits a bed containing 100m of plant debris and tars it up to produce coal. That is bullshit, plain and simple. The observable facts contradicting this include;

  • Fossils in coal, as argued before
  • Carbonaceous mudstones which contain abundant foissils and silicates. Why don't ALL mudstones contain deposits of tarry bitumens if magma generated coal and "fossil" fuel deposits?
  • By one logic of your argument it is the organic matter which traps petroleum, and by another, it is petroleum which turns organic matter into coal. Why, then, are there oil deposits around salt domes? If you discount one or another of the two ingredients of the "magmatic coal" theory (the pre-existence of organic matter which then traps petroleum, OR the petroleum which seeps up) then you fail to explain a) why petroleum is associated with non-coal rocks, and why high-rank anthracite and graphite is not intimately associated with bituminous liquid hydrocarons.
  • The association of coal with a very strict set of palaeoenvironments as distinct from oil and gas deposits. Coal can be proven to be associated with siliciclastic rock sequences of terrigenous origin, and with the onset of a marine transgression and within certain tectonic enviornments. Coal-barren siliclastic rocks including your facetious example of a fossiliferous sandstone, are not always associated with the same palaeoenvironments and tectonic environments as coal.
  • Arguing that "if coal is formed from organic fossils why don't fossils always contain coal" is a rubbish argument. Read the entry on coal; coal preservation only occurs under special conditions. But you never find a coal which does not contain plant fossils and certain maceral associations.
  • To put the onus back on you and your bunch of whiny "but leave in a totally and provably wrong fringe theory" groupies, a question: why does the rank of a coal seam increase in proximity to a granitic intrusion, as seen in the Triassic back-arc basin coals of the Ipswich basin, the Taronga coal seam and other examples? Why do you have low rank, brown coals away from the granite, and higher rank black and sub-anthracite coals closer to the granite, all with the same fossil assemblages, culminating in ash within the aureole of the granite? Is it because the granite, which is devoid of petroleum, brought mythical magmatic petroleum withit? Or is it because the orthodox theory that you require heat and pressure to form higher rank coals holds true? In essence, the orthodox argument is that the granite provided the contact metamorphic heat to upgrade the low rank coals. By your bad argument, the coal should show the same rank and maturity regardless of proximity to the heat of a granite because coal is formed by a uniform process of abiogenic seepage. Rolinator 02:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Is this a response to my post? It seems like it is because as far as I can tell, I'm the only "apologetic wikipedian" here. But then it sounds like you're arguing with the original troll post since you go on to argue against abiogenic coal, an idea that I neither endorsed nor defended. Since you don't indent, it makes it look like this is a response to the entire discussion. At any rate, none of this applies to petroleum, so while I think your arguments should go in the article (provided they are properly sourced), they should not be taken into account when it comes to considering how we treat "these tinfoil hat brigade loons" as a whole. Aelffin 21:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I think we wandered off down this particular garden path because the article cites the Fischer-Tropsch process as the method by which abiogenic petroleum is produced. Now, the Fischer-Tropsch process is designed to convert coal into oil, so it is a short but wobbly step to argue that coal itself is abiogenic, despite the fact that it contains bits of leaves and twigs not to mention the occasional tree stump.
The phrase "abiogenic oil" itself is an attempt to change the playing field, since the proper term for what they are talking about is "inorganic oil". Geologists are not claiming oil is "biogenic", they are saying it is "organic", which is not the same thing. However, if the abiogenic crowd used the word "inorganic", the organic chemists would jump all over them. So they use an unfamiliar word, and back it up with knowledgeable dissertations on conditions on other planets where no one has ever been, except maybe them. The proper term for the form of debate used in the article is "choplogic".
In any case, I don't think Wikipedia obliges us to give equal time to a fringe theory, so we should treat the abiogenic oil theory in the same manner as other, similar theories. For further information see Flat Earth and Flat Earth Society RockyMtnGuy 20:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Regarding your first point: Let's not lump everything together, even if some proponents of abiogenic hypotheses do. We're talking about a large family of chemicals (as RockyMtnGuy mentions below) and there's no reason to think that an argument pertaining to one pertains equally to another. They should be treated seperately, both in discussion here and in the article itself. In fact, considering the title is "Abiogenic petroleum" and not "Abiogenic hydrocarbons" then we should restrict this article to that subject and not wander off into any of the aforementioned hydrocarbons unless we're ready to change the title.
Regarding your second point: While I consider "abiogenic oil" an awkward term, it is accurate. "Inorganic petroleum" is a contradiction in terms. All long-chain hydrocarbons are organic, whether they derrive from previously living matter or not.
Regarding your third point: This isn't about balance. Remember, this is an article about a fringe theory, not an insertion of a fringe theory into the main article on petroleum. The flat earthers are treated objectively within the article on the subject, and so should the abiogenic oil people. Though I think it's obvious that there's a lot more room for debate on the origin of petroleum than there is on the geometry of the Earth. --Aelffin 15:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Another point: much of this article is off-topic. It's supposed to be about abiogenic petroleum. I would point out that Petroleum derives from Greek words meaning "rock oil", which is to say it is oil found in porous rock. It is a liquid, not a gas or a solid. Gas is often found in assocation with petroleum, but gas is also found where there is no oil anywhere around, as is coal.
  • Methane is not petroleum
  • Helium is not petroleum
  • Carbon is not petroleum
  • Coal is not petroleum
Geologists are not claiming they have to have the same sources. They could all come from different ones
RockyMtnGuy 22:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sedimentary Basins

This is like watching crabgrass spread. Now we have statements like The distribution of sedimentary basins is caused by plate tectonics, with sedimentary basins forming on either side of a volcanic arc, which explains the distribution of oil within these sedimentary basins. I presume they're talking about the sagebrush volcanoes of the West Texas Permian Basin, the snow volcanoes of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, or the notorious sand volcanoes of the Arabian-Iranian Mega-Basin. See the Wikipedia article on sedimentary basins for more realistic info. RockyMtnGuy 14:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No working Petroleum Geologists believe in this

I am a geophysicist (of Russian Parentage) working in the oil Industry - Abiogenic oil is not believed in by anybody working in mainstream petroleum exploration taday. All commercial petroleum deposits are linked to organic source rocks, This includes Ghawar, The Canadian Tar Sands, Kashagan (which I worked on) and the Orinoco tar belt. Deep Methane may be possible but heavier hydrocarbons are cracked by high temperatures. Source rock estimation is difficult as we have few samples to measure Total Organic Content from rocks in the source kitchen. This rubbish belongs with Trofim Lysenko- Alan Foum

The Abiogenic theory was first tested by the Canadian government over 100 years ago. It was an obvious thing to look for - drill a well through the Athabasca Oil Sands and find the source of the oil. The Geological Survey of Canada drilled three wells starting in 1894. They found no oil but hit natural gas (and one well blew out of control for the next 21 years). Under the oil sands (and the gas fields), there is the Canadian Shield, pre-Cambrian granite which covers most of Canada, and does not contain any oil (but has recently been discovered to have billions of dollars worth of diamonds, for those who are interested.)
The source of the oil sands is unclear, but it is clearly not under the oil sands because people have drilled thousands of wells through it and found nothing underneath. Most likely it is hundreds of miles downdip to the southwest. Most of Alberta is underlain by oil-rich shale which is up to five miles deep at the southwest corner and zero at the northeast corner. It looks like the buried oil from a vast area has been slowly migrating southwest to northeast, following the rock layers, and rising until it reaches the surface near Lake Athabasca. And there it is, on the surface. It doesn't matter where it originated from, because it's not there any more, it's in the oil sands now. RockyMtnGuy 05:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

201.19.121.88 03:30, 24 September 2006 (UTC) Maybe your russian parentage do not play chess. Do you know works from N.A. Kudryavtsev, Porfire'v, Chekaliuk, Dolenko, Boiko, Kitchka, Kuznetsov and many others?

[edit] This article desparately needs editing!

Whenever considering this hypothesis, bear in mind that the Oil majors reject it, and by implication bet several billion dollars against it every year. There are no 'deep fractures', for the simple reason that the crust becomes plastic at depths of 10-15km; the methane forming reaction ran to completion around 2.5 billion years ago (Around the same time as oxygen started to build up in the atmosphere - all the inner planets have been oxidised by the action of solar UV over time); the generation of oil from source rocks has been done in the lab; I could go on. --193.130.83.216 12:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Follow up edit

Removed and corrected some of the more glaring errors and slants. On a meta-slant, why is it that some people with little or no background in geology, let along petroleum geology, get so passionate about this subject? The idea that oil companies are trying to bury this theory falls flat on the basis that it would cost them vast amounts of profit, oil service companies like Haliburton even more so.

I can't speak to the validity of the theory, but would it really be in the interests of the oil companies to flood the market with cheap product and drive down prices? I doubt they'd want to find out if it were true. Aelffin 18:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Agreed, needs editing

Notice: This section of discussion has been altered by many alterations of old comments. Comments might have been created as replies to preceding text which has been altered, thus changing the original meaning of the discussion. (SEWilco 03:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC))

Well, it is necessary to remind one plain fact about the depths from where melts and transmagmatic gases are coming to the surface (volcanoes, diatremes, etc.).

So, errm. what?

Then, let's assume that only practice can prove the theory, ok?

Yes, the continental US-48 was very extensively drilled before anyone had a convincing explanation for the origins of oil. No sign of these Abiogenic fields showed up. See http://certmapper.cr.usgs.gov/data/noga95/natl/graphic/uscells1msmall.jpg for details; You will note that wildcat wells have been drilled virtually everywhere with no regard to any theory of petroleum origins.

Of course, there should be “plastic” regime governing at some depth after true brittle one. However, for 5-15 km depth the regime is better to call as “quasi-plastic” because of existence some transition interface from unstable frictional faulting to localized quasi-plastic shearing. For example, the Kola superdeep borehole (SG-3, TD = 12 262 m) has produced evidences of deep suprahydrostatic circulation hydrothermal systems throughout its length, and, of course, existence of open fractures.

If I recall correctly, that particular borehole is in Continental shield with a very low geothermal gradient.

Besides, it also disproved the idea about so-called Conrad’s boundary (between “granite” and “basalt” layers).

Which was disproven by seismic tomography long before. But this is a digression.

In fact, there is a mechanism to transfer fluids from the undercrust medium, but it’s too naïve to think about single open fracture linking the pool in the sedimentary cover and kind of hyper-deep “oil tank”. True story is a bit more complex.

Then perhaps entering the 'true story' instead of asserting it would be helpful. Bear in mind that long chain hydrocarbons would need to be transported very quickly indeed to survive under any conditions.

As to oil generation from “source” rocks in the lab there is no secret what is it.

Try these papers as a starting point;

Pepper, A. S., and P. J. Corvi, 1995, Simple kinetic models of petroleum formation. Part I: oil and gas generation from kerogen : Marine and Petroleum Geology, v. 12, pp.291-319.

Pepper, A. S., and P. J. Corvi, 1995, Simple kinetic models of petroleum formation. Part III: Modeling an open system : Marine and Petroleum Geology, v. 12, n. 4 pp.417-452.

All versions of pyrolysis needs 400-600 deg. C to generate something worth to analyze besides methane.

This is because we don't have 10,000+years for our experiments.

So Lopatin’s “time machine” is inevitable instrumentation to apply this. Plus, it is necessary to bear in mind the difference between multicomponent composition of true oils and olefins, unsaturated hydrocarbons. Finally it is very useful to discern simple black shales with so-called kerogen (new edition of phlogiston) and oil shales. The latter can bear soluble oil bitumen, dispersed live oil, even visible oil droplets and be in some cases a reservoir and rather good producer. But first it would be not superfluous to take in mind the outgassing column (or chimneys) concept, micro-fractures, percolation system network and so on. Therefore the sophisticated boiling of oil-stained cores or samples mimics the distillation process.

The above does not make any sort of sense.

One simple test for conventional bioorganic concept:

There appear to be 6 points here. Of course, it is a standard tactic of pseudoscientists to produce reams of questions instead of supporting evidence for their own ideas.

1. Produce evidences that 2nd Law of thermodynamics is non valid in some cases (spontaneous synthesis of higher hydrocarbons in the stratisphere) and why.

2ndLOT is always valid. Synthesis of Hydrocarbons from biological fats is trivial. Those promoting abotic oil appear to think that oil comes from carbohydrates; I would suggest that they actually read the literature. Wiki is, I believe, not the place for strawmen.

2. Produce evidences that hydrocarbons abundant in the Solar system and beyond have biologically derived origin. Or at least produce facts, not speculations, about existence of extraterrestrial life based on carbon cycle.

This is irrelevant. Why does all reduced carbon in the Solar system have to have the same origin? There is a great deal of evidence that the Earth started out with CH4 as the primary carbon phase, but that photodissociation combined with the loss of hydrogen changed this to CO2 by circa. 2.5Ga. The atmospheres of Mars and Venus collabarate this; primordial reduced carbon is only found in the further out regions of the solar system.

3. Produce calculations that petroleum mega-accumulations (NB: reserves in place, not only recoverable ones) like the Orinoco Tar Belt, Big Athabasca, Tatarstan’s Romaskino and surrounding “Permian” bitumens, gas hydrate potential of World Ocean could be derived from any known organic sources in the sedimentary column.

Typical source rocks may yield 0.25 bbl/tonne, or 0.5bbl/m3. A 10m thickness will hence give 5,000,000 barrels per square kilometer. Availability is not a problem; for example the North Sea has ~70Gb of oil produced by ~5x10^5km2 source rock, so a crude calculation gives 1.5 Trillion barrels generated. You are the one promoting the theory, you should be doing the reading and calculations. Why was the reference to the Athabasca source rocks removed?

4. Produce evidences that bioorganic concept may support the mechanism supplying oil reserves faster than they decay. Combination of known rates for petroleum escape (diffusion and through fractures) from reservoirs prohibits its preservation for hundred of Ma under any kind of seal, even under rock salt.

The kinetics of oil generation combined with the known volumes of source rocks provide this. See above; oil fields are typically filled to the spill point, and typically over 99% of generated petroleum escapes. If you are claiming that the current models for petroleum formation are incorrect, it would help your case no end to actually do some research on what they are.

5. Produce evidences of bioorganic sources for 25x10deg21 g of methane (this figure exceeds all organic matter stored in all Phanerozoic sedimentary basins) that decayed in the troposphere for Neogene-Quaternary time due to photochemical reactions.

It's called 'Photosynthesis', or rather the anerobic breakdown of the products of photosynthesis. If such quantities of Methane were not coming from biological sources, there would be no oxygen in the atmosphere.

6. Produce evidences of present-day powerful lateral hydrocarbon streams feeding the traps (accordingly to the bioorganic concept there are lots of petroleum systems still active in many basins).

We call them 'oil seeps' at the surface. Given a residence time of 1ma, a 1 Billion barrel field would be charged at the rate of 30 barrels per day; hardly a powerful rate. Since this is your pet theory, YOU provide evidence - ANY evidece - that oil is moving at depths >15km.

Agreed, the text should be edited, re-written and re-formatted. However, what’s the necessity to have such long comments on bioorganic model of oil origin here?

The page reads very much like a puff-piece for what is a very fringe theory, and makes deliberate misstatements about petroleum geology in order to promote an agenda. For instance, someone deliberately edited out references to the Athabasca source rocks.

--193.130.83.216 13:45, 9 December 2005 (UTC) Ajduk

Several lines with due links to relevant Wiki and other webpages could be quite enough. Otherwise, it can easily provoke counter-comments on those pages.

Kitchka

[edit] Major Flaws

The article is in dire need of editing (as others have mentioned). I can improve the language, but the facts are in dispute. I'm adding the Expert tag. It will need to stay until an informed consensus is reached. ::Didactylos 08:24, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the microdiomonds/diamondoids thing, i too agree that there's little evidence for the Pro side, and I did add the Con side mainly as a foil to the Pro side. I, for one, would shed tears (crocodilian) idf the whole issue was removed. Permanently. So as not to clog up an already ridiculous subject with more ridiculousness.::Rolinator 12:11, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diamondoids from drill bits? (sic)

Like biogenic postulation about petroleum origin, evidence of diamondoids present in natural petroleum and gases being contamination from drill bits during drilling wells is absolute nonsense. Diamondoids is similar to natural diamonds from kimberlites and lamproites but only because its molecular structure. In chemical comparison diamondoids have hydrogen added to carbon atoms while diamonds is only pure carbon without hydrogen. Neverthless, both probably have similar origin from great depth in the earth's mantle, supporting abiogenic petroleum origin.

So, diamondoids are hydrogen-carbon, or similar to a carbide? What is its mineral name? If it is an identified naturally occurring mineral substance you should be able to provide a name for it and provide some form of reference. Otheriwse it's like saying hematitoid is hematite with hydrogen added when it's actually goethite. And also, why don't we see diamondoids in all rocks from the deep crust? Such as metamorphosed Phanerozoic sediments which, presumably, contained a kerogen which had been converted to a carbide or carbon hydride compound? Surely all metamorphic rocks would have this, not just deep basinal rocks, and by inference, there would be abundant evidence of this mineral. Rolinator 07:08, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, addendum: Isn't methane a diaomondoid? Carbon, 4 hydrogen = methane. In practise, identifying long chain hydrocarbon tars as separate from diamondoids would be nearly impossible, especially if, as in the biogenic dehydrogenation reactions of bituminous coal or kerogen to anthracite or graphite, the hydrogen content dropped to only 4%? Wouldn't some mildly hydrogenous anthracite-grade kerogen approach the composition of "diamondoid"? If so, how could you tell submicroscopic particles of anthracite apart from diamondoid? And if you couldn't, surely under a microscope, anthracitic kerogens would look like diamondoid; highly reflective, subtranslucent, conchoidal fracture. Sorry, I remain unconvinced.Rolinator 07:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


Re: to Rolinator

I strongly reccomend you visit the website this page and its links to learn about diamondoids; not all but just a little bit. http://www.chevron.com/moleculardiamond/diamondtech/properties.asp. Diamondoids is not a mineral, of course. You should say maybe a tiny mineraloid. We can not see diamondoids in all rocks because diamondoids came from earth's mantle and diamonds too. Pressures and temperatures at crustal level are very low even metamorphic belts, some igneous rocks, in comparison to earth's mantle. Kerogen in Phanerozoic metamorphic belts will become carbonaceous phyllite, carbonaceous schist or graphitic. Probably primordial methane from mantle form these diamondoids (upper mantle?). Methane is not a diamondoid. Methane is a gas and do not form crystalline latice. Unfortunatelly most part of geologist don't understand still earth's formation, primary geochemical differenciation, abundance and distribuition of gases such as methane, helium, nitrogen. Also coal and bitumens are not "fossil fuels". It's important read the book The Deep Hot Biosphere (Thomas Gold) to learn about methane, petroleum, helium, coal, tar, peats ecc. I think that if we understand methane we will understand better our good and old geology. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.216.85.174 (talk • contribs) 01:17, 31 January 2006 UTC.

I do admit that I and the vast population of geologists don't know much about the deep mantle, etc. The problem I and everyone else on wikipedia has with this article is that the whole thing is hanging off Russian research (correct or not), and the work of Thomas Gold, who is one of the typical eccentric nutcase geologists who make all these theories and do very little actual direct research. This poses a problem because although you obviously have your own agenda to push, wikipedia articles have to be unbiased and based on essentially orthodox views. If we start allowing every weird and wacky theory to gain a massive article like this, there are several problems;

  • Students who reference wikipedia will run up against orthodox instruction and teaching in their classs and can risk being failed because they see some theory on wikipedia, cite it and the refs contained within it, and faily or othewise get maked down. A lot of education is learning orthodox views because they are solid, understood, etc
  • Wikipedia will become cluttered with confusing information, which will prevent people learning what is "right" and generally agreed to be right and what is not generally agreed to be "right". Even agreeing that it is worthy to present alternative viewpoints, they cannot be wild speculation and based on unorthodox theories.

Thus my problem is Thomas Gold's book draws together disparate sometimes unconfirmed, poorly understood or ambiguous evidence to make a theory which does not fit with the vast majority of petroleum occurrences. Should we accept this as being "factual" and part of an encylopedia? Not without being very careful about the language; removing emotional words; and that is not what you have achieved or are promoting.

If diamondoids are poorly understood an ambiguous (because we have no evidence that bacteria can live anywhere near the mantle), should we include them? Not in my opinion. Rolinator 04:10, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


First: Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and the article abiogenic petroleum origin is specific to treat about this theory with contribuitions focused. Biogenic theory is so poor that do not have a specific article in Wikipedia. The problem of petroleum paradox is not solved yet (If your tie has a ketchup spot this fact do not signify that tie is made whole from tomatoes).

2nd: Dr. Thomas Gold is not a geologist, he was astrophysycist, astronomer. In fact, his views about origin of hydrocarbons and other theories are controverse, but he is not a ignorant. I continue reccomend you read the book "The Deep Hot Biosphere" with an open mind. Not only in Russia but also in USA many experimental high pressure and temperature studies made in laboraratory confirm possibility of hydrocarbon generation from inorganic materials, based on thermodynamic calculations, suggesting environment compatible to processes deep in the earth (Mantle). Russian and Ukrainian scientists were the first understand origin of petroleum and always they shared this knowledge with the world.

3rd: bacteria do not exist near mantle. I think that nobody wrote this nonsense (its the same someone write that diamondoids is contamination from drill bits - this last conception, in my view, is a problem for students). Bacteria, acts at shallow levels in crust eating primordial hydrocarbons and left their fingerprints in these hydrocarbons (biomarkers). "A banana can not eat a monkey, the opposite is possible because that fruit came first"

I respect your opinions but I not agree. Geology is a young science. Our knowledge about earth still just a little bit. I hope that we can advance with space program for instance Cassini-Huygens mission to Titan and many others. Thanks.


Geology is a young science, but a lot older than astrophysics. Also, I'd hardly want a motor mechanic looking at my kidneys, so I don't really believe an astrophysicist knows enough about :geology to make accurate predictions.

Russian science has done some almost mythical things. Drilling to 12km into the crust. Synthesising a 18 month 5Kbar, 450 degree C acidic hydrothermal experiment, etc. But that does not mean that the assumptions made by anyone about the mantle hold true: we have only secondary evidence of the mantle and lots and lots of equations. I don;'t trust equations.
Rolinator 11:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Final answer on diamondoids

OK; Diamonds are invariably formed from abiogenic carbon and, without argument, are abiogenic. They show carbon isotope ratios around 0 to 5 per mil indicating little, if any isotopic fractionation during their formation. However, the structurally related diamondoids in oil show high levels of isotopic fractionation in the range of -20 to -30 per mil, the same as most true biomarkers, indicating diamondoid derivation from enzymatic ally-created lipids with subsequent structural rearrangement during the process of source rock maturation and oil generation.
Reference: Mellor et al. Carbon isotopic composition of -20 to -30 per mil for diamondoids, which include atoms aside from carbon in their lattices, is different from diamond carbon at 0 to -5 per mil. Also, this shows that diamondoids cannot have been created by terrestrial methane which is at -30 to -70 per mil or more; because reactions favor light carbon, you'd think deep methane wconverted to diamondoid would show a much greater sken in isotopic composition. So, sorry, diamondoids are no evidence of abiogenic petroleum, though you were right that they aren't from drill bits as I ignorantly claimed. But anyway, its over and done with now.Rolinator 09:07, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I continue disagreeing. Diamondoids as diamonds come from deep sources (mantle), not from "source rocks" that is nonsense. Caution, the paper citted in reference (Mello), he is a owner of an enterprise with business in organic geochemistry and of course he never would believe that petroleum is abiogenic.

Why do Wikipedia articles have to be "based on orthodox views"? That completely wipes out the whole field of documenting UNorthodox views. Saying that x believes y is not the same as asserting that y is true. Howdoesthiswo 23:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Appeal to authority

"The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin." (Dmitri Mendeleev, 1877)[1]

Mmmmm... nothing says "NPOV" like an appeal to authority in the third paragraph.

The rest of the artical does not disappoint. Massive, repeated, flagrant NPOV violations. A+++ --203.222.161.178 03:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh. You fixed it. Bugger. --203.222.161.178 05:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry. Go read the Joe Vialls story; its equally as amusing.Rolinator 07:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Going over the evidence again

I have been going over the evidence of this Abiogenic theory again, prompted by its leaking over into the coal and Talk:coal pages. I am not entirely against methane from the mantle feeding bacteria, whose dead bodies could then form biogenic oil, in granites or whatever. But when people start crapping on about coal from magma, I see red. So lets go over some of the evidence, same as in Talk:Coal;

  • Abiogenic theory cites Albertite as evidence of liquid coal and coal discordant with bedding
  • This is actually a form of bitumen or asphaltane which is a residue left over from an oil accumulation. The discordance comes from its injection into an anticlinal extensional fault. It is NOT coal.
  • The WorldNetDialy link and proposition about the White Tiger field in Vietnam is essentially a tainted link, because the guys running WorldNetDaily wrote the book "Black Gold Stranglehold".
So effing what? Since virtually everything ever written about anything is penned by persons who are more supportive of one theory over another and have said so -- let's just delete 99.87% of Wikipedia right now! Otherwise, I fail to see a reason for bitching about WND when Chevron's progaganda is front & center over at peak oil. Jeesh; the subject is mysterious happenings five miles down, not denying the Holocaust.--Mike18xx 07:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
  • White Tiger is the only oil convincingly shown to be hosted in granite; however, inspection of the seismic profile of the area shows faulted basement passive margin which is sealed by an onlapping sedimentary sequence. It isn't conclusively proven whether the oil has migrates sideways from the sediments into the granite. For instance the CuuLong seismic profile shows a definite basement horst with onlapping sedimentary source rocks, draped by a reservoir seal. Oil is probably hosted in fractured granite, and it is feasible that this is not abiogenic. Consider the orthodox trap play would see the oil migrate up the horst bounding faults from the lower source units, into the trap unit draped over the top.
  • WorldNetDaily and other abiogenic theorists leap aboard the whole "oil in granite" thing without really going into depth about the whole architecture of the basin and its horst blocks. To be an unqualified granite host, I personally would want to see NO caprocks, and NO onlapping sediments which could feed oil into brittle extensional faults, leading to a domed trap atop the horst.
  • Meteorite Orgueil was found to contain amino acids, which are NOT the so-called 'petroleum' products purportedly found in meteorites according to this paper, used as a citation to support abiogenesis. So, if you are lacking actual hydrocarbons and have 70 amino acids which can be catalyzed by HCN, you do not have proof that petroleum (ie; long-chain hydrocarbons) can be formed abiogenically.
  • Meteorite Murchison

"The meteorite also contained hydrocarbons which appeared abiogenic in character and was enriched with a heavy isotope of carbon, confirming the extraterrestrial origin of its organics." So, the debate is hardly over, and these hydrocarbons, amino acids and "sugars" are hardly evidence that we have crude oil formed in space, like the links supplied as evidence seem to suggest. Let no one be confused; synthesising amino acids abiogenically is plausible; synthesising short-chain hydrocarbons is plausible. Add a bit of oxygen, and you get a "sugar". We are, however, debating whether or not it is more likely that the vast majority of oil and coal on Earth is biological or not, and hence whether it is possible to abiogenically create these deposits, and so far, the evidence is weighted towards producing ONLY simple, chort-chain "organic" compounds.

  • Proterozoic oils are known in the Roper Superbasin in Australia, this is without a doubt. However, consider that these "ancient" oils are sourced from carbonate (stromatolite) formations and are entrained in dolerite dykes. Oil in igneous rocks? No. Oil trapped in igneous rocks which have penetrated an oil-bearing basin. Oil in Proterozoic basements? No. Oil in Proterozoic sediments, which have since released their oil. There are biological sources for Proterozoic oils (read the ref list).
  • Proterozoic biomarkers are known from both degraded kerogens, and undegraded inclusions within post-igneous minerals. This infers that, a) the inclusion minerals formed during the oil 'window', and can be dated, and b) no further oil has seeped into the basin from supposed abiogenic sources since then. Also, the difference in biomarker phenotypes is significant, as if the abiogenic theory was correct, we should see all types of biomarkers in the Proterozoic, including ones from more advanced plant phyla. We do not, which supports the inferences that biomarkers are in fact from plant remains, not miraculously synthesised from the mantle effervescences.
  • Deep-earth bacteria DO exist, yes. But feed mostly on sulhur, and live in veins. In all cases, life needs space, which is generally lacking within most deep rocks, let alone the mantle.
  • Other weird arguments abound about Proterozoic oils, particularly related to shungites from Karelia, Russia. These may represent Proterozoic oil shales or even coal. S.L. Zhmur interpreted shungites as cyanobacterial mats.
  • Gasresources.net tends to host most of the Russian "literature" on the abiogenic oil evidence. This is, at best, broadly descriptive and doesn't give much in the way of evidence, like the Vietnamese seismic sections, so Western observers can't readily question the theories and their "facts". However, statements like this: The trapping strata for the reservoirs in the Carboniferous period sandstones are shallower shale formations, as is typical for sedimentary reservoirs. The trapping strata for the reservoirs in the Precambrian crystalline basement are impervious, non-fractured, essentially horizontal zones of crystalline rock which alternate with the fractured, uncompacted, bed-like zones of granite and amphibolite. hint that, again, this is a horst of crystalline basement with brittle structures filled by typical methods explicable under the orthodox 'oil play's of biogenic theory.

So, I particularly don't see much in the way of concrete evidence on these parts which is unequivocally conclusive of an abiogenic origin for any of these features. If you eliminate these Russian and Vietnamese oil-in-granite occurrences as being probably simple "fractured basement" reservoirs, then you eliminate the major thrust of abiogenic theory which cites this as evidence that oil is found in all rocks in economic quantities. Yes, it is, but it could have migrated there from the sediments nextdoor. If you disabuse the notion of "liquid coal" or "magmatic coal" which is fairly easy, you can only reinforce the notions that coal is biological in origin. This, in turn, reduces the import of Thomas Gold's theories and Kudratsyev's principle that carbon is sequestrated in a sedimentary section by magmatic fractionation.

Having given a few good solid kicks to the credibility of the proponents, I think we should focus on

  1. removing systematically any links to counterculture-aligned nonscientific websites which are proposed as "evidence". These are NOT evidence.
  2. Leave only scientifically peer-reviewed journal articles in the links sections and as references. This can include the Russian literature, and Gold's book. But not Vialls' book and not the link to WorldNetDaily, because their book is a recap of other arguments.
  3. We want only PRIMARY references, of papers. Not books which reference one another and the author's own works and other books.

When you go through the extant links, this would reduce the evidence for abiogenic petroleum to Thomas Gold's book and some Russian papers we can't get in English.That may be as far as we can push it, but to me, it seems fine. If the abiogenic theorists want to prop their arguments up, they should have to do so with actual evidence, not yet more hearsay and tinfoil hat claims.

Rolinator 08:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fischer tropsch edit

I edited this to remove the following:

This process was developed and used extensively in World War II by Germany, which had limited access to crude oil supplies. It is today used in South Africa to produce most of that country's diesel from coal. Since there are large but finite coal reserves in the world, this technology could be used as an interim transportation fuel if conventional oil were to disappear. There are several companies developing the process to enable practical exploitation of so-called stranded gas reserves, those reserves which are impractical to exploit with conventional gas pipelines and LNG technology.

I did this because

  1. this information is about the fischer-tropsch process and its use in the modern world
  2. This is irrelevant to the discussion of serpentinisation synthesis of oil
  3. it is not scientific evidence either for or against
  4. It is speculative corporate information, again, of no scientific value to the discussion of abiogenic oil

I hope you agree with this. We can do without cluttering up the evidence sections with quasi-political and quasi-corporate speculations. Rolinator 02:21, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed new format for article

I have embarked upon a rewrite of the article, to bring it into some semblance of order and logic. this is a work in progress; I'd like some input before I go and change the main article (I'll give it a week or so before I do it anyway).

The philosophy behind this is, firstly, to recombine the disparate arguments into a coherent set of arguments for the theory, based on the underlying mechanism (which appears to be serpentinite synthesis; everything else relies on bacteria) and explanations (primordial methane, which is fairly weak); then evidence pointing at this mechanism from petroleum geochemistry, from geological phenomena and observations, and lastly by analyzing the case studies and examples of biogenic petroleum carefully, one by one.

I have then excised the history of the theory to a later section, because it is essentially biographical and personality information on the proponents, and also moved all the peak oil and quasi-political arguments to a later section. The deep hot biosphere/microbe arguments should be shunted over to a separate page because this is biogenic oil whether you like it or not, and this article should remain focused on trying to eliminate such bacteria as sources of oil, not just say 'oh well, its abiogenic oil contaminated by bacterial oil, so nyer!'.

This has advantages over the current format which is clunky, confusing, and biased by both sides of the fence, in a wholly remarkable way.

I will go through the references later on, to check that they are actually credible, and to include the refs and links, above in my critique. Remember - I want to see this article become a worthy discussion of the theory not a poetic glorification of its proponents, or a conspiracy theory tinfoil hat wank, or a counter-culture shrine to antidisestablishmentarianism.

You can find the proposed format over at my sandbox page (User:Rolinator/sandbox); please give me some decent feedback. Note: I can insult better than anyone alive, so don't bother me around on my own talk page. Genuine feedback only. Cheers. Rolinator 08:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Please avoid the vulgar language. This is a public forum. Stovetopcookies 04:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Wank? Vulgar? Wank?!?! Wank is hardly vulgar. Necrof3lching or motherf$cker are vulgar.Rolinator 10:16, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
There's no need to exacerbate it. Be civil. — Omegatron 13:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Good! Rewrite long overdue. Vsmith 13:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

OK. I actually did work on the serpentinite mechanism and took some time studying the massive catalog of links (which I haven't fully gone through yet). I also don't understand how to do the internal ref linking, but I'm sure Vsmith and others will spell check and link this... However; these are the reasons I'll give for cutting much of the article out;
  1. Much of it was repetitive arguments. For instance, the biomarkers and particularly the presence of methane in everything, were mentioned at least six times as evidence for abiogenic theory. It only needed mentioning once; hence, the article is shorter.
  2. A lot of the evidence for and against is basically ambiguous, such as chirality, odd-number hydrocarbon abundance, etc etc. I'm not a biochemist or a chemist; we need one to look at that and make a decision whether to re-include it.
  3. The article's former format of Pro vs Con on each bulllet point was pointless bickering and overly wordy. I managed to roll the arguments into 3 categories
    1. Mechanism. Previously not discussed. And yet, it is plausible, if not proven that you can synthesise petroleum via serpentinite.
    2. Chemistry. This is ambiguous, mostly, because you can argue either point for or against. So if it was ambiguous it got cut. There's a lot of arguments I can make about carbon isotopes, but it'll need diagrams and equations and a LOT of time, suffice to say, discuss the isotopes first before haring off and changing it, please.
    3. Geology. There was a lot of basically bullshit abiogenic evidence used here. I've had to resort to chopping a lot of it out because its absolutely wild speculation. Others, which are moderately defensible or worth rebuking, were given the for/against treatment.
    4. Example deposits, has been shaved down to White Tiger. Its the one most often quoted by WorldNetDaily, alternet, Vialls' and LaRouche et al. as being "pproof" of abiogenic oil. However, I'd put my money more on the Venezuelan crude than White Tiger, pending a look into the Venezuelan oils. But again, its going into the politics.
  4. I kept the history section mostly unchanged, and left politics well alone.
  5. I answered the bits I chopped out re: western bias, by showing that research is continuing, even today. Not a lot of direct testing is going on. This is, frankly and unapologetically to our abiogenic champions, because the scientific community blew ~$70M drilling the Siljan crater for Thomas Gold and returned nothing. Or, at most, 8 barrels.
  6. I chopped out all the deep hot biosphere arguments. Yes, its semantics, but deep bacteria do exist but that is a frm of biogenic oil, and the arguments about biomarkers were overly complicated by everyone arguing the middle ground of a deep biosphere. We should be iscussing purely abiogenic oil, from the mantle, not oil from the sub-greenschist facies where everything gets confused by deep hydrothermal circulation, bacteria and isotopic fractionation.
To sum up the current state of the science: yes, its possible and plausible and it is likely that some oil is abiogenic and likely that an oilfield somewhere is mostly abiogenic in origin, but as of now there is very little conclusive proof, and what is portrayed in the article is the state-of-the-art knowledge. And what's here is actually 50 times as much as in most petroleum geology textbooks.

Now I await the edits, and the discussions.
Rolinator 02:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor gripe about hydrogen ratios

The article says: ...Sir Robert Robinson studied the chemical makeup of natural petroleum oils in great detail, and concluded that they were mostly far too hydrogen-rich to be a likely product of the decay of plant debris. Olefins, the unsaturated hydrocarbons, would have been expected to predominate by far in any material that was derived in that way.

In the next paragraph, this is "refuted" by citing the existence of biotic waxes and oils and concluding that: The argument that it is impossible to create hydrogen-rich long-chain hydrocarbons in nature is fallacy.

Note however, that the original argument was NOT that it is impossible to create hydrocarbons naturally. What R. Robinson is pointing out is that the overall ratio of carbon to hydrogen differs between petroleum and biological material. The fact that biological material can contain small amounts of hydrocarbons is hardly a refutation of this argument.

I have accordingly changed the wording from:

The argument that it is impossible to create hydrogen-rich long-chain hydrocarbons in nature is fallacy.

to:

These oils and waxes, however, occur in quantities too small to significantly affect the overall hydrogen/carbon ratio of biological materials.

Freederick 03:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

That sounds fine by me, but if you want, you should probably rewrite the whole section. Or ditch it. The problem I had with it was that it was one of many very broken arguments which can be stated either for or against. Specifically, yes, you can create via biogenic means, oils and waxes which have different chemical formulas, but the same H:C:O ratios as crude oil. But this is irrelevant to the whole argument of Robinson which is that the H:C ratio of petroleum is so low that it suggests that it needs a reducing environment.
The problem with taking a purely chemical view (especially from 1950's research) is that the chemistry of living organisms runs counter to the typical laws of thermodynamics which drive reactions in beakers. Organisms create very hydrogen saturated compounds at great energy expense because they need them for biomechanical tasks wihin the living cells. This occurs in a wasteful manner, and requires energy, which is provided by the sun or other chemical means. Can these break down to provide long-chain hydrocarbons of C6+ or C8+? Yes.
Can these be synthesised in the crust and the mantle? I don't know. One argument against is the need to maintain a chemically reduced environment to prevent oxidation. This is plausible in serpentinites, for a time (basically, until it begins carbonating). But, minerals don't react the same way as organisms.
The other salient point with the serpentinite process and its similarity to the Fischer-Tropsch process is to do with reagents and products. Chemical reactions are equilibrium systems; products and reagents balance out in a constant proportion at the same temperature and pressure. The F-T process works efficiently because we saturate the reaction with enough methane that the equilibrium favors production of oil. In nature it is highly unlikely that the concentration of methane is enough to produce anything more than a tiny amount of oil. This can then react back with the ingredients it was created with, in equilibrium. Even if the serpentinite is an open system, I would expect that 99% of the time virtually nothing is produced because the equilibrium chemistry doesn't favour oil.
Can we envisage burying these plants in an oxygn-free rock mass, and in an already reduced environment which you cannot find in non-organic rocks easily (not even serpentinite) aside from graphite schists, can we reorganise cllulose into petrol, or plant waxes and lipids into petrol, after cooking off hydrogen and oxygen in fats and sugars as water? Sure we can. Its highly plausible, and fits with thermodynamics because it is a response to the potential energy of submetamorphic conditions, whereas spontaneous genesis of high-chain-length hydrocarbons is not.
Could I have explained all of that in four sentences? No. So I left the old section alone, even if it is rather shit. So, you're welcome to synthesise the above down into two paragraphs.Rolinator 07:40, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Rewrote Abiogenic Petroleum Origin? Bad, very bad

I suggest return to original article. It seems that was rewrote by a creotionist (above by anon 200.217.143.92 - only post)

No, it was redone by a geologist. Don't really know what a creotionist would say about it, (don't really care either). The current version is far better than the hodge-podge of pov that it replaced. Sure there is room for improvement, seems there always is.
Now if you have specific points, please say what they are and we'll discuss. Vsmith 00:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Redone by a geologist...but suspect because I think that he don't believe in abiogenic petroleum origin that is the theme of Wikipedia article. I would prefer that the text redone by a true expert in this matter. I agree that this matter is controversial but the title of article its not for comparison between teories but rather contribuitions and evidences focused.

Indeed, I soundly dispute creation "science". So you are way off base there, anonymous snarker. Sure its not perfect; we don't have 200 pages of space to go into detail on everything, and I can't outright lift the phase diagrams I need to prove a lot of the evidence for and against. Nevertheless, there's more than a few geologists on here who are probably going to agree more with what I wrote than what was there before, and not because its more biased. In fact, this revision actually includes some basic equations for HOW abiogenic petroleum is supposed to form. You could even say I, a doubter, improved the case for it markedly. Rolinator 01:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I admire your efforts, maybe self-including how a new probably proponent of a new teory (deep biogenic petroleum theory) sic, please, correct if I am wrong or what is the author or references of this theory?

Gold; deep hot biosphere. Etc. Give me time; I'm still sorting the refs and links out from this train wreck of an article.
Also, I am sure you would love to have the article as an entirely one-sided affair run by people who put links to the only two real sources of concern with the issue (WorldNetDaily; Gas Resources Corporation ie; J.F. Kenney et al), and not discuss at all the serious concerns that the majority of the scientific community has with the issue. However, I am sure I am not the only person who would like to see it remain as an unbiased discussion type article where readers can at least attempt to find out both ides of the story. It is a contentious issue; therefore we deal with the bone of contention.
note that also the article barely even touches on the biogenic theory, and remains focused on discussing the problems with the abiogenic theory. So, what's your problem? That I decided to trim out all the poetic references to Russians and Ukrainian heroes? That it is no longer a blow-by-blow bitchfest? That it is 2/3rds the size of the previous edition? That it has removed a lot of the bitching and slanging which went on before? That it doesn't fit your percieved worldview? Rolinator 05:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seemingly Conflicting Arguments

Maybe it's me but in the geological arguments for and against the theory, there seems to be conflicting statements. In the con side it says: "The eight barrels of oil-like substance produced from the Siljan borehole were proven to be diesel sludge contamination". But on the pro side it says that it was shown that diesel sludge contamination was proven to not be the source. At best, perhaps it should be clarified? Ucntcme 18:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

It should be...and someone has tried to, though I'm not sure where they got their info; and it's unlikely the hole was drilled only "a few metres away". Give me some time, and I'll try to hunt up the data on those two wells. I'm sure that both didn't produce the sludge. And anyway, even if it's 8 barrels of abiogenic sludge, its hardly the bonanza of free abiogenic oil is it? You see, Thomas Gold convinced a bunch of bankers in London in the 70's during the oil crisis, when oil cost an arm and a leg, that oil was abiogenic, etc etc, and that the best place to find it was in the Siljan crater, because a) it is above ancient fractured basement, b) capped by sediments 360Ma old which couldn't make oil by the biogenic theory and c) was a meteorite crater which would have fractured the crust and created the fracture networks necessary for abiogenic oil to percolate upwards.

End result: Thomas Gold and his investors drilled 2 7,500m bores, found shit (whether or not you believe it's diesel or not it's still a failure). Ergo, the best site in the world for abiogenic oil is proven to be a duster, your theory sucks arse. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation believes otherwise and shows analyses, which is good. Science thrives on debate. But science also works on evdence, and so far the evidence says the Siljan stuff, regardless of its nature, is proof that abiogenic oil is irrelevant.Rolinator 08:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The inability of Gold, et al, to discover (significant) petroleum after deliberately attempting to locate it in the unlikeliest of places neither "proves" nor "disproves" his or anyone else's theories. After all, it's not as if he proposed the continents where floating like rafts over the stuff. The more important scientific work revolves around chemistry, not whether or not something has been found. (But if we do wish to go there, *I* would certainly like a credible explanation for why there's enough dissolved CO2 down at the mantle/crust interface boundary to propel liquid magma into 2,000ft fountains out of Kileaua's vents.)--Mike18xx 07:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article is being cited in Peak Oil

This article is being cited in Peak Oil as authority for changing "Since fossil fuels are finite" to "If petroleum supply is finite". Now we have an NPOV problem. --Nagle 07:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The article, per se, is not being cited; the proponants of abiogenic oil (with which this entry is concerned) are being alluded to. That aside, the edited "Since..." sentence was POV in itself, and I changed it on those grounds alone. (Abiogenic oil was counter-pointed elsewhere in the peak oil entry.)
Well, maybe you both should go back to Peak Oil and tell everyone to re-read this article, because it's not supportive of unending supplies of oil. Also, if there's an NPOV problem it is because Peak Oil is a theory, and it is based on one hypothesis related to the abiogenic / biogenic oil debate. I don't see an NPOV problem, I see a bunch of pointy-headed wetpants who can't read thingsproperly and start screaming "this bunch of geeks writing Peak Oil say blah and the guys arguing in internecine warfare over on Abiogenic theory say something else!"
Well, tough luck. This whole debate is based on American insecurity about oil. People argue about Hubbert's Peak, people resurrect Abiogenic Oil, because they don't want to change their behaviour and they figure since they've read something on the internet it means they are instant experts who think that they can argue and debate and dick around with semantics.
Basically, this article isnt NPOV. The pro-abiogenic anti-peak people are pushing an agenda. Screw them. Rolinator 12:22, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Uh huh. ("Dr. Hypocrisy! Call your office!") Your agenda (beyond lumpen, proletarian anti-Americanism) is apparently to get these "people" (Google "ambiguous-collective" "logical fallacy") to "change their behavior". >forehead smack! I should have known that Gold wrote the things he did because he was a lazy gas-guzzler not interested in changing his guzzling ways. Silly me....--Mike18xx 03:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Blow me. Or get a geology degree. Rolinator 10:11, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The attempted plagiarism by T. Gold of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins.

Thomas Gold is not the father of the Russian-Ukranian abiotic oil theory. He is also a known plagiarist and disinformationist. I believe this page needs a MAJOR overhaul and all references to Thomas Gold should be removed.

Source. Please click on the link to the source to view the links to the articles referenced at the bottom of the page.

This page is written in order to clear up certain misunderstandings connected with the provenance, and authorship, of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. Everything about the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is extraordinary. Not only has this extensive body of scientific knowledge permitted the Russian nation, which had been previously petroleum-poor, to achieve energy independence, but also modern Russian petroleum science has been the subject of the most daring attempt at plagiarism in the history of modern science.

Sometime during the late 1970’s, a British-American, one-time astronomer named Thomas Gold discovered the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. Such was not difficult to do, for there are many thousands of articles, monographs, and books published in the mainstream Russian scientific press on modern Russian petroleum science. Gold reads the Russian language fluently.

In 1979, Gold began publishing the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of petroleum origins, as if such were his own ideas and without giving credit to the Russian (then, Soviet) petroleum scientists from whom he had taken the material. Gold tried to alter the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins with notions of his own in order to conceal its provenance, and gave his “ideas” the (very misleading) name the “deep gas theory.”

Worse yet, Gold’s alterations of modern Russian petroleum science are utterly wrong. Specifically Gold’s claims that there exist large quantities of natural gas (methane) in the Earth at depths of its mantle are completely wrong, - such claims are upside-down and backwards. At the pressures of the mantle, methane is unstable, and the hydrogen-carbon system there evolves the entire suite of heavier hydrocarbons found in natural petroleum, in the Planck-type distribution which characterizes natural petroleum. Methane at pressures of the mantle of the Earth will decompose to evolve octane, diesel oil, heavy lubricating oils, alkylbenzenes, and the compounds found in natural petroleum. [These properties of the hydrogen-carbon system have been described at greater length and rigor in a recent article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.1] Regrettably, Gold is as ignorant of thermodynamics as he is of ethics.

A few moment’s thought should have been given to the reasonable probability that an astronomer, who had no previous knowledge of petroleum or geology, and no experience in those fields, might have independently thought up, all by himself, a formidably extensive body of knowledge which itself resulted from the directed work of many, many men and women of a large country with a splendid scientific tradition, working over several decades. The notion compares with the myth of Apollo springing fully-armed from the forehead of Aphrodite. As the French say, “incroyable !”

A common saying goes that “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.” Perhaps one might speculate that plagiarism is somehow an even more sincere compliment. Not so. The plagiarism of scientific work constitutes theft of a scientist’s most precious possessions.

Scientists very rarely garner wealth from their endeavors. Science is usually done by its practitioners for the joy of discovery, - and for the credit and standing gained among their peers as reward for successful work. As one might expect, when the Russian petroleum scientists learned of Thomas Gold’s behavior, they were outraged. They remain so today.

The men and women in the former U.S.S.R. who worked hard to develop and enunciate the modern theory of abiotic petroleum origins struggled under unusual difficulties throughout their lives. This century has been very hard for every one born in the former U.S.S.R. All of the contributors to the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic hydrocarbon origins had to live through the worst of the Communist period in their country, and almost all of them suffered the terrible experiences of World War II. Their lives have been especially hard. Now without exception they are all poor. To have had even what little reward they deserved for their scientific work stolen from them by plagiarism is especially disgusting.

Gold’s attempts at plagiarism have not been restricted to the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. Thomas Gold is a serial plagiarist. In the papers which are included in the following pages, are to be found published complaints against Gold for having plagiarized scientific research involving not only modern Russian petroleum science [Krayushkin, U.S.S.R.], but also bolide impacts [Denofrio, U.S.A.] and speculations on an hypothesized agency of microbes for generating oil [Hunt, Canada].

A prairie lawyer named Abraham Lincoln once remarked, “you can fool all the people some of the time, and there are even some people whom you can fool all the time; but you can’t fool all the people, all the time.” Thomas Gold has yet to learn.


1 J. F. Kenney, V. G. Kutcherov, N. A. Bendeliani and V. A. Alekseev, "The evolution of multicomponent systems at high pressures: VI. The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origins of petroleum," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 2002, 99, 10976-10981.

Specification of the plagiarism by Thomas Gold in the diverse complaints of other scientists.


Letters from various scientists complaining of plagiarism by Thomas Gold, and from Russian scientists rejecting paper(s) by Gold for reasons of lack of originality and failure of attribution.


1. Letter of Dr. Richard A. Donofrio, Astro Geological Research, to editor of Atlantic Monthly, complaining of plagiarism by Thomas Gold of his [Donofrio's] work connected with bolide impact sites as potential prospects for petroleum exploration, dated May 1986. PDF version

2. Letter of John Briggs, Department of Journalism, Western Connecticut State University, to Professor V. A. Krayushkin, questioning the claims of Thomas Gold as originator of modern (Russian) petroleum science, dated 15 December 1989. PDF version.

3. Letter of Professor V. A. Krayushkin, Institute of Geological Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, to John Briggs, specifying and demonstrating the extent and sources of the plagiarism by Thomas Gold of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, dated 16 January 1990. PDF version.

4. Letter of Dr. C. Warren Hunt, Archean Petroleum, to Dr. Eugene Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy, complaining of plagiarism by Thomas Gold of his [Hunt's] ideas and speculations of a creation of petroleum by microbial action, dated 01 August 1989. PDF version.

5. Letter of Dr. I. N. Plotnikova, on behalf of the Organizing Committee for the International Petroleum Conference commemorating the semicentennial enunciation of modern petroleum science by N. A. Kudryavtsev, held in Kazan June 2001, rejecting, for lack of originality and failure to credit properly previous scientific work, a paper which Thomas Gold had tried to insinuate into the Proceedings of that conference. PDF version.

I think you are reading an older version; the version as it states it now, in the "History of Abiogenic Theory" section starts by crediting Berthelot and Mendeleev, then Kudryavtsev et al., and then moves on to say that in the West Gold was one of the most forceful proponents in recent times.
I'll quote you the article text just to make sure;
The abiogenic petroleum theory was founded upon several archaic interpretations of geology which stem from early 19th century notions of magmatism (which at the time was attributed to sulfur fires and bitumen burning underground) and of petroleum, which was seen by many to fuel volcanoes. Indeed, Wernerian appreciation of basalts at times saw them as solidified oils or bitumen. While these notions have been disabused, the basic notion that petroleum is associated with magmatism has persisted. The chief proponents of what would become the abiogenic theory were Mendeleev[28] and Berthelot.
Russian geologist Nikolai Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev was the first to propose the modern abiotic theory of petroleum in 1951. He analyzed the geology of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada and concluded that no "source rocks" could form the enormous volume of hydrocarbons, and that therefore the most plausible explanation is abiotic deep petroleum. However, humic coals have been proposed for the source rocks by Stanton (2005).
Although this theory is supported by geologists in Russia and Ukraine, it has recently begun to receive attention in the West, where the biogenic petroleum theory is still believed by the vast majority of petroleum geologists. Kudryavtsev's work was continued by many Russian researchers — Petr N. Kropotkin, Vladimir B. Porfir'ev, Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Georgi E. Boyko, Georgi I. Voitov, Grygori N. Dolenko, Iona V. Greenberg, Nikolai S. Beskrovny, Victor F. Linetsky and many others.
The theory is receiving attention from Western geologists, as indicated by the one day just prior to the June 2005 AAPG annual meeting in Calgary, Alberta.
Astrophysicist Thomas Gold[29] was one of the abiogenic theory's most prominent proponents in recent years in the West. Thomas Gold died in 2004, with apparently none of his students following up on his research. Conspiracist Joe Vialls [30] died in 2005. The passing of the torch may go to Dr. Jerome R. Corsi, author of "Black Gold Stranglehold", or Dr. Jack Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation[31][32][33]. Nevertheless, the theory has received continued attention in the media and scientific organizations (note external links).
Now. What you do from here on in is, firstly, update the "History of Abiogenic Theory", with your knowledge. Leave in the Berthelot-Mendeleev part; it's fine. Change the bit about the Russian researchers with whatever you want. We'll review. Leave in the things about Thomas Gold. While it may be true he came to the scene late, and not having read any Russian papers nor many of Gold's, and certainly not having worked out the chronology of it all, the fact remains, Gold is the most accessible source in the West, and he did research. Eliminating him and his work entirely isn't the way to go about it in wikipedia. I agree with your points, namely that it is likely he was a plagiarist and your reasoning is sound. But plagiarist or not, his work exists and is a reference for the English speaking world. Also, you seem unaware of one salient point: he is now deceased. So...change away, just be careful to adopt a NPOV stance and keep Gold in. We aren't here to judge, just report the facts. Also, you may be better off moving over to the wiki on Gold himself, and raising these points there as well. Thanks for your input, Rolinator 14:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


I already had advise. Return to original article...

[edit] Diamondoids, again

OK. Tiny they may be but you are confusing the crystal structure (cubic) of diamondoids with diamond, which is abiogenic, and thereby confabulating the idea that diamondoid is abiogenic and since it occurs in oil, oil is abiogenic.

It is not. See, above; diamondoid C isotopic fractionation too extreme for abiogenesis. Not found in Kimberlites. And since we're on the subject, galena is cubic, are you therefore saying that since galena is cubic and diamond is cubic it means galena is formed in the mantle at depths of 100km? That's stupid. Hence why I have edited this out. Again. And if you want to put it back in, Kenney's little helper, find me a ref outside WorldNetDaily or Gas Resources Corporation. Cheers,
Rolinator 12:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Incivil and inflamatory personal attack comment removed. Please be civil and avoid personal attacks. Vsmith 02:34, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Explicit language removed from Rolinator's post. Remember, this is a public forum. Stovetopcookies 04:42, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
NEVER ever censor another wikipedian's comment without prior discussion. Doing so only exposes your own narrow-mindedness and cultural arrogance, or, if you aren't narrow-minded or culturally arrogant, makes you appear that way. What you should be doing instead, as a smart and enlightened person, is adding a comment requesting that the original poster edit his or her comment in accordance with your prefered conventional beliefs. That's what nice people do in a public forum. Thanks. 4.159.11.138 10:33, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for...uh...prompting anything. But, sans expletives I stand by my science. Rolinator 11:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I am removing the diamondoids sentence In view of their demonstrated production at atmospheric pressure during pyrolysis of sediments: see Diamondoids and molecular biomarkers generated from modern sediments in the absence and presence of minerals during hydrous pyrolysis at pangea.stanford.edu

I don't believe their production at mantle condtitions has been demonstrated (though perhaps they can be) and therefore citing them as evidence for petroleum production in the mantle is pretty weak. DonSiano 15:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't find any reference (other than wikipedia spinoffs) where the presence of diamondoids in oil is taken as evidence for abiogenic origin is seriously proposed by a proponent of abiogenic petroleum. Gold never claimed it in his book. Therefore a citation is needed, or the (now restored) mention of them should be deleted. I put a citation needed tag on the sentence.DonSiano 20:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
So, where diamondoids come from? Biological detritus in your view? Diamondoids are found in all oils, mainly in soft oils and condensates and also in gas. Gas and coal frequently contain mercury and you mind that mercury is product of organic detritus? Please re-study your physics or learn chemistry! and geology of course. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.64.68 (talk • contribs).
The original phrasing [2] is similar to the present one and uses the term "diamondoids". Gold referred to "pseudomorphs of diamond" [3] but these are different from molecular diamondoid. (SEWilco 03:55, 10 September 2006 (UTC))
"Hydrothermal Hydrocarbons", at the AAPG Research Conference "Origin of Petroleum" (June 18, 2005, Calgary) did mention diamondoids ("nanodiamond particles"). On a related note, in what way does the isotopic ratios of oil/gas diamondoids differ from eclogitic diamonds? (SEWilco 05:18, 10 September 2006 (UTC))
Demonstrated production in rock at low pressure does not rule out abiogenic production in the mantle (high pressure) or crust (various pressures), it only weakens the use of diamondoids as a deep origin marker. Production at atmospheric pressure does not prove all diamondoids are made at the surface. (SEWilco 05:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC))
The suffix oid means like or resembling, with the implication that there are fundamental differences despite the superficial similarities. Diamondoids are not diamonds, in the same sense that humanoids are not human. Assuming that diamondoids have the same origin as diamonds is like assuming that little green Martians must come from Earth because they have the same number of arms and legs as Earthlings. Confusing the two really messes up the discussion. RockyMtnGuy 16:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abiogenic petroleum origin feasable?

After reading about this and comparing it to the common theory that petroleum comes from decaying plants, dinosaurs, etc., I think that the APO theory is actually quite feasable. Considering such vast quantities of oil that have been extracted, I would think that there would have to have been more dinosaurs than there are people in New York City, to have all died in the same area, at the same time. Could that really be possible? Also realize that organic matter is mostly comprised of water, which would evaporate before the dead dinosaurs' bodies would have been covered, leaving mainly bones. Unless bones turn into oil I would have to go with the idea that oil may in fact be a naturally occuring substance from deep in the Earth. Stovetopcookies 04:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Could it be possible? Yes. Anything is possible, but this isn't the probable source of all that fun happy go-go juice we use. You are correct that most organic matter is something like 60% water, sometimes more (jellyfish, etc). However, if you consider that most plants are more water-rich than human beings and coal is definitely composed of plant matter, your argument that dead flesh would evaporate is not only self defeating, but illogical. First off, flesh does not evaporate. You only see dinosaur bones because the flesh has been eaten by bacteria and other organisms (mattos, etc) which respirate it as carbon dioxide. Secondly, dinosaurs are not proposed as the source of oil, that is a frankly facetious argument. Oil is considered to be sourced from aquatic and marine plants...whichby definition cannot evaporate when they sink to the bottom of the water column.
So, sorry, stovetopcookies, you should keep OFF the green leafy vegetables and the mexican hash cookies before you prompt me to go into even more detailed explanations of why you don't exhibit the intelligence which humans are renowned for.
Evaporating dinosaurs! Hehehehe... Rolinator 10:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
There are few if any dead dinosaurs in our oil fields, and probably not very many plants. The vast majority of the dead critters that we burn in our cars were tiny little phytoplankton that died in the ocean and were buried in mud under anerobic conditions. This didn't happen everywhere, but where it did, it happened on a large scale over long periods of time. RockyMtnGuy 14:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kerogen and asteroids

I am not in any sense a mineralogist or a geologist (mathematical physics is my area), so I could be way off-base here, but our article on kerogens, as well as some of our asteroid articles, make the claim that kerogens exist in the asteroid belt, and indeed in deep space. Since the kerogen article suggests that kerogens are precursors to fossil fuels, would that suggest that hydrocarbons needn't have a biological origin? Wooster (talk) 10:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

It sure does mention kerogen, that wikipedia article. But what type of kerogen? Type I, type II? Is it just amino acids (ie; amine (nitrous) hydrocarbon which is potentially not organic) as mentioned above (do a bit of reading on this talk page)? OR is it just agenda pushing by the same people as like to mangle this page (aside from myself, obviously) so they can say, as you do, "hey look something written on a free to air, openly editable web page is supporting the wild ambit claims made on another web page!". IT's the internet, take everything with a grain of salt. Rolinator 00:56, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Qué? You need to get your tinfoil-detector checked, mate. I was asking an honest question. As it happens, I buy the biological origins theory, because I trust the experts in whose field this is. I understand this includes you. I was just wondering whether the existence of asteroidal kerogens was evidence that it needn't (and please watch my verbs, I choose them carefully) happen that way; in fact, I was more interested in the (admittedly, thoroughly hypothetical) question of whether those kerogens could be converted (by some process) into fuel, and you've given me a direction to head in. With thanks, Wooster (talk) 20:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, glad I could help out, mate.Rolinator 11:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why Hasnt It Been Exploited?

I'm not a geologist (I'm an economist actually) - but the biggest question I have when I read this is why this source of oil hasnt been exploited yet.

There are plenty of countries with the resources and technical capabilities to extract this source of energy if it was there to be exploited; the argument that it is a US-based conspiracy sounds far fetched and also is illogical.

China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Iran, Israel, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Norway, Australia, South Africa etc etc etc all are countries who have either the resources or technical capability to exploit this source, and will also do well to exploit this oil source. Not all of them are US dependent nations (Brazil, China and India being the biggest in that category); and aside from which, countries that are desidely not US friendly like Lybia, Cuba, etc are not adopting this theory in a hurry.

Even IF there was a government conspiracy, that really does nothing to prevent private companies from exploiting this resource. I have yet to hear of an IPO based on this theory. With oil hovering at 70 bucks a barrel - it would seem the most opportune time to take a stab at this; and with the profit motive still alive and well the last time I checked it would seem likely that someone, somewhere would launch some scheme to extract oil based on this theory.

The fact that it has not yet happened does not mean it will not happen, but it adds to the side of being cautious about this.

Also - compared to another theory, the idea of "Peak Oil" - it would seem that the risks are lopsided. If in the future we find that there IS an nearly endless (100x or more current reserves) supply of oil the world as a whole will probably experience something akin to what the US and the Developed nations experienced in the 20th century - massive industrialization, huge increases in food production, large increases in life span etc. That is not something to worry about or prepare for. If Peak Oil is true, however, the world looks increasingly bleak, and would argue for fairly drastic measures to prepare for such a world by reducing our dependence on oil. So either we do nothing and HOPE for this theory to turn out to be true; or we prepare for Peak Oil by changing out life styles.

The World Net Daily is obviously biased. The problem isnt that they are biased - the problem is that they are not evidence based. It seems that they are taking things out of context and are somewhat obscuring their sources. And their sources are not what most people would call high quality.

Like I said, I'm not a geologist, so I cant speak to the science behind this theory or try to refute it; but just on the basis of simple logic you would expect to see things that are clearly not being seen.

Thanks for the discussion - it's been very helpful in trying to figure out if the theory is correct or not.

This source of oil has not been exploited because it's not there. Gold, et al, drilled a few very deep wells and found virtually nothing. Oil companies, despite what the proponents of the theory think, drill the occasional very deep well to try to figure out the underlying geology of their fields. They haven't found any significant oil below the Cambrian formation. It's not that their theories preclude finding any oil deeper than that, it's just that it's not there. RockyMtnGuy 14:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Really? Vietnam has a super-deep well and its a major source of income for their economy. Go figure?

[edit] References

The references for this article appear to be in very bad shape: there are, for example 23 of them, while 33 are cited. As another example, ref no 16 about trace metals points to an article by Zhmur, rather than the intended one by Szatmari, which in the reference list is number 5. Clicking on the arrow next to ref 16 doesn't do anything. Can somebody explain what is going on here? Can they be readily fixed? DonSiano 15:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contradictory and confusing

"The eight barrels of oil-like substance produced from the Siljan borehole were proven to be diesel sludge contamination"

"It was proposed that the eight barrels of oil produced were from the diesel fuel based drilling fluid used to do the drilling, but the diesel was demonstrated to be not of the kind of oil found in the shaft."

Was it or was it not the same type of gunk used to drill the hole? If there's debate about that, can we state that there is debate about it, rather than saying yes in one paragraph and no the next?

Howdoesthiswo 23:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Or why not just say "the first hole may have been contaminated by drilling lubricant, so a second hole was drilled..." Also, in the same list: "Presence of deep-dwelling microbes in the Lechuguilla cave complex, New Mexico" What does this have to do with oil??? Ethan Mitchell 01:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
It says in a round about circumstantial way that yes, bugs live in rocks. If that gets your skirt blown up about the possibility that oil is created from said bugs then bully for you. No one here issaying that bacteria do not live within rocks, down to a few km underground, which is one tenet of the abiogenic camp. There's the evidence, make of it what you will. Can such bacteria decompose to produce oil? Beats me.
As for the stuff about the siljan drillholes, well, its controversial and the paper is buried deeply in some book or journal somewhere, and I haven't bothered digging it up, but neither has anyone else. Whether or not 4 barrels of crap equals a validation for 40 billion barrels of crap inSaudi Araia is an entirely different argument. Rolinator 03:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
My skirt is not blown up. My skirt is not even flammable. But the more I go over the article, the more I feel that the terminal set of lists is working directly against our need to write a clear, consistent article. The fact that the Siljan experiment is described differently in different lists would seem to indicate that people are adding things to the list with no regard for the article in general. Nor are the number of items in these lists so large that they really demand a litany format. I would hope that we can incorporate all of them into the main body of the article. Ethan Mitchell 21:15, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I did a lot of work, you should have seen it before. The Siljan stuff is the subject of much attention from pro-abiogenesis supporters, which have created the mangled contradictory nature of the page. You're welcome to do further reading on it and clear it up, but as far as I'm concerned, if it isn't completely wrong and no one just cuts out chunks of either argument quality can degrade over time until a major rewrite is necessary. I also wish you luck on getting the blow-by-blow lists dealt with, because hope springs eternal in the young, and it is the sign of consensus and not controvery when the lists disappear. Also, the article tends to be longer and involves a lot of tricks stuff like grammar and clauses and nested logical what ifs. Things which bullet point bitching alleviates by letting both sides profess their determined biases on the same page at the same time without requiring consensus. So go ahead, enjoy the week of effort required to do anything much to this page. Rolinator 08:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article is pretty much a complete disaster

It departs quite a bit from reality. Abiogenic oil is very much a fringe theory within the geological profession. I fear we're having a discussion of the "Flat Earth" theory versus the "Round Earth" theory.

I checked a number of the references, and in many cases they contradict the statements in the article. Many times it says "Nobody knows..." but when you check, you can find the names and organizations of the people who do know. It makes bald, unsupported statements like: "No investigator has ever produced anything resembling petroleum in the laboratory by the application of heat and pressure to plant debris." which is patently false because people have been producing things resembling petroleum from plant debris for centuries.

It goes on about biomarkers without mentioning that geologists use them to identify the particular critters that died to make their oil, and odd-numbered carbon atoms without saying that geologists use the odd-even ratio to determine how much cooking their oil got after the critters died. And it talks about Gold, the main proponent of the theory, who died after finding about 80 barrels of dubious oily stuff of uncertain origin at a cost of millions.

And then it says things like: "Supergiant fields such as the Athabasca Tar Sands (Canada), Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt (Venezuela) and the Ghawar Field (Saudi Arabia) are good examples that have been interpreted as having been formed by abiogenic oils. This interpretation is based mostly on perceived deficiency in source rock volumes."

Well, the source of the Ghawar Field is known to be "The argillaceous carbonate intervals of the Jurassic Hanifa and Tuwaiq Mountain Formations" (Ayers et al 1982). And, there's no lack of source rock in Saudi Arabia. The source of the Orinoco deposits are known to be "mudstones of the Upper Cretaceous Querecual Formation" (The CIA). There are actually source rocks underneath the Orinoco deposits, but the actual source rocks are 300 km north. That's why geologists use biomarkers to track down their oil - it can migrate hundreds of kilometres just to confuse them. Nobody knows the exact origin of the Athabasca deposits, but there are a dozen theories. The abiogenic theory was tested by C. Warren Hunt who drilled a very expensive well right through the tar sands into the pre-Cambrian granite underneath until his drill bit melted and found... nothing. It's been done before, but those who don't read history are doomed to repeat it. So, we're down to 11 theories involving 9 different source formations or, alternatively, 2 trillion tons of coal. Or maybe it just formed right in place. The debate continues.

So, someone really should put this dog out of its misery. Or at least, cut it down to the observed facts, in which case it will be about 1 paragraph long. RockyMtnGuy 23:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellent work. Please, if you can disprove these things, edit out the crap parts and put the references in at the end and we'll be done with it. The reason this article is still around is that, despite being firmly in your camp, wiki works via collaborative handjobs which is everyone's secret beliefs and biases hidden behind everyone saying "nPOV violation!" etc.
But don;'t let that dissuade you; start culling and we'll fight off the tinfoil hat brigade.Rolinator 11:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Giant Ghawar oilfield in Saudi Arabia is a very example that demonstrate that petroleum migrate from deep faults in basement and the same reason occur beneath all oil and gas field around the world. There is a big horst formed in basement along Giant Ghawar, indeed petroleum certainly follow deep structures in the basement that connect outgassing from earth's mantle.

They've done a lot of deep drilling to figure out the underlying structure of the Ghawar field, but they haven't found any deep oil down there. The big problem with Ghawar is that they've been injecting water into it for years to maintain pressure, and the production is now mostly water. This has nothing to do with the origin of the oil, it's just that they have a big water problem now. A BIG water problem. The issue is that the water is bypassing and stranding the oil in unproducible pockets. RockyMtnGuy 14:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Valentin helium

  • Lack of mantle helium in the majority of crustal hydrocarbon sources which are definitively not related to magmatism penetrating the sedimentary basin after the oil window[4]
  • ^ Valentin, J., 2004. Isotopic, organic and inorganic geochemistry of the Idrija mercury deposit, Slovenia: constraints on the formation of the Hg-PAH association. PhD Thesis, Unpublished, Univerity of Lausanne, Switzerland.Abstract

The abstract of Valentin's thesis does not describe a global survey of crustal hydrocarbon, helium, nor magmatism. Which are covered in the thesis? (SEWilco 05:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC))

Helium has strongly association with hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas); also with mercury mainly isotope 3He, that is primordial. There's no biological process that produces helium. About this matter, better explanation was give by Dr. Thomas Gold in his book "The Deep Hot Biosphere" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.76.216 (talk • contribs) 04:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
The question is about Valentin's thesis and what it explains. (SEWilco 04:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC))
Valentin says the citation of his work at that place is inappropriate and simply wrong. Helium is not mentioned. Statement and reference removed. (SEWilco 16:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC))
An abstract of Valentin's thesis begins: "Hydrothermal petroleum forms by geologically rapid maturation of sedimentary organic matter..." - which is exactly the reverse what the abiotic proponents are arguing. Helium is not mentioned anywhere. RockyMtnGuy 15:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Helium mainly 3He comes from mantle as hydrocarbons. Helium has close association with hydrocarbons but for comercial accumulations is necessary an effective seal rock such as evaporites (rock salts). Also mercury comes from mantle in form of methyl-mercury or dimethyl-mercury and and have close association with bitumens. Biological processes do not intereact with mercury because it is poisonous and biocide. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.124.95 (talk • contribs) 01:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, helium and hydrogen are the first things to escape if there are any leaks in a seal. No, biological processes do interact with mercury. Some biological processes absorb mercury or convert it (some forms of it). As with vitamins, some plants and microbes have an affinity for metals which includes mercury, and will absorb and thus concentrate it from the less concentrated origin in rock/soil. A plant has a limited sense of taste and some metals are needed for biological processes. (SEWilco 14:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC))
It has been hypothesized in direct contradiction to Gold that under certain circumstances migrating hydrocarbon gas will extract all of the existing helium available in solution in water and carry the He with it into any available reservoir. See [5]. RockyMtnGuy 22:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Right, its interesting also bitumens in association with uranium deposits like McArthur River (Canada) that's near Athabasca (see, http://www.ir.gov.sk.ca/adx/asp/adxGetMedia.asp?DocID=4367,3574,3442,3440,3385,2936,Documents&MediaID=8696&Filename=wilson.pdf. Uranium have also close association with coal. Witwatersrand gold and uranium deposits in South Africa, and Archean black shales of Pilbara Craton in Australia. (see, http://www.geosociety.org/GSA_Connection/0506/nwsRasmussen_abs.asp) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.107.19 (talk • contribs) 02:28, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Remember to sign and date your comments with ~~~~. Also start new topics as a separate section. And don't edit past discussions, such as by adding text above existing discussions, because that changes the meaning of what was already discussed and makes a reply to your comment awkward. (SEWilco 16:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC))
Saying bitumens in association with uranium deposits like McArthur River (Canada) that's near Athabasca is like saying New Mexico is near the Pacific Ocean. Alberta and Saskatchewan are each the size of Texas. The bitumen deposits of Alberta are in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin - which is a huge sedimentary basin, while the uranium deposits of Saskatchewan are in the Canadian Shield - which is a vast area of precambrian granite. They are hundreds of kilometres apart. There's no significant amount of oil in the Canadian Shield and there are no uranium mines in the WCSB. And not finding them is not for lack of looking for them. RockyMtnGuy 17:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] article is all right - remove disputed/expert tags?

I just read this for the first time. It seems reasonably complete and NPOV to me. (Background: I have heard of the theory before, but not researched it; I don't care one way or the other whether it's true or not, but I think it is fairly interesting). Therefore, I would like to remove the disputed and expert-attention tags.

For the disputed tag: could someone please summarize the facts which are disputed? (bearing in mind that quoted interpretation of facts are inherently non-dispute-able)

For the expert-attention tag: I think that is ridiculous on the face of it, the article is highly technical in parts ("serpentinised peridotites"? "ultramafic"?) and has a massive references section (all WP:RS, even). I would guess that what the tagger really means is that the article needs attention from professional geologists which would bring it into compliance with the mainstream geologist POV. That is not where Wikipedia aims to be: yes, the article should say what the mainstream POV is, it already does, quote "few would support it..."; no, the article should not present the mainstream POV as the only correct POV. I apologize if I misunderstood what the tagger has in mind. Could someone please explain what parts of the topic are not adequately covered and why they need expert attention? What kind of expert? (oil field geologist, or expert on the abiogenic hypothesis specifically?)

I'm going to allow a good long period for comments, a week or so, and if none are forthcoming I will remove the tags. ObsidianOrder 09:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It may seem reasonable to the casual observer, but it's frustrating the geologists who read it. I'm not a geologist, but I was once involved with a research project in the Athabasca oil sands and knew the information about that was mostly wrong. So I did some investigation and discovered a few things:
  1. The references often contradict the article. Some of them have nothing to do with the article.
  2. Some of the weird ideas presented as facts demonstrate a non-understanding of chemistry and physics.
  3. Much of the technical bafflegab is off-topic. For instance, serpentinised peridotites mostly means asbestos. It doesn't tell you that (I doubt the author knew). It tells you how to synthesize asbestos, but this is supposed to be an article about petroleum.
  4. It doesn't say much about deep drilling, except for Gold's two test holes. There has been a lot of deep drilling since Gold's attempts and the results have been very interesting but mostly negative for abiotic petroleum.
  5. It gives little information from recent breakthroughts in organic geochemistry (a relatively new science), which has been able to pinpoint the origins of oil even when the formations are too deep to drill. Again, these have been mostly negative.
Some of the more off-the-wall bits have been removed (e.g. the hypothetical lakes of methane on Titan) but it still needs work. RockyMtnGuy 21:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
RockyMtnGuy - thanks. Could you describe in a bit more detail "references often contradict the article" - which ones? (while at it, why don't we either make the article say what the references say, or just remove the conflicting references and leave a {cite needed}) "weird ideas presented as facts" - which ones? could you please quote the relevant parts of the article? (while at it, we can try to rewrite them to simply cite external sources, with appropriate attribution) "bafflegab" - yep ;) any other suggested clarifying substitutions? "a lot of deep drilling" - does that merit its own article? I guess I see the point that it could use more expert attention, but so far no specific example of a factual dispute. Thanks. ObsidianOrder 07:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I did a statistical analysis of the references as a quality-control test, and came up with a lot of duds. An example is the reference attached to The White Tiger oil field in Vietnam has been proposed as an example of abiogenic oil because it is found 1000 meters within crystalline basement rock. the reference is Dow, W.G., 2005. The Petroleum System Paradigm and the Biogenic Origin of Oil and Gas. AAPG Conference, Calgary, Canada 2005. However, in the article, Dow says: the oil's components indicate a lacustrine organic facies with lipid-rich, land-plant debris and fresh-water algal material, refuting theories of abiogenic origin in this area.. In fact the basement rocks have been upthrust until they're higher than the organic source rocks below.
Weird ideas presented as facts have mostly been edited out, lakes of methane on Titan being an example. Nobody knows what is on Titan, but some scientists have speculated that lack of radar reflections from the surface could indicate liquid methane. Somebody took that and turned it into a fact. Another fact presented is the flat statement: No investigator has ever produced anything resembling petroleum in the laboratory by the application of heat and pressure to plant debris.. Later, in another context, you will find references to the Fischer-Tropsch process, which will do exactly that - convert plant debris into oil.
A lot of very deep drilling has occured. Examples include the Archean Biosphere Drilling Project (ABDP) and a very deep well C. Warren Hunt drilled in the Athabasca Oil Sands in an attempt to find the hypothetical source. He found approximately nothing. But people have been trying that since 1894. If you look in the Atlas of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, you will find that thousands of wells have been drilled right through it into the basement, and nobody has found oil there.
There's no factual dispute between the geologists - they all agree it's wrong. The factual dispute is between the petroleum geologists and the people who think all the petroleum geologists are wrong. RockyMtnGuy 18:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
"came up with a lot of duds" - could you please list all of the problem references? I fixed the White Tiger one.
Re: Fischer-Tropsch process/"ever produced"... I do know a little about that, the product is not particularly similar to natural pertoleum, it requires metal catalysis (although not necessarily very rare: do you happen to know if vanadium/iron/platinum are often found with oil deposits? ;) and it goes through syngas as an intermediate (can this even exist thermodynamically at depth?) I've converted the original claim to a citation-needed.
Can you give other specific examples of disputed facts in the article? A complete list would be nice so we can go down and edit each one. "The factual dispute is between the petroleum geologists and the people who think all the petroleum geologists are wrong" - that's as may be, we're just here to report on that, not take sides. If there is anything that the article presents as a fact when it is questionable, we can edit that to be simply a quote of someone who made the claim, assuming it is a notable claim/person. I'd like to move beyond the "everybody knows the article is broken so we're gonna complain about it with tags" to "let's fix it" ;) ObsidianOrder 21:06, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I didn't look at all the references, I did a statistical analysis, and found a significant number of problems with them. One of the problems with this article is that anybody who knows how to fix it has better things to do than edit Wikipedia references - they're all out making six-digit incomes finding oil for oil companies.
I gave the Fischer-Tropsch process as a counter-example to dispute the statement No investigator has ever produced anything resembling petroleum in the laboratory by the application of heat and pressure to plant debris. Actually, if you want a lot of counter-examples, see the Wikipedia article on Thermal depolymerization. Several patents on methods to produce crude oil from plant material are cited there. Most of them were invented after Kudryavtsev's time.
I don't dispute the Fischer-Tropsch process works, or even occurs in nature, although I would dispute whether it creates much petroleum. Left to its own devices it will probably produce natural gas rather than petroleum. There are lots of disputable facts cited in the Talk section here. Nobody has time to fix all of them because, again, they're too busy making money finding oil. RockyMtnGuy 18:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I see you toasted the No investigator has ever produced.. section. If we keep this up, we could have this article fixed in a matter of months. OK, here's another one The presence of tiny diamondoids in oils, mainly in condensates and gas. Diamondoids probably form at high pressures in the earth's mantle and they migrate together oil and gas to low pressures in crust. The article is confusing diamondoids with diamonds, which are not the same thing, which you will see from the two Wikipedia articles. Now the key points here are that condensates and gas are not petroleum and diamondoids are not diamonds. Diamondoids are nearly indestructible molecules naturally found in petroleum. Their presence in a gas/condensate field which contains no petroleum is usually taken as evidence that there USED to be petroleum there, but the fragile long alkane molecules have been converted to natural gas by thermal cracking and all that is left is the tough little diamondoids. RockyMtnGuy 03:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
"we could have this article fixed in a matter of months" - that's the idea ;) diamondoids in oils - hmm. as far as I can tell from a brief look, diamondoids *only* occur in oil/gas/condensates, and nowhere else. The largest artificially synthesized one is C18, naturally occuring ones go to C40-50 and up (quote "However efforts by others to synthesize higher diamondoids have failed, other than one tetramantane made with great difficulty and low yield." [6]) So how the heck do they form naturally? And how do they get in the oil? As per the Chevron ref, they are in fact found in much greater concentrations in condensates specifically... from something like 1 ppb in oil to 0.1% and up in some condensates. I'm not sure the "primarily in condensates and gas" should be removed, actually it makes sense combined with what you said - the process of cracking plus the migration of the NG means the residue is enriched in diamondoids. The interesting quetion here is we can find a source which says that diamondoids to support the abiogenic petroleum hypothesis. ObsidianOrder 07:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archaean gold relationship

  • Lack of commercial oil deposits within Archaean shear-hosted lode gold deposits; the ideal analog of a long-lived structure in serpentinised ultramafic rocks

What are the sources for the above? Why is Archean a restriction, as a longer time frame both allows more time for both leakage from below and escape to above? The restriction also reduces the available sample due to only 7% of craton rock being of that age, so lack of deposits become less surprising. Nevertheless, Archean oil has been found and it does not have to be interpreted as abiotic because life existed then. [7] Hadean oil should tend to be abiotic but such rocks are rather scarce. (SEWilco 04:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC))

    • Well, why is it? Because the abiogenic theory says that prolonged fluid flows along transcrustal structures, should see oil seeping up and becoming trapped in structural traps along faults.
    • Now. Number One, the Archaean "oil" you speak of is present as bitumen nodules several microns in size within metamorphic rocks and has been interpreted as biogenic. So its hardly proof that abiogenesis is the driving force here. Secondly, the abiogenic theory, if followed through, predicts that oil should be seeping through the crust at all levels at all times, because its coming from the mantle. So, where is it in the Archaean cratons, which have been sitting arund the longest, able to trap the oil the best? Or should be believe that the absence of current accumulations of oil in Archaean cratons is proof that no oil is seeping up along faults from the mantle? Or does oil only seep along faults and sit within Phanerozoic rocks which conveniently sit along subduction zones and modern plate boundaries within successions which contain rocks capable of producing oil via the biogenic process?
    • Thirdly, where is the oil within the dunite bodies of the Archaean cratons? They produce methanee, I'll grant you that, I've seen it myself when drilling these Archaean ultramafics, but I have not seen any oil, even at the culmnation of the Lake Percy granite dome, nor anywhere within the Yilgarn craton has it been reported. So where is the abiogenic oil, if it cannt form within the faults which pierce the mantle and which have sat around liable to oil seepage for 2,800,000,000 years or more?
    • Leakage out of the reservoir. Ah yes, the classic "argue two points separately" trick. The Athabasca deposit, as argued by abiogenic proponents, is being recharged from below. The recharge being seen in several other oil deposits, is argued as topping up from the mantle. So why are you now claiming that this process doesn't work so well in the cratons? Lack of structural traps? Too much rock in the way? Or what, maybe its bullshit? If there is abiogenic oil, it should be consantly leaking through the cratons, and the mobile belts around the cratons, recharged from below, not just within biogeically fertile oil fields where its all too ambivalent.
    • I don't think you can convince me that using Archaean gold deposits as a litmus test for the abiogenic theory is flawed. If there should be abiogenic oil anywhere, it should be in the cratons, far from any onlapping phanerozoic veneer, sitting right next to gold deposits. Which brings us to the following;


Whoever put the following mish-mash of crap in is obviously of the opinion that gold deposits (hosted by faults) and oil deposits are associated in China; "Commercial oil deposits near shear-hosted lode gold deposits, such as the Shengli Field on the Tancheng-Lujiang fault near the Linglong-Jiaojia gold deposit[8]"

I have read that paper. There is NOTHING in it on oil. It is an argument that mantle helium is from magmatic/mantle sources and is a tracer for the source of the gold within the gold deposits. The paper holds no information on the helium isotopic makeup of the oils. The gold deposits sit within granites and schists, which are displaced adjacent to younger Phanerozoic sedimentary successions by strike-slip faulting, which contain oil which is significantly younger than the gold. The gold is associated with reduced granites, and is formed by hydrothermal circulation directly related to the intrusion of the granites. The gold lodes do not cross the major strik-slip faults. So there is no connection. Remember, children, faults can juxtapose dissimilar rocks next to one another but that doesn't mean that the gold on one side is formed by the same processes as the oil on the other, and vice versa! Nor does it mean they formed at the same time, nor within the same faults!

Rolinator 01:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

  • What is expected depends on the variation of "abiogenic" theory, as well as local conditions. I'm not aware of a version that expects oil to be seeping at all levels; the variant of Kudryavtsev's Rule is used which expects hydrocarbons at all levels (with more complex molecules near the surface).
  • "Archaean "oil" ... has been interpreted as biogenic. So its hardly proof that abiogenesis is the driving force here." Yes, I said that. Archaean age does not eliminate the possibility of biogenic oil.
  • "So, where is it in the Archaean cratons, which have been sitting arund the longest, able to trap the oil the best?" Good question, any answers? Gold seems to claim all oil as abiogenic/microbial, but merely absorbing existing gas/oil/coal fields as examples doesn't help because predictions made by one theory but not the other are needed.
  • "where is the oil within the dunite bodies of the Archaean cratons? They produce methanee" Do you have citations for that? Maybe conditions were right for methane but not oil; abiogenic methods require proper temp/pressure/chemicals, while microbial methods require water and nutrients.
  • "So why are you now claiming that this process doesn't work so well in the cratons? Lack of structural traps? Too much rock in the way?" I'm asking for citations which explain what and why. There are a number of claims which can fit various craton situations, but we're supposed to find what has been studied. The "nobody has looked there" claim doesn't help much, as research would tend to be produced from holes in the ground. Assuming relevant research exists (such as chemical analysis and pore fluids rather than strictly mechanical porosity studies).
  • "I don't think you can convince me that using Archaean gold deposits as a litmus test for the abiogenic theory is flawed." I was asking for sources which indicate that such a litmus test exists. And has such a test been performed, such as by checking the chemistry of the rocks and drilling to check for seals under the gold deposit?
  • That's why I asked for details on the oil gold test, as the statement of the test without sources might not have all relevant details for the test. The China fault is a strike-slip fault, there is a large gold find near a large gold-containing oil field on the fault, but not surprisingly there are an assortment of formations and sediments involved. When the only clearly relevant test is juxtaposition of oil and gold, their presence is relevant. (SEWilco 04:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC))
Did you notice methane from the Kidd Creek mine in the Canadian Shield? (Let's see... that should be copper, lead, zinc, silver) Incidentally, this was moved from the "External links" to being a citation but the corresponding text was lost.[9] (SEWilco 02:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC))
  • Lollar, Sherwood et al. 2002. Abiogenic formation of alkanes in the Earth's crust as a minor source for global hydrocarbon reservoirs. Nature, 416, pp522-524. Abstract
OK, can you try arguing consistently, for a start? First you say "it depends what you want to believe". No, it does not. Either oil comes from the deep crust, from crystalline basement rocks, the mantle, what have you...or it is biogenic. If you want to start weasling out of the predictions (Kudratsyev's Rule, after all states 'at all levels') of the theory because you don't find oil, for instance, within the first 100m of a gold deposit, or the first 1,000m or in the Witswaterrand or Mt Isa, Broken Hill, Bendigo, Ballarat, the Valhalla Lode at Norseman (down 1,200m), etc, then you are weaseling out of ALL of the theory because the oil seeps upwards from whaever mythical depth is dorms at, which means that when you drill or mine these trap sites, you should, on balance, find oil around major transcrustal faults and ergo, around gold.
Secondly, you say "mabe they haven't drilled the gold deposits enough". This is laughable; gold deposits are the most highly drilled of any deposits. Within the top 400m, most will be drilled to better than 40x40m spacing, and you are saying that somehow people have missed it? You obviously have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
If you need citations to prove everything I throw at you, then you shouln't be editing this page. I have as much reason to doubt you are qualified or able to even read the links/citations as you do to doubt the arguments I throw up. There's a lot of holes in the ground, but few get the pore fluid, porosity treatment you spak of, least of all in the hard rock mining industry. Probably about 0.0% of gold holes will get porosity tested because it doesn't matter to the gold explorer or nickel explorer, so I cannot provide you with porosity measurements of gold mineralised rocks. Be realistic; do you think that if oil was found in the middle of a gold field that there wouldn't be a big hoo-hah about it? The reason there isn't despite an annual production of over 18 million metres of drilling in Australia alone, spent mostly within the gold and metals mining industry, is that there hasn't been any found to date.
Let me be honest - no one needs a reference list to come up with questions about a crackpot bullshit theory such as this. I have the weight of at worst a century's circumsantial evidence on my side in the form of drilling and mining into the cratons wich has, thus far, failed to yeild oil. But let me give you a vague set of references for the fact there is methane in dunites; me, a bunch of drillers, and other exploration geologists and drilers who have poked over 1,200 holes into the Honeymoon Well ultramafic. You can email Martin Gole or write to him (address here [10]) and ask him how much drilling has been done, to what depths, and what proportion of the holes hit oil, or at least methane.
The other point, which you are again trying to weasel out of, is that if you have a dunite body like Honeymoon Well, which should by the tenets of this theory have produced oil (what with the whole "serpentinite mechanism" and shit, give its been serpentinised at ~500 degrees and 12 Kbar sufficient to make enough oil), and actually has produced methane...but not oil...then whats the problem? It proves that you can get to methane within serpentinites, big deal. But no oil, and you want to drop it like a hot potato because it doesn't prove your POV? *I* mentioned Honeymoon Well, and I think this theory has less merit than a used piece of toilet paper, because I was being fair to the subject. But it doesn't change the facts; lack of oil in the cratons, "microbial" or otherwise. You can't argue "OK, so it didn't produce abiogenic oil, but what about microbial oil?" for everything. Go through the list of gold deposits again except instead of "abiogenic" mumble "microbial". Still no joy? Thought so
Kidd Creek is an old volcanic caldera, FYI, which is chock full of sulphide. Sulphides can be eaten by, you guessed it, bacteria, o produce, you guessed it, methane. Not a proof for or against anything except "there's methane in the rocks" which doesn't surprise anyone. But where is the oil, microbial or otherwise? They have dug a lot of ground up in Canada as well as in Australia, and yet again, there's a conspicuous lack of oil within the cratons, associated with any form of mineralisation.
The thing is, I had a look at this Chinese stuff. As best I can figure out, the oil is within 50km of the gold. This is suspiciously similar to the situation in Victoria where you have onshore gas, coal, and offshore oil within 100km of producing goldfields (Walhalla, if you want to know). What does this prove? Nothing except that Victoria has a lot going for it, as does tat area of China. Furthermore, looking at the limited stuff available on the web I couldn't find many maps, but a lot of the oil is found in an onshore-offshore basin in sand channels within a shale. Hardly similar at all to the granite-associated gold you have, what, 100km at most away. The moment you show me that the gold, and only hydrothermal lode gold, none of this placer rubbish, is sitting immersed in oil within metamorphic rocks, not sedimentary rocks, and I will believe you. But, you cant show me that, because you are weaseling out of showing actual evidence that gold and oil coexist - and that Mao et al. paper doesn't count. Hell, I can show you a paper on He-He isotopes from Cictorian slate-hosted gold, and you can tell me the Victorian Bass Strait oil is abiogenic! That'll be fun and pointless. Hence why I will remove that China crap from clouding the issue.Rolinator 09:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I am being consistent, and so are you. You're using the oil-only translation/interpretation, while I'm using the material for this topic, in this case from Gold: Kudryavtsev's Rule: "Any region in which hydrocarbons are found at one level will be seen to have hydrocarbons in large or small quantities, but at all levels down to and into the basement rock."[11] I haven't been claiming that serpentine process is how hydrocarbons are created, while you seem limited to that and created a gold-oil test based on it. I'm not dropping dunite bodies (their having a mantle origin makes them interesting), indeed I asked for a reference so I could learn more (and now you mention Honeymoon Well with phrasing as if you had already described it better than being dunite in the western U.S.). (SEWilco 18:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC))
Kudryavtsev's Rule is inoperative in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). The Geological Atlas of the WCSB is available here. Most of the conventional oil in the WCSB is in the Devonian formations (Most of the oil sands are in the Cretaceous). Despite the drilling of thousands of wells into the Precambrian basement, there has been very little oil found below the Devonian, and virtually none below the Ordovician. (Why would people drill into the basement when they don't expect to find oil there? Diamonds!) RockyMtnGuy 19:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deep fault reactivation

An important observation is that deep fault in basement can be reactivated during basing evolution. Other question is about how metals reach the crust. Silicon, hydrocarbons? Important gold deposits around the world has in association carbonaceous phyllites or graphitic schists (carbon). Hydrothermal alterations in host rocks such as in Golden Mile, Australia, carbonatization is strong (again carbon!) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.57.158 (talk • contribs) 02:16, 6 September 2006.

Irrelevant to the oil argument, unless you wish to argue that long-lived reactivated basement faults (eg; the Mundrabilla Lineament, active for ~1080 Ma and still going) should have oil but do not, and thus the theory is disproved? Carbonate metasomatism, as seen at the Kalgoorlie Golden Mile, is different from methane and petroleum. Carbonate metasomatism is driven by devolatilisation of basalt (arguably inorgaic) to produce a potassic, carbon dioxide bearing hydrothermal fluid from within the orogenic belt, so it is emphatically not a mantle-driven process, at least in Kalgoorlie.
The association of gold with carbonaceous phyllites is as a reductive trap; carbon is a reduced element, when present as graphite in a rock. It tends to act, much like it does in a cyanide process plant (CIL-CIP) as a catalyst to break down thiosulphate gold complexes within the hydrothermal solution, thereby prompting the deposition of gold. But that also ignored the whole rheology argument with gold deposition, which is that a phyllonite is an appropriate structural trap. When you get down to nitty gritty details, the number of large gold deposits which are hosted within graphitic shales is actually quite small; most gold is hosted within dolerite within sequences of basalts, or within slates and phyllites. In none of these cases is there any real link between gold deposition and oil. Trust me on this, I wrote a thesis on gold, I work in the gold exploration industry Rolinator 08:53, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

201.19.106.76 00:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC) I also work with gold deposits (in dolerites, phyllites, schists, ecc.) . Try make connection with primordial methane that came from mantle and its oxidation in crust, not oil, to relate with gold mineralizations. I think you'll make a progress.

Anonymous, sign your postings with ~~~~, and start a new section when you start a new topic. Whatever the significance is of fault reactivation... (SEWilco 02:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Some general comments from a geoscientist

I'll begin with this disclaimer: I am an exploration geologist and geophysicist.

This article is still in desperate need of a make-over... I can clearly see that the debunking of ‘modern abiotic oil’ (should it be hydrocarbon reservoirs instead of merely “oil”?) theory is being carried out well enough without me (and rightfully so; who believes this anymore!?) in the talk page, so I'm not going to spend a lot of my time here. The theory of abiotic oil is a good article to have on wikipedia, but in the context of the history of geology. It was one of many now outmoded hypotheses of the origins of hydrocarbon deposits. It carries no legacy that I know of into modern geologic sciences other than as history.

As for the origin of “mystery” hydrocarbons, I’ve seen very little discussed about the geochemical fingerprinting of hydrocarbons to their source rock. When abiotic sources of hydrocarbons was being entertained many years ago, the capability and distance of hydrocarbons to migrate was not as well understood as it is today. I’m not a geochemist, but I think this would be a another path to walk down in explaining why proponents of abiotic hydrocarbon reservoirs are incorrect.

Additionally, in areas where serpentine and serpentinization is abundant (mid-ocean ridges, oceanic crust), the hypothesized conditions for the production of abiotic oil are all there, yet there is absolutely no evidence that it exists. Numerous deep ocean drilling programs have also not reported any signs of serpentized abiotic hydrocarbons despite drilling into the hearts of these zones... umrgregg 16:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, I noticed that the citations are not pointing to the correct reference numbers at the bottome (appears to be +1 off). I don't know how to fix it, so I'm throwing that out there. umrgregg 16:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Dear Geocientist, try read researches at Guaymas Basin in Gulf of California and Lost City hydrothermal vents in north Atlantic, for example! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.98.219 (talk • contribs) 04:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I looked into it and found nothing compelling me to to beleive that abiogenic hydrocarbons, especially light gas, is available on this planet for commercial exploitation or as a significant part of any exploitable petroleum system. umrgregg 13:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Corsi reference

I added a link for Jerome Corsi, which will advise the unwary that the potential torchbearer for this theory is a Ph.D. in poli sci and the conservative activist best known for the "Swift Boats for Truth" affair in 2004. Caveat lector.

--Andersonblog 22:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. The mention of Corsi was added by an anon [12] without explanation. The book credits Gold for the theory but is there any new research? (Does someone have the book?) Corsi doesn't seem to have published anything else on the topic. Doesn't look like carrying the torch, I'll remove the book advertisement. The coauthor's background is books on gold investment, so apparently this is a case of oil coming from gold. (SEWilco 04:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Silicates cracking water

Revision as of 01:02, 5 September 2006 (edit) Rolinator (Talk | contribs) (→Hydrogen generation - be careful of "wil" and "may", its all dependent on redox, which you obviously know nothing about or you wouldn't believe granites could successfully crack water)

The information is from the sourced document. It refers to common knowledge that moisture in laboratory vacuum glass systems leads to the production of hydrogen. Several sources are given for Si- and SiO- radicals exposed in fractures and formation of hydrogen from steam. Crushed quartz reacts with water to produce hydrogen in the 25-270°C range (Kita 1982). Hydrogen generation from quartz and feldspar (Sugisaki et al 1983). Hydrogen from crushed framework silicates, and hydrogen commonly observed in active fault zones (Ware et al 1984/85, Sugisaki 1984/85, Sato et al 1984/85, Satake et al 1984/85, Sato et al 1986). Want the full references? Here's a more recent example: hydrogen produced when quartz grains were crushed within pure water. [13] (SEWilco 06:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC))

Eek! 5,000 cm3 of H2/m3 of rock? Freund's work seems to be based on the same process, but throughout the entire volume of water-containing crystallizing rock rather than only rock fractures. DOI:10.1089/153110702753621367 (SEWilco 18:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC))

Sourced document said "The hydrogen would react with dissolved carbon compounds in the water to form methane and higher carbon compounds." So for "would" I used "will" rather than "may". (SEWilco 06:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC))

Well, great. You can create hydrogen during dynamothermal metamorphism in granite at low temperatures (by crustal standards). But what does this tell us about the process of forming oil in ultramafic rocks (tell me, do ultramafic rocks contain quartz?) - it tell us if your ultramafic rock is not in the mantle and it is in fact a granite and you fault it you create hydrogen if and only if you crush the quartz grains. Now, there are a few points I would like to raise here,
  1. Crushing or fracture is a brittle process (by which I mean, a brittle rheology); once you get down to 5-15km depth within the crust, at temperatures in excess of 250 degrees celsius, your rocks behave in a brittle-ductile fashion. They deform by shearing, ergo, no crushing. No hydrogen.
  2. Secondly, the conditions in the mantle are not those of the experiments, meaning that there is little applicability of the data to mantle rocks which...dare I say it, do not contain quartz. Refer to the thermobaric stability phase diagram of quartz-coesite-stishovite. Does stishovite create water when sheared, at 1000 degrees celsius and several hundred times the pressure? Don't know, neither do I.
  3. Thirdly, what is your argument regarding the need for hydrogen to form oils? That by producing a gas which prefers to react with free dissolved oxygen in the water, in the presence of carbonic acid (dissolved CO2) and/or methane (after all, any carbonis, according to the theory, good enough to produce oil regardless of whether it's carbonate or methane), it gets a CH4, and makes it...a CH5? Or, as I propose, is this just another completely irrelevant string to be added to the harp of the abiogenic theory because you read it somewhere and it happens in the ground, and involved hydrogen, and ergo it must mean that the abiogenic oil theory is one poofteenth more plausible?
Or are you arguing apples and oranges? I mean, granites and ultramafics (harzburgite-peridotite-dunite)? I mean brittle and ductile?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rolinator (talk • contribs) 23:58, 9 September 2006.

Nothing is being claimed about ultramafic rocks. These are abiogenic processes in the crust, not the mantle. Whether they can also happen in the mantle is relevant only to claims about abiogenic hydrocarbons in the mantle. (SEWilco 05:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC))
But you are claiming that you can creae C8H18, for instance, via crushing granite in a fault and producing hydrogen. In the presence of silica and carbon dioxide. Without a transition metal catalyst. To me, it seems like a huge leap of faith. You are also saying they are abiogenic processes in the crust. They are chemical processes which happen in the crust. The fact it is "abiogenic" is the same abioenic as a chemical reaction happening in a test tube in a laboratory. Just because a reaction happens without the interference or without the presence of plankton, agae, coal and biological detritus doesn't mean it is abiogenic and directly applicable to the abiogenic petroleum origin theory. You are confabulating a wide range of phnomenon without considering the chemical model of abiogenic petroleum which as far as I can see, involves two mechanisms;
  1. Magic, where you vaguely refer to "depth" but not "at some depth"; "pressure" but unspecified; "cabon" in whatever form, as long as there is some,"diamondoids" and some "biomarkers", within whichever rock you fancy, by whichever process you cncoc, to produce oil. As long as it isn't according to the biological oil model.
  2. Geochemical and tectonic models which refer to serpentinite, the mantle, primordial volatiles, etcetera within experimental evidence and thermodynamic data put forward to support a theoretical thermodynamic model of petroleum formation which is, by your own sources, occurring in the mantle at mantle pressures and temperatures wih primodial volatile components trapped there, and NOT within granite.
So either the model has specific, testable hypotheses and requires certain criteria determined by the geological environmen, or you just invent shit and it happens by magic and no one can question or test what you say because you grab at whichever straw comes to hand as support for the wild claims. This idea of yours with granite sits firmly in the first camp; Kenney and GRC are trying to do the second camp, which is a whole different kettle of fish. Rolinator 00:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
The claim is only "methane and higher carbon compounds". Carbon dioxide is not mentioned as being the source of carbon. (SEWilco 03:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Texas helium citation

Helium trapped within most petroleum occurrences, such as the occurrence in Texas, is of a distinctly crustal character with an Ra ratio of less than 0.0001 that of the atmosphere.[citation needed]

Rolinator, Texas was your addition. [14] (SEWilco 21:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC))

Having a large amount of helium is a rather rare occurance in petroleum fields. Most have no recoverable helium. The Hugoton field of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas is an exception and was the source of most of the world's helium until a few years ago. The field is largely depleted now and they're looking at producing fields with lots of helium but no useable petroleum or natural gas.
According to the USGS, the world's six largest helium reserves and their share of world reserves are Quatar 25%, U.S. 21%, Algeria 21%, Russia 17%, Canada 5%, China 3%. According to the BP Statistical survey, the six largest petroleum reserves are Saudi Arabia 22%, Iran 11%, Iraq 10%, Kuwait 8%, Venezuela 6% and Russia 6%. The only country on both lists is Russia. RockyMtnGuy 22:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

SEWilco, there is a difference between helium trapped within a petroleum reservoir, and a petroleum revervoir which can acutally produce helium. Helium is present in virtually all crustal and magmatic water reservoirs and gas reservoirs, but it is only currently active tectonic boundaries where you can find mantle helium (helium with an Ra >1) or around magmatic systems which are currently active or active within the last 5-8 Ma. This tends to follow the reasoning that the mantle only outgasses around structures which carry magmatism and which are tectonically active (ie; not the cratons). For instance, in the Eger Rift Graben, Czech Republic, mantle helium [15] is coming up through the crust along a fault dissolved in water, sourced from aagmatic source within the crust-mantle-boundary. This is your vaunted transcrustal flow of fluids (CO2, H2), NOx, etc); mantle derived gases and fluids reach the surface with a 3He/4He Ra of 3.1, still distinctly mantle values. So, why do we not see mantle helium in oil reservoirs, such as the Hugoton Field? If the abiogenic theory holds true the Hugoton field should have mantle helium ratios. Similarly, the Eger Rift should have petroleum reservoirs. Rolinator 00:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you have the "needed" citation for the statement? I understand the background, but someone requested a citation for that statement. (SEWilco 03:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC))
Specifically,
Weinlich, F.H., Brauer K., Kampf H., Strauch G., J Tesar and S.M. Weise. An active subcontinental mantle volatile system in the western Eger rift, Central Europe: Gas flux, isotopic (He, C and N) and compositional fingerprints. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 63, No. 21, pp. 3653-3671, 1999.
Helium isotopes, tectonics and heat flow in the Northern Caucasus. B.G.Polyak, I.N. Tolstikhin, I.L. Kamensky, L.E. Yakovlev, B. Marty and A.L. Cheshko, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Act Vol 64, No 11, pp. 1924-1944, 2000.
Well, if you want to start reading about crustal and mantle gases, try the following,
Moreira M, and Allegre C.J, 1998. Helium-neon systematics and the structure of the mantle. Chemical Geology 147 (1998) pp. 53-59
Geochemical and 3He/4He evidence for mantle and crustal contributions to geothermal fluids in the wesern Canadian continental margin. I.D. Clark and R.J. Phillips (2000) Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 104 pp. 261-276.
Some studies of groundwaters in New Zealand, which has volcanism, plutonism, petroleum, natural gase, etc; surely this exhaustive survey ought to give you ammunition to support abiogenic petroleum simply on gas ratio basis;
Hoke, L., R. Poreida, A Reay and S.D. Weaver. The subcontinental mantle beneath southern New Zealand, characterised by helium isotopes in intraplate basalts and gas-rich springs. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 64, No. 14, pp. 2489-2507, 2000.
Giggenbach, W.F., Sano Y., Wakita H., Isotopic composition of helium, and CO2 and CH4 contents in gases produced along the New Zealand part of a convergent plate boundary Geochimica et Cosmochimica Act, (1993) Vol 57 pp. 3472-3455
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rolinator (talk • contribs) 08:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I'm already aware of New Zealand, but mantle helium is not unexpected there. (SEWilco 17:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC))
Well, what do you say about the fact you have fluids coming all the way through the crust in the Eger rift wthout appreciable petroleum, either directly from the mantle or picked up along the way? Its a little bit compelling evidence against this abiogenic theory, what with NZ, eastern europe, etcetera? If you read in detail the Hoke et al. paper on New Zealand , which is quite comprehensive, you will note that around some ultramafic dykes they found methanogenesis by the serpentinites, proof of the serpentinite synthesis in the model, but again, no petroleum. Also, this is decoupled from mantle helium reservoirs and from sedimentary reservoirs. Given there is significant lode gold at MacRaes in NZ, and that this sits within a metamorphic belt of slates and schists, and that it is unassociated with either mantle helium or oil, I would think that it is a fairly good example of lack of petroleum genesis even in a region where mantle, metamorphic and sedimentary fluid reservoirs are mixing, and where serpentinite is making methane (and, by the theory, ethane, butane, nonane, decane, etc). Rolinator 01:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Serpentine processes are only relevant to petroleum if those are indeed the major processes involved in making petroleum deposits. What happens in spreading centers is not necessarily the only mechanism. Which other processes are not described here yet? (SEWilco 06:24, 16 September 2006 (UTC))
Serpentinite in spreading centres (continental rifts, mid-ocean rifts, back-arc basins) are the same as in subduction zones, except that in subduction zones there is a larger component of sedimentary cover interfering. Within the phanerozoic, i think it would be difficult to separate biogenic contributions of methane from abiogenic serpentinite methane (or even oil, really) in subduction zones; the major discontinuities in the crust are the back arc rift grabens, if any exist as they aren't present in all subduction zones, and the decollement leading oceanward to the trench, and the major discontinuities (faults) would tend to be abiogenic migration pathways, same as major migration pathways for biogenic oils being cooked out of sediments as they enter the accretionary prism, undergo diagenesis and meamorphism, and liberate oil. At the same time the sediments are being cooked up above, the underriding occeanic plate is being serpentinised and dehydrated by metamorphism and producing methane - potentially.
If not in subduction zones, we are left with intracontinental processes, such as plume magmatism, to provide the heat and volatile flux and fluid pathways to allow abiogenic oil to seep upwards, regardless of whether it is from the mantle, or the mid-crust. But again, the mantle or some hypothetical mid-crustal mafic masses would be required to provide catalytic ferrous and transition metals to drive petroleum polymrisation, not just the production of methane.
Without some kind of flux, a pathway and source of carbon aside from carbonates, I don't think that there would be any way to produce abiogenic oil. Especially not in granites, no matter what you think of the power of piezoelectricity to drive the process. Unless it is by simple degassing and convection, which the papers from New Zealand and the Eger rift show isn't, in those cases at least, producing oil, just a bunch of hot geothermal water. So, what other processes could there be? I think all geological environments are covered; granite associated hydrothermal fields such as in California, New Zealand, are out. Large lopoliths in the Caucasus didn't do it. Metamorphism didn't, or we'd have a multitude of oil in New Zealand's slate belts and elsewhere (Bendigo-Ballarat, Gympie, the Chinese faults, etc, are all barren). Coal fields aren't produced by magmatic outgassing or we'd only be digging coal out from around granite plutons and volcanoes, not out of sedimentary basins in passive margin fluviatile sequences. Without fail. Have I missed anything except impact craters...oh wait, that was done aleady with essentially a failure because 8, 0 or 100 tonnes of oil for $50M a hole is a waste of money but Chevron can drill a hole in Mexico chasing buried anticlinoria and hit 2 billion barrels based on a biogenic theory. Seems pretty compelling to me.Rolinator 08:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Where did you hear of piezoelectricity producing oil in granite? Has carbon in granite been confirmed? (I didn't think I had mentioned the carbon line) Who said bituminous coal fields are produced without sedimentary/organic deposits? And for each geological environment which you mention, why don't we find gold (or horses or bubble gum) in every one? And Chevron was just chasing where they had been looking; they were finally able to see what was under the salt and confirmed there was a formation similar to nearby successful ones. (SEWilco 04:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC))
You mentioned granite and hydrogen in connection with this "debate". It is a logical conclusion that such egregious connections are an attempt to link the phenomena with abiogenic oil (or why not mention this over in granite instead?) and hence, there is a logical need for carbon to enter granites, become zapped, and turn into oil. If you follow a series of hypotheses and postulates through to the end, instead of wildly throwing out stuff by itself and hoping no one notices that it is not related by any process or ay theory to anything else you have mentioned or are debating. Like, as you say, horses and bubblegum.
As for why there is not gold everywhere, well, this is hardly a debate about gold is it? People in the 1950's would have been complaining, had they had Wiki, about how the price of gold is fixed and a fallacy of the plutocratic elites, yadda yadda yadda, and that it came from the mantle in unlimited quantities, etc. Oh wait, there is a "gold from the mantle" debate in gold ore genesis research, and, oddly enough now you ask, I did just happen to write a thesis on it at university and, oddly enough, it is in PDF format and could be emailed around. But, even with a short story such as "yes gold can come from the mantle" which is what the data I collected and interpreted actually says (and why I was led to the Polyak, Hoke, Weinlich papers and others) I will not say all gold comes from the mantle, nor that mantle-derived gold provably accounts for more than 1-2% of all gold mined. Which is where we come to the issue of scientific method and this debate, both within the literature, by Kenney and cohorts, and within Wikipedia.
You are perhaps simply defending this article in order to maintain a non-biased open canvassing of all viewpoints within the scientific community about this "abiogenic oil theory". However, you are just about the one who is continuing the debate and propping up the failures within the article to properly convey the facts, and the phenomena which are leading the scientific community to form a consensus that oil is not abiogenic. You are, in my view, going about it the wrong way, by raising ephemeral and unconnected phenomena (hydrogen in granite, etc) without rigorously understanding the fields of geology and earth sciences which this theory ultimately requires informaion from. This behaviour is far from simply maintaining a NPOV within the article; this is basically defending a politico-socio thesis (which is all that the modern abiogenic oil theory is) and bad science.
It is bad science because the theory, and you via continuing to do what you do, do not seek to understand and incorporate real evidence from published papers (polyak et al., Hoke et al., etc) which, individually and in toto provide more evidence that there is no observed abiogenic oil than there is evidence for there being even the remotest possible chance that one day someone will drill and find some. Good science has incoporated the new evidence about mantle volatiles and the lack of evidence and association of these with oil deposits, and has concluded that the vast majority of oil is best explained by biogenic oil formation theories and that there is no support for abiogenic oil theories.
If your question is "why is this theory wrong?", the scientific question is "how can we test this theory" which is, as above, why I threw out gold deposits as an example of where abiogenic oil could exist, but does not. It addresses all the potential contaminants and obfuscating phenomena and allows a test for unambiguous abiogenic oil. Like Gravberg-1 and Gravberg-2. Given there have been 2 full-blown tests and many other holes drilled into the crust which were equally likely, probabilistically, to test the abiogenic oil theory, there is no evidence for the process aside from purely speculative science which invokes processes which, when investigated specifically, show no evidence of supposed hydrocarbon migration from the deep earth (eg; Polyak et al, etc etc etc). In other words, every time someone measures a hot spring and it has mantle-derived volatiles but no petroleum, or drills a hole deep into a saddle reef in a gold deposit and there is no oil, or drills and oil well and there is no mantle volatiles but plenty of oil, or drills and oil well into a craton and it comes up dry....this says abiogenic oil is a failure. Given that the first two happen on a daily basis, every day of the year without fail, at a multitude of sites around the world, without finding even a ton of "black bituminous sludge or diesel contamination", it says something about abiogenic oil. Rolinator 05:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I fully support Rolinator in his verbal dress-down of SEWilco. I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you for defending geology and good science! umrgregg 13:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it was a nice rant. But Rolinator is not answering the questions.
  • He claimed I'm making "egregious connections" involving granite and oil. I referred to research involving Gold's Gravberg-1 well, but Rolinator is either ignoring that work or is referring to something which I did not say.
  • Wandered from why there is not gold everywhere to nattering about the scientific method. I mentioned gold because he knows gold. Although the basic answer is that conditions are not right for gold to appear in every situation, Rolinator adds something interesting: although he knows that mantle-derived gold provably accounts for only a few percentage of mined gold, he presented gold deposits as somehow being indicators of mantle activity. I recognize there is a difference between mantle-derived traces and economically useful deposits (such as the helium-3 in Mauna Loa rocks whose extraction would consume more energy than tritium fusion reactions can produce). (SEWilco 20:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC))
  • "You are perhaps simply defending this article in order to maintain a non-biased open canvassing of all viewpoints within the scientific community about this "abiogenic oil theory"." — Thank you.
  • I'm "propping up" the ignored facts within the article, and including relevant non-abiogenic information. For example, some editors made changes that coal was not included in the theories when T.Gold definitely did address coal. Whether Gold was correct about coal is a related issue.
  • I did incorporate Polyak [16] when Rolinator mentioned it. "Hoke" is not in the article, so apparently nobody who knows it has integrated it in the article.
  • Rolinator's gold test is only relevant if he knows all the relevant factors. Rolinator has demonstrated he is not aware of the details of the abiogenic oil/gas theories, including saying not even a ton of sludge has been found when tons have been found. (And what is "Gravberg-2"?) I've asked for relevant studies rather than more speculation. (SEWilco 02:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC))
Trying again: Where did you hear of piezoelectricity producing oil in granite? Has carbon in granite been confirmed? (I didn't think I had mentioned the carbon line) Who said bituminous coal fields are produced without sedimentary/organic deposits? (SEWilco 20:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC))
Well, why did you mention the "crushing quartz creates hydrogen" if not in connection with this debate? Or are you in the practise of mentioning random tidbits of trivia in relation to all wiki articles you mangle? You can pooh-pooh me for "not knowing all the relevant factors", but what is your claim that you know otherwise? Or anything? You aren't propping up ignored facts you are propping up disputed and irrlevant interpretations which I have disputed and in a few cases disproved by showing you other facts.Rolinator 01:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
"Crushed quartz", not "crushing quartz". Type Control-F and your browser probably will open a search window. Type quartz. The source was discussing chemistry. I am indeed propping up details (some of which were misplaced) of the theories which are the topic of this article. Properly explaining Copernicus' theories also requires info of what was known before and after him. I don't claim to know all the facts but at least I've read some of Gold's work (oddly, I've only been able to find a summary of Kudryavtsev's work from Gold because others merely bow toward Kudryavtsev without describing his work). (SEWilco 03:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Bitumens

SEWilco and Rolinator please, read this article about bitumens in association of copper mineralizations in Chile: http://earthsciences.dal.ca/people/zentilli/Wilson-Zentill_2006.pdf#search=%22copper%20bitumen%20chile%22 Geologist

Read the abstract: "pyrobitumen predates bornite-chalcocite mineralization and may have reduced subsequent mineralizinfg fluids". Given that the petroelum was there first, this is merely a distraction to this debate about mantle- or metamorphic-derived metalliferous mineralisation and serves to shed no new light on supposed abiogenic petroleum, its method of prouction, the models supporting the theory or, least of all, is compelling evidence for it. Remeber, these are Lower Cretaceous shales, cnglomerates and sediments formed in a back-arc basin, like all petroleum source rocks could be under the biogenic model. Ergo, this is arguably biogenic petroleum which has, as the paper says, been a reductive trap for metalliferous mineralization (page 10). This is similar to Pb-Zn Mississippi Valley Type, and i is no great surprise to anyone who is a geologist and not a fat wheezy geek who thinks Exxon and BP are trying to punch chads in florida or whatever tinfoil hat brigade shite drives the abiogenic theory.Rolinator 08:36, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

What they are saying is that pyro-degraded petroleum may have contributed to the formation of copper deposits in Chile. That's very interesting, if you are talking about copper, but has nothing whatsoever to do with this article. RockyMtnGuy 14:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Try study quicksilver (mercury) deposits at New Almaden, California, USA, where mercury is associated also with bitumens. And don't forget: mercury is frequently associated with coals that most part are solid hydrocarbons...and.... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.53.109 (talk • contribs) 03:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
So what? Get over the act that metals can either, a) be transported as chelated metal-hydrocarbon complexes (and a.2, that oils carry metals) or b) that economic mineralization occurs within old hydrocarbon (specifically, petroleum) deposits, and c) that coal contains mercury. This is not disputed because, and pay attention here, anonymous, it is irrelevant to whether or not oil comes from the mantle.
In all cases (including mineralisation in the Lennard Shelf, Western Australia, in Serbia, in Romania, in Russia, in Iran, in India) where petroleum deposits have contributed to concentration of metal sulphides this is as pyrobitumen; degraded petroleum. In all cases, the oil brought in the metal from wherever it was sourced from (this ranges from evaporite sabkas in Iran, to shale sequences in Romania, to carbonate shelf facies in the Lennard Shelf and the MVT archetypes, etc) or passed through. In all cases, the presence of a metal deposit is not providing any information about where the oil came from, merely where it ended up and where it got degraded into pyrobitumen, tars, asphaltite etcetera. Arguably, the Venezuelan crudes which show this supposed amazing "mantle chondrite" ratio of metals which is used as the be-all and end-all of evidence for abiogenesis, can be explained by a similar but less advanced process. If we cannot agree that the currently fluid, extractable resources of Venezuelan, Saudi or Canadian crude is either biogenic or abiogenic, how is arguing about pyrobitumen going to help?
The onlyargument which can sustainably be put forward here is that "some metalliferous sulphide deposits show an affinity with hydrocarbon reservoir trap sites, and many stratabound sediment-hosted sulphide metal deposits may have an ore genesis in petroleum migration" and "petroleum is integral to the transport portion of the ore genesis model of many stratabound metal deposits". But this in no way says anything about where the oil came from.
Finally, the suite of mantle-derived metal sulphide deposits and metals associated with the mantle are; Ni-Cu-PGE, V-Ti-Fe oxides, diamonds (not diamondoids!), REE and U phosphates in carbonatite and perhaps some other trace elements which associate with these four groups. Hg, Cu manto deposits,

Pb-Zn-Cu-Ag, Hg-Ag, and other epithermal low-temperature sulphide deposits are definitively NOT associated with mantle activity. Thus, the origin of the metals is separate to the origin of the petroelum. Find me some petroelum present in a nickel sulphide deposit or a V-Ti-Fe oxide deposit (not methane; that's not petroleum) and evidence that nickel migrates around in oils, and I'll start considering this relevant.Rolinator 03:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Methane is also expected by Gold's theories, but accompanying evidence of a deep source would be needed because methane can come from many sources. But this would only influence Rolinator unless this has been defined as a test of one of the theories. (SEWilco 18:44, 15 September 2006 (UTC))
Methane can come from manifold sources in the crust, but the real test is where the petroleum comes from. Just because you can create methane in the presence of serpentinite doesn't mean, neccessarily, you get all the way to octane and can run your car. That is the ultimate test; squaring away all possible sedimentary sources, (ie; finding a craton-hosted petroleum deposit) finding higher n-alkane and other organic (alkene, benzols, etc) but not biological, without biomarkers, with proven mantle or deep crustal recharge (either an elevated 3He/4He ratio, or a LOT of helium, and a H and O isotopic composition distinctive from recirculated deep brines), and finding one where it is extant today or within the reasonably recent geologic past (ie; I would accept a pyrobitumen deposit in a granite or schist-gneiss belt if it satisfied the above). But so far, there is none, yet we continue to find oil under conventional biogenic source-transport-trap models. Thus, you may find methane coming from the mantle (and yet...unproven; Polyak et al. and Weinlich et al. can't eliminate crustal methane sources) but that is not petroleum. Rolinator 01:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Getting all the way to octane is only relevant to petroleum. Russian theories are oriented toward deep petroleum, while Gold seems to lean toward methane in the crust (with the deep biosphere consuming it), although Gold also had a lot of deep carbon fluid of unspecified composition. But methane is significant; Gold's "major paper" was The Origin of Methane (and oil) in the Crust of the Earth. There are indications of deep carbon, but they don't always convert to methane/petroleum.[17] (SEWilco 06:01, 16 September 2006 (UTC))
Once again (its like talking to a special child....yeesh), this is an article about abiogenic petroleum. Petros, meaning rock in the Greek, oleum being oil, or "oil from rock". Not "methane from rock". If you want to throw Gold's research into the article on methane, and drag all the serpentinite stuff in there and show those wacky chemists that methane can be formed either abiogenically by serpentinisation or biologically by germs living 20 miles down in the crust, go ahead and shock their pants off. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
But that is ignoring the fact that there is no evidence in nature of methane turning to octane, by which I mean "rock oil", by which i mean "abiogenically" specifically, without microbes, in the Earth's crust. As the theory states. On the wikipedia page we are discussing. Without mumbling incoherently and trying to duck and weave away from the specific definition of what is petroleum and what is abiogenic and without arguing apples and oranges.
I'll say it even more simply: stop crapping on about methane methane methane, and start explaining how we get to octane. Specifically. Taking into account everything else. Specifically. And if this means removing Gold's name from the Abiogenic petroleum origin wiki page because, suddenly now he didn't say anything about it and didn't con investors into drilling Gravberg-1 and Gravberg-2, and leaving it as a theory of those wacky Russians and Kenney of GRC, then so be it. I'll be the first to support removing references and confusion from this article. I think it could be SIGNIFICANTLY improved by getting confusing horse-trading arguments like you carry on, out of it.
But that doesn't mean you can keep arguing abiogenic methane means nothing to abiogenic octane, while at the same time keeping arguments in the article that imply that methane does have relevance to the abiogenic production of petroleum (eg; methane on Titan, methane in volcanic eruptions, etc). You can't make the abiogenic theory fly without reference to methane, because methane is a "building block" which Lego-style miraculously turns into octane. And without that, and without Gold's references, this theory is bullshit and you know it. So, what's it going to be, systematically cutting "abiogenic methane" away from "abiogenic petroleum"?
Or are you going to argue something like "No, thats not what I meant, I meant methane can be made, like we all agree, but Gold said mumble mumble, etc, granite hydrogen faults and meteors!" Rolinator 05:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Dr. Gold's theories about abiogenic petroleum include methane at many points and texts. You know a lot about geology, but do you know the topic of this article? (SEWilco 21:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC))
Do you? And what do you know about geology anyway? We are arguing geology, which as a field of study includes more than simply petrology, petrography, mineralogy. The processes of the deep crust are as much a science of thermodynamics (wherein which Kenney et al. use simple mathematical models to predict oil formation) as it is about structural geology to get the oil out of the deep crust/mantle and into the trap sites, as it is about geodynamics, mineral chemistry and geochemistry, or even isotope geology. Which of these fields have you studied? Making an argument about abiogenic oil based entirely on thermodynamics ignores the geochemical influences imposed by the host rocks (mostly granite and gneiss), which are in turn affected in rheology by the pressures and temperatures (hence, at 30km a gneiss cannot break and form hydrogen, it tends to shear in a ductile fashion), which in turn affects the structural geolgy of the area in question (ie; modifies the transport route of hydrocarbons into trap sites, or in the cratons, precludes any transport). Thus, all these simplistic arguments are fine when somone parrots them back on the internet, but any scientific theory cannot just make predictions based on a few vage arm waves and a few equations, especially not in geology when all aspects have to be considered. So to say "have you studied the topic", yes I have, because I have studied the things which imact on the topic. Like, the deep crust, shearing mechanisms and processes, geochemistry, etcetera. This leads me to not only have a list of articles which cast doubt on this crazy ass theory, but to consider from over a decade of studies, that there is no plausible way to form oil via this mechanism so as to satisfy all the various constraints imposed on it by what is known about how the deep crust works, what it's made up of, and how this supposed oil would come out, where it would come out, and how it would be trapped. As I've said elsehere, exhaustively, there is far more evidence against than for.Rolinator 01:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Good. I've found one set of Kenney mistakes but their topic isn't covered in this article. Please add the appropriate caveats to his concepts. (SEWilco 04:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Lakes of Methane on Titan

They're baaaack! The fabled lakes of methane on Saturn's moon, Titan. Probably reintroduced by someone who spends a lot of time there rather than on this planet. Two points:

  1. This is a speculative hypothesis based on the absense of returned radar reflections, rather than an observed fact. We'll have to wait until someone sets a probe down on them to be sure.
  2. This is a completely different planet, which has completely different geology than the one most of us spend most of our time on. Other people's mileage on other planets may vary.

This article is a complete waste of time. It's an example of entropy in action. I've been asked to worked on some more useful articles, so I'm outa here... RockyMtnGuy 14:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Carbon is the fourth element in cosmological abundance, after H, He and O. Study chemical composition of solar system is very important to understand earth formation processes. All things are connected and all are important, not spend time. Study of comets, meteorites, planets, moons, stars also will permit us understand earth and also the matter that are made our bodies. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.53.109 (talk • contribs) 03:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Anonymous, there's been 4.5 billion years of geology between Earth and Titan. A lot has happened. Because we find ice on Pluto, does it mean that glaciers are formed 4.5 billion years ago? That the ice ages were created during Earth accretion? Titan and what happens on the surface of Titan near absolute zero and half or less atmospheres pressure is irrelevant to what happens 5, 10, 50km deep wihin the Earth at a thousand degrees celsius and ten thousand atmospheres pressure. But its nice to see we can fill our tanks on Titan when we drive our Space Hummers there, in a holistic neo-hippy view of science which you espouse. Sure, studying butterflies makes volcanologists happier people but it doesn't help them predict eruptions.Rolinator 03:59, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
The cosmic abundance of carbon is already mentioned. Perhaps links and references with details need to be added, but the simple expected abundance is part of the theories. (SEWilco 06:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC))
Yes, anonymous contributors, I know about the ethane cloud on Titan. [18] It's already known that there are a lot of hydrocarbons out around the gas giants and there was a lot of stuff in the rocks which formed the Earth. (SEWilco 18:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC))
Ok SEWilco, I see that you looking for understand earth's formation and evolution. About comments from Rolinator maybe I would prefer discuss about women with him, not geology, mainly about origin of natural hydrocarbons. As said Walter Groupius: "The human mind is like an umbrella - it functions best when open." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.70.173 (talk • contribs) 02:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
The difference between Titan (and the outer planets) and Earth (and the inner planets) is that the sun blasted the atmospheres off the inner planets during its T-Tauri phase, when it first went nuclear. So, after that, Earth and the other inner planets no longer had methane atmospheres, but the outer planets did. RockyMtnGuy 20:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not directly related to the article, but

I thought there used to be a biogenic petroleum origin article or something like it. Where has it gone? I wanted it to answer my big question: where the feck came the carbon from in the first place? I mean, the biogenic theory is that its critters that died suddenly in large quantities and then coincidentally, suddenly were absorbed by the seabed or something, and then were fossilized into petroleum and coal. But where did the carbon come from in the first place? Wouldn't they, in order to reach the surface of earth billions of years ago in any sensible quantities, basically have to be liquid or gasified?

Where did the original carbon, that the critters that fossilized in an all too improbable fashion, used to reproduce, come from? 84.75.130.173 13:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It is assumed, that before evolution "invented" photosynthesis, the Earth's atmosphere consisted mainly of carbon dioxide and possibly methane. Hardly any free oxygen was present. -- Petri Krohn 14:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
The article on the Archean eon is a tad sparse on the atmosphere. History of Earth has some info on the atmosphere. Not much info on carbon minerals or deposits before photosynthesis appeared; presumably after life appeared there would have been organic deposits. There are few rocks or minerals from the Hadean, before life emerged. (SEWilco 15:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC))
Ah. There is some history in "Earth's atmosphere#The evolution of the Earth's atmosphere". (SEWilco 01:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC))
Notice that a lot of the information in Wikipedia about the ancient atmosphere is a summary of the standard model: Molten rock on Earth got rid of its gases, and the gases got lost somehow. The requirement of the gases being removed is primarily due to the lack of some noble gases (ones heavier than helium) in the current atmosphere. There are problems with the standard model at many levels, in this case see MantlePlumes.org:Noble Gases. (SEWilco 02:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC))
Thomas Gold (see "The surface carbon budget") thought that the surface carbon budget was a little short and continued outgassing was taking place. So it was not required that in the distant past all the carbon be on the surface at one time. (SEWilco 15:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC))
Of course, but Gold is the proponent of abiogenic petroleum. I'd like to know the calculations and data from the biogenic crowd - I mean, they wouldn't just assume it was biologic and the go on believing the carbon suddenly materialized out of nowhere to create life... 84.75.130.173 18:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
If it were not for life, Earth would have a carbon dioxide atmosphere much like Venus (and would be very much hotter than it is now). Over the billions of years, through the process of photosynthesis, bacteria and plants have extracted all but a trace of the CO2 and converted it to hydrocarbons and the oxygen atmosphere we all know and love. CO2 + 2H2O = CH4 + 2O2. For more details see Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World by Nick Lane. RockyMtnGuy 19:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Ahh, Gold also describes the biogenic theory. The early earth may have been too hot for hydrocarbons not to oxidize, and the hydrocarbons would have formed CO2 then. But this raises even more questions, such as the abundance of oxygen and its affinity to bind to various other elements such as hydrogen, silicon, aluminium, iron etc. Unfortunately there is probably not enough data on the elemental composition and other qualities of the early earth. The thing that strikes me in the abiogenic vs biogenic thing is Occam's razor - It seems far more improbable to me that dying critters, combined with sudden (!) covering with sediments (necessary to prevent the recycling of the carbon by the biological destruents and scavengers) would have caused the rather massive, and somewhat randomly distributed quantities of oil that have yet been found. The notion that - now that we know hydrocarbons occur in space in massive quantities - some of those hydrocarbons simply may have ended up in earths crust and survived - appears to be a much more simple and plausible explanation. Can it be debunked in a way a layman understands it? 84.75.130.173 23:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Hydrocarbons which reached the atmosphere, and which were less dense than that (poorly known) atmosphere, would soon be converted to CO2 by sunlight, even though the sun was dimmer then. (SEWilco 02:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC))
I think that does not exist biogenic petroleum origin because it is nonsense. All evidences from geology, astrophysics, thermodynamics, experimental studies hold that natural hydrocarbons are first abiogenic and after migration they reach shallow levels in crust suffering contamination by bacteria that creates a paradox for researchers that ignore abiogenic (abiotic) theory. Unfortunately this paradox still exist today. Understanding juvenile earth formation, carbon balance, methane, nitrogen, helium, diamonds, metals such as Ni, V, Cr, Co, Cd, Zn, Pb, Hg, sulphur, As, Sb, Se Te and others that came from earth's mantle, origin of "evaporites", will permitt better undestand about origin and evolution natural hydrocarbons...next and present challenge is origin of life... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.75.48 (talk • contribs) 00:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
In relation to the abundances of elements you cite, I propose you read and understand the chemical process of chelation before you start claming that the presence of any element in oil is evidence that it came from one process or another. Hydrocarbons are known to bind with metals; metals are found in minerals. All minerals have some concentration of elements you cited. So it is not at all diagnostic.
As for the "all evidence", you have to cite which evidence. Because there is a lot of evidence used to infer biogenic origins to oil. But I don't see anyone saying ALL evidence infers biogenic origins. Thats a pretty ridiculous claim. And you blithely start rattling off jargon almost as if it is fait accompli that "carbon balancce" whatever that is, is perfectly understood and it naturally supports your wild and unsubstantiated claims. It is like me saying "all evidence points to George Bush being spawned by wolves, because of hair balance, speech impediments and being a Republican." Wild, unsourced, unsubstantiated and unargued bullshit. Hell, George Bush has more vanadium in him than the average oil. Is he abiogenic?Rolinator 01:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removing disputed tag

I've removed the disputed tag. Hope that's ok. I asked for examples of specific facts presented in the article which were in dispute and RockyMtnGuy was kind enough to point to a couple which were promptly fixed. I went away for a while to allow for more comments; there weren't any. If you disagree, put back the tag but please point out exactly what you think is disputed here; just saying "a lot of things" isn't good enough.

Also, I would like to ask anyone who is about to put the tag back, to think for a second about whether they disagree with the abiogenic petroleum theory itself, or with what the article says about it. If you disagree with the theory itself, maybe you shouldn't be tagging the article. It exists to report on the theory, in other words just what others have said or claimed about it, nothing more and nothing less. If the article itself makes a factual claim that you think is not properly sourced, or describes sourced material incorrectly or unfairly, then by all means put the tag back. ObsidianOrder 00:59, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

201.19.57.157 00:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)Certainly you are not democratic. Would be necessary remove all comments at this page according your judgement.

I have to concede that it has been cleaned up considerably, compared to when I first saw it. At least the dubious science has been identified as such. In my opinion it now fits into the flat earth category, which is a legitimate article on Wikipedia. Those people who believe it can now invest their money in drilling for abiognenic petroleum, while I'll continue to put mine in money-making ventures. RockyMtnGuy 01:29, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
A banana can not eat a monkey. Mainly carbon and hydrogen are most part of organisms. Where came from this carbon? Atmosphere? Hidrosphere? Space? It seems to me that is more plausible that natural hydrocarbons came and is coming from earth's mantle. Do you know why Russia has the most petroleum production of the world? The problem is not thinking that you need drill basement searching abiogenic oil for get commercial accumulation. You must understand first what is petroleum if you want found it better. Natural hydrocarbons are abiogenic, primordial and they are contaminated with bacterial interaction at shallow levels in crust, mainly in sedimentary basins because have better reservoirs and cover deep depressions in crust formed by deep faults. Some success of western countries is due development of seismic investigation, never from biogenic orthodox view of petroleum that is obsolete.201.19.122.192 00:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
What the crap? Russia does not have more petroleum production than Saudi Arabia, you dinkus. Besdes, your argument is fallacious and does not prove anything; if these champion Russian guys are looking in the same place as Western geologists for different reasons, both will find oil. So what if they believe erroneously that the oil in deep sedimentary formations comes from the mantle, if they find it? But to prove the theory and not just find oil you have to drill and find oil which can be proven to come not from biogenic sources. And this hasn't happened. People used to think the world was flat, but it didn't stop them from making maps. Same deal. The Russians are probably wrong, but they can still find oil if they look in the places where oil accumulates. You are a fool, Mr Banana.Rolinator 01:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
No, scientists from Russia and Ukraine are not wrong Mr. kangaroo and Russia, certainly nowadays is the most petroleum production of the world. In fact you don't know nothing about petroleum as you have proved many times. Just for you, probability of petroleum how as a "fossil fuel" is the same: ...you shit inside a bird cage and hope your shit to sing...you open door of the cage and your shit fly over to firmament and becomes a star and after a black hole...finally rains as biogenic oil over a crocodile's fool mind.201.19.90.75 22:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] deep biogenic theory? (sic)

Who is the author of this theory? I think does not is Dr. Thomas Gold. He never mentioned this. On the other hand the term Deep Hot Biosphere Theory, that is a Gold's proposal, is correct. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.57.157 (talk • contribs) 00:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, are you complaining about the term "deep biogenic theory"? You'll have to look at the history of the source article [19] to see where it originated. I didn't alter that because it looks like a descriptive term for the deep microbial concepts from several authors. Using "deep hot biosphere" seems too specific, similar to using "Copernican solar system" for all star-dominated astronomical conditions. For example, some extremophiles live in cold or shallow conditions. 20% of methane might come from microbes but how deep is "deep"? (SEWilco 14:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC))

201.19.52.235 00:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)Dear SEWilco, Ok, I thought that would exist still those article ("deep biogenic petroleum theory" 'sic'), but it's good that redirection to abiogenic petroleum origin. Yes, I know the origin of old article and I wrote to the possible "author" at item 14 of this discussion page. On the other hand, in my view, the term Deep Hot Biosphere is suitable for earth and other planets. About extreme microbial life living at depths or shallow levels of course they need food and the plausible food is primordial hydrocarbons. What is your opinion about this matter?

Readers of archives: "item 14" is the section #Rewrote Abiogenic Petroleum Origin? Bad, very bad. (SEWilco 03:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC))
Don't you think that the microbes would have, in 4.5 billion years, eaten all the primordial hydrocarbons? We humans sure aren't eating Big Macs left over from the formation of the solar system.Rolinator 01:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
See "The Surface Carbon Budget" in Gold's 1993 USGS paper. (SEWilco 03:34, 29 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Calcite-Wustite-Lime-Water-Methane

OK, SEWilco. You are obviously not a geologist or you would not propose the carbonate reactions to produce methane. I shall now outline why your hamfisted equations are useless;

  • Number one, FeO is present in magnetite as part of the Fe)Fe2O3. Your equation about it forming hydrogen may fly. However,
  • Calcite cannot be converted to quicklime (CaO) within the crust. In order to convert calcite to quicklime, you need to do this with a reductant, typically charcoal. Quicklime is a constituent of cement. There is no mineral within nature which is CaO, because CaO + H2O equals?
  • There is no rock assemblage known within geology which is FeO plus CaO, ie, wustite-quicklime. The closes we get is a skarn assemblage of magnetite-calcite.
  • Your reactions are chemically correct and faultless, however, that does not mean you can apply them to rocks within the crust. One of your reactions occurs at 1500 degrees celsius. Please check whether the mantle exists at 1500 degrees celsius, and at what depth within the Earth you must go to reach 1500 degrees celsius, and whether or not this fits with the rest of either the abiogenic petroleum theory (it does not) or with the rest of science.
  • Additionally, you presume that CaO is a stable mineral phase at any temperature and pressure apart from sea level, 1Kbar. Please cite the phase diagram for CaO at mantle temperatures and pressures. Please cite why you think CaO can exist in hydrous mantle and deep crustal material without reacting with other silicates or water. Remember, quicklime reacts with water. Calcite dissolves in water, but does not do so to form quicklime and methane!
  • The equations concerning FeO ignore the fact that is extremely, extremely rare, if not impossible to form pure FeO within manle lithologies. The oxidation potential of rocks such as peridotite is at best an FeO/Fe2O3 ratio of 0.4, and that is in magnetitite layers with pure magnetite. Most crustal gneisses are at 0.1 or less FeO. Which reduced lithology are you proposing as the source of wustite-calcite to drive these reactions? Can you cite evidence that this lithology exists in terrestrial samples?

Those equations, I reiterate, because I know it takes you inordinate amounts of time and mental effort to understand anything, work fine in a laboratory where these are only two reactants. However, geology is much different, because it is impossible to separate out the individual major element oxides and make them do their magic like you want. For instance, a magnetite-bearing serpentinite will contan FeO bound strongly within the magnetite mineral. Oxidising the magnetite within a serpentinised body during hydrothermal metamorphism does not happen, and this is provable because serpentinites generally contain magnetite. You are now claiming that serpentinites, during serpentinisation (which elsewhere, I pointed out, could only possibly create methane during the process of hydrous metamorphism which is a one-way street) now not only create magnetite and serpentine from olivine, but they are subject to such severe metasomatism that the magnetite is now converted to hematite? Cite evidence that hematitic serpentinites exist and are the dominant form, ergo, that they are widespread enough to contribute their FeO toward abiogenic production of methane? This is a ridiculous and unbelievable claim which has very little basis in fact. I am not saying that there are not portions of serpentinitised ultramafic bodies which have been demangetised by hydrothermal alteration, but this is very very rare. I know this, I work for a company exploring Archaean serpentinites for nickel. And in NO cases are there serpentinite bodies which contain calcite, nor are there serpentinite bodies which contain quicklime. In fact, the more carbon dioxide you add into an ultramafic rock during metamorphsm, the more likely you are to form a talc-magnesite assemblage. So the mineralogy and chemistry of the ultramafic changed, yet again, and makes the assumptions of your swathe of equations useless. So I hope you can see that you have just gone ino a chemstry book, pulled some equations out, and thought you could fob this off as proof of the theory. The reality is, there are no such minerals and rocks which fit your equations. Therefore I have removed them.Rolinator 02:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Calcite cannot be converted to quicklime (CaO) within the crust. - The Scott2004 source refers to mantle conditions, not the crust.
  • There is no rock assemblage known within geology which is FeO plus CaO - Which formula mentions FeO+CaO? A rock on the surface?
  • ... 1500 degrees celsius - Actually two reactions mention it, both from Scott2004's experiments. Hmm... [20] has an estimate of 1450° C for one condition, [21] says the range is 870-2200° C.
  • you presume that CaO is a stable mineral phase - I did not state what happens to CaO after formation. Scott2004's "methane reforming" does require two reactions involving CaO at different temperatures, which implies movement of reaction products.
  • ...extremely rare, if not impossible to form pure FeO - Hmm... Wüstite [22] associated with lime in meteorite, meteorite, meteorite. Nope, not terrestrial. Although Wüstite being in kimberlite pipes is interesting. Scott2004 doesn't say why calcite and wüstite were chosen, other than mention of "reduction of carbonate under conditions typical for the Earth's upper mantle". Probably is considering subducted calcite, and some think subducted material often reaches the lower mantle. Would subduction of oxidised ferric iron from the surface be a factor? Lamproites having iron suggests there sometimes is iron in a subduction area, while kimberlites from the lower mantle have less iron.
  • Oxidising the magnetite within a serpentinised body during hydrothermal metamorphism does not happen - Okay, so where is this mentioned?
    • You are now claiming that serpentinites, during serpentinisation ... now not only create magnetite and serpentine from olivine, but they are subject to such severe metasomatism that the magnetite is now converted to hematite? - I thought we were discussing mantle reactions, who mentioned serpentinite other than yourself?
  • ... you have just gone ino a chemstry book, pulled some equations out, and thought you could fob this off as proof of the theory. The reality is, there are no such minerals and rocks which fit your equations. - Nope, I pulled out some equations exploring hydrocarbon-producing conditions, often from studies exploring exactly that topic. There not being such surface rocks only suggests that the reactions don't often take place where the products reach the surface unchanged.
(SEWilco 05:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC))
The problem I have with the whole thing is that FeO exists at unreasonably low fO2 conditions (I am going to wildly assume you know what that is?) at the Wustite-Magnetite buffer. The reactions work in the lab, in the 600-1200 degree celsius range, in a laser crucible, with an artificial concoction of wustite, calcite, water. This is not a natural system on several bases; firstly the composition is unknown, there is no evidence of it on Earth, in the crust - and it must be the crust because the mantle is never below 1150 degrees C. Secondly, the efficiency of methane production is different between resistive and laser methods, suggesting that there may be some artificial phenomenon associated with the laser process which is producing the raman spectrum of methane. Thirdly, the CaO-Methane-Magnetite system at 1200 degrees may just as easily revert to Wustite-Calcite-Water once the laser is turned off; this could well be an equilibrium reaction.
So, what compositions do we know of in nature which produce observable methane? Serpentinites. Which have FeO. Thus why the serpentinite reactions are favored. The equations put forward involved converting magnetite to hematite; this does not happen within the crust without a change in oxygen fugacity past the quartz-fayalite-magnetite buffer and into the hematite-quartz stability field, and its speculation that this happens in serpentinites, in the crust, the mantle, anywhere and that it is this process that creates methane.
If you wish, restate the reaction as Wustite-Calcite-Water --> Magnetite-CaO-Methane, but please mention it is a hypothetical model of methanogenesis proposed from laboratory studies. The way it was written and presented makes it seem like there is a gigantic list of reactions related to carbonates and wustite and it was all solved. It is, in my estimation from having actually, you know, studied geology, more likely that the serpentinite mechanism works. Ths is because, as I staed before, there have been well recorded examples of methane being struck within serpentinites. In fact, this is something I have seen myself. A wustite-calcite mantle xenolith I have no knowledge of.
Saying 'the products don't reach the surface unchanged' is crap. Read the paper, they list spectral evidence for a variety of compounds observed during the reaction. This includes a list of compounds including CaO and methane. However they do not cite this as evidence that CaO is produced by the reaction; the list of compounds is a reading of a physical state of an artificial compostion. The authors do not go as far as saying that there is a particular mineral assemblage created nor that they expect this to revert to other mineral assemblages enroute to the surface. That is your inference, and you are attempting to defend your use of this study as evidence of abiogenesis by saying "nothing is proven". Well, if nothing is proven, and this is a laboratory reaction, can you use this as evidence for the theory? It is equally arguable that if the conditions in the lab can't be proven to exist in nature, it is meaningless, as it is to argue that artificial synthess infer it is possible that abiogenic petroleum exists.
The presence of Wustite in Lamproites is interesting, however it is not associated with oil or methane, to my knowledge. It is also a rare thing to find wustite in even kimberlites.
Can carbonates be subducted? Yes, however most carbonates are metamorphosed to marble, calc-silicate assemblages (scapolite, wollastonite, etc) and tend to melt at 800 degrees C so are unlikely to survive as intact formations within the lower crust/mantle. The carbonate is also likely to be dissolved in part enroute to the manle via hydrothermal cnvection. This is not to say there are not enriched mantle areas rich in carbonates and that there are no carbonates in the mantle, but I think you can avoid bringing subduction into the argument in the first place. It is not necessary to argue through flaming hoops carbonates get into the mantle via subduction and it is therefore irrelevant to the discussion as to whether coral reefs can be stuffed down into the mantle.
Why did they choose wustite-calcite? Probably because they knew they needed a composition which contained hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and a transition metal which was very reduced in terms of oxygen fugacity, in order to produce methane (reduced hydrocarbons). This is normal for science because their objective was to ask "is it possible to produce methane from mineral-water mixtures?". This is different from asking the question "which natural rock/mineral assemblage exists that can produce abiogenic methane?". It is a fine distinction but a critical one.Rolinator 02:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Low fO2 means there is little oxygen available for reactions (although that scale ranges from 'little' to 'tiny small pieces of miniscule' amounts). Looks like Scott2004 got magnetite at low temp+pressure, which switched to wustite when pressure increased and lime converted to aragonite. I'm only seeing magnetite in "Carbonate reduction" "Reaction 6b" so that must be what you're referring to. Because H2O is present, high fO2 is implied so much more magnetite than wustite should exist. A subducting slab is likely to lose magnetite, but wustite is most likely to be encountered at greater depths. Hmm. The wustite-magnetite buffer is an equilibrium, so some wustite exists; if calcite and water are present when conditions prefer magnetite, wouldn't the reaction which consumes wustite tend to take place and not be reversible later if the methane escapes? (SEWilco 06:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC))
The scott experiment had a ratio of wustite to calcite to water of 8:1:20 if I recall correctly. This is a massive excess of water, and I believe, it was present as supercooled ice; this was heated by a laser and raman spectroscopy used to detect methane within the vaporised superheated steam. This is, once again, not a typical mantle composition where there is (as best can be shown from mantle xenoliths) less than 0.5% water. High oxygen fugacity is not "implied" by the presence of water; while volatiles within the mantle may be present as ions and certainly not in liquid form, minerals are not subject to the same state and are still essentially solid. Because water exists as oxygen and hydrogen ions does not mean that the hydrogen simply abandons the oxygen, seeps off, and leaves a dissolved oxygen gas.
Thus the problem I have with saying, simplistically, that a bunch of stoichiometric reactions involving FeO and CaO, water and carbon dioxide, equates to nature involves, 1) primarily the extreme artificiality of the experiment, and 2) the problem that oxygen fugacity is not simply increased by throwing in more water. Because you are right, what happens when the water leaves and the reagent leaves, or the methane leaves the system? The reactions either have to be reversed, and the assumption that the system is driven to produce methane falls over, especially because the CaO must find something to bind with chemically. Hence, the Scott experiment is good at showing that within an artificial composition subject to artificial conditions, you get artificial methane. But this is far from what happens in 'wet' enriched mantle peridotite at 100km depth.
The other point about the presence of wustite within kimberlites is that if a kimberlite has wustite, it necessarily cannot have produced methane (because, then, it must be present as magnetite or hematite). Similarly, the fact that the majority of ultramafic rocks and magmas erupted into the crust and onto the ocean floors contain magnetite, not hematite, says that even if water is added, it does not increase oxygen fugacity. And, also, if you need water to create methane, by that logic, the reactions are opposed; water increases fO2 above the W-M buffer and indeed above the Q-F-M buffer, and out of the chemically reduced state needed to produce methane, hence, carbon is present as carbon dioxide.
Thus, realistically, there is no scientifically defensible reason to leave these equations in the article. They are wholly disconnected from reality. Once again, I would be happy with a "experiments on synthetic or artificial materials in the laboratory indicate that a sifficiently chemically reduced mantle lithology containing carbonate and wustite can produce methane if there is an excess of water." Or something like that. This is far different from saying "mehane is produced in the mantle via these bazillion reactions". And in any case, you just copied them from the Scott paper where they were given as potential reactions.Rolinator 09:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


There do seem to be various pieces of slabs at the upper-lower mantle transition zone, although I don't know if they lose all their volatiles by then. A lot of CO2 and H2O seems to be buffered in the mantle, although in the lower mantle they've lost their oxygen. Hydrocarbons in kimberlite pipes with diamonds suggest C+H can meet someplace deep. But whether C and H got in lower mantle is where Gold and Russian theories separate; Gold said C is primordial while Russian theories are satisfied with any C which gets deep enough. If C is siderophile in the mantle its travels are simplified. (SEWilco 06:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Deep mantle

What is the current consensus on the present lower mantle composition? Is it 20% (Mg,Fe)O with mostly Fe2+ or a lot of Fe3+? What happens when subducted carbonates hit it? (SEWilco 18:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC))

The composition is best known from 2 sources; rocks created by melting the mantle, and xenoliths brought up from the mantle within those rocks. Kimberlites tend to carry a lot of xenoliths, as do alkali basalts, lamproites, lamprophyres, intraplate basalts.
See igneous rock; see igneous differentiation; basically the composition of a basalt is a function of its source composition and percentage of melting and depth of melting. This also determines the FeO/Fe2O3 composition. Given most basalts contain magnetite, not wustite, not hematite, it places the oxygen fugacity of the upper mantle between the wustite-magnetite and quartz-fayalite-magnetite buffers.
Don't be misled by the Fe2+/Fe3+ composition as being entirely restricted to whether or not there will be magnetite or wustite as the iron oxide. FeO and Fe2O3 enter silicate minerals in different amounts and thus the redox state of the magma selects for the type of ferric/ferrous silicates and vice versa. This is the QFM buffer; Fayalite relies on having an overwhelming amount of ferrous iron in the melt, if there is too much Fe3+ this forces the iron into magnetite, and when all FeO is consumed into hematite.
With this in mind, ask yourself, if peridotite is the major component of the mantle and it is composed predominantly of olivine (Ferrous iron), what must the redox state of peridotite be? Given that silica will tend to bond with all available FeO to form fayalite, if the redox state of a magma is reduced enough, at what point do you form wustite? Or is wustite only formed in rocks of a composition with excess iron?
The presence of wustite within a rock is very, very rare on Earth because, according to known mechanisms of melting the mantle and the back-calculations performed to estimate the composition of the mantle from ts products (basalts, kimberlites, etc), the mantle is not at the wustite-magnetite redox buffer.
The composition of xenoliths varies widely and it is difficult to find pristine examples because the minerals in xenoliths are generally unstable at surface temperature and pressure, are erupted in volatile-rich magmas, and subject to cooling within wet conditions leading to retrograde metamorphism style reactions (propylitic alteration, etc). There are 3 broad types of mantle xenoliths; peridotite types such as harzburgite, eclogites and other metamorphic rocks, and enriched mantle xenoliths which are rich in carbonate minerals.
Thus there is no need to invoke subduction of sedimentary carbonates into the mantle to account for carbonates. They are already there. But don't take my word for it.
Caveats are many; Kimberlite and other exotic rocks such as that are formed from the enriched carbonate mantle, yet hardly any contain wustite; most are in equilibrium with peridotite and Al-enriched garnetiferous peridotite, which is certainly within the W-M and Q-F-M redox compositional space. Graphite and diamond, both elemental carbon and strong reducing agents, are known from kimberlites, so it is arguable that the presence of wustite in kimberlite is as much a function of their derivation from areas within the diamond stability field as it is of original magma composition. ie; at such depths carbon forms a mineral phase when in excess and could alter redox state. Similarly, methane within kimberlite is equally likely to be formed by the influence of hydrolysis of carbon in the presence of FeO during magma ascent. If there was a mechanism to force carbon from elemental forms (diamond) into methane within the mantle at these depths, why is there diamond in kimberlite? Why, if you must merely "add water to change the redox state" is carbon not oxidised entirely to CO2, and why is there magnetite and not hematite? You can thermodynamically and chemically not have methane and carbon in equilibrium within the mantle at such depths.
Hopefuly this has answered a few of the problms you ae having understanding the deep mantle.Rolinator 16:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Look deep in 1877

I'm very happy with discussions about deep mantle. It makes me remember the famous phrase about petroleum origin from the father of periodic table of the elements Dmitriy Ivanovich Mendeleyev: "The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin." (Dmitri Mendeleev, 1877) 201.19.55.29 23:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Mr Irrelevancy! You have once again done a sterling Appeal to Authority on a chemist who, in 1877 obviously knew everything there was to know about Kimberlites and redox chemistry, what with having invented the periodic table. In fact, he was such a renowned geologist, science has progressed almost nowhere wince the late 19th century, which means we can take one sentence from Mendeleyev and use it as raison d'etre for a whole range of hinky ideas. Rolinator 01:51, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Certainly he never would believe that diamondoids is diamond contamination of drill bits (as some current geologist woul hold at present...sic) if he had all the knowledge of the scientific advances until century 21. On the other hand, I reccomend you continue studying sedex deposits and you will find that hydrocarbons coming from mantle will explain those mineralizations correctly. Good luck. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.79.221.117 (talk • contribs) 01:03, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
All you Anonymous, do you have summaries of the theories of Mendeleev and others? I'm finding too many papers with the equivalent of an astronomer thanking Copernicus for his work but without describing what the work actually was. And without a user name it's hard to communicate with you and know whether we're talking to one person (or should repeat ourselves). (SEWilco 02:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC))
You are the most important contributor of the article. In fact you have reason. Knowledge from all important scientists such as Galileo, Newton Mendeleev, Einstein and many others are incorporated in science, in our mind. I intend just remember the way pointed by Mendeleev at century 19. Also interesting to note is that cosmological books always refer the with respect to those scientists. User name. For you Truth just for discretion. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.79.221.117 (talk • contribs) 01:03, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Nonresponsive. (SEWilco 04:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC))
At least responsive in part, right?. Ok I 'll bring those summaries from Mendeleev.201.79.221.117 22:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] F-T and cosmological articles

201.19.122.192 02:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC) Its interesting articles below

  • Peter Szatmari. Petroleum formation by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in plate tectonics. AAPG Bulletin; August 1989; v. 73; no. 8; p. 989-998

This Article

[edit] Subduction of carbon and water

Apparently much subducted water and carbon are not volcanically returned to the surface. Where does it go? (SEWilco 02:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC))

Some water and carbon is emitted volcanically near subduction zones, but is the carbon budget balanced? The Russian theories require deep carbon deposits, whether primordial or not. Older theories assume compositions similar to those of meteorites, which implies a primordial source; this is hardly surprising before subduction was discovered. Gold argued in favor of primordial deposits but was aware of subducted carbon.
  1. One source (Kerrick 2001 Nature 411:17 May:293-296) says 5.4 Tmol/yr C is subducted but 2 to 3 is released in arc magmatism, so 2.5-3.5 Tmol/yr is not accounted for.
  2. "only a modest fraction of subducted CO2 immediately returns to the surface at arc volcanoes." [23]
  3. "the rate of subduction of water is much larger than the volcanic outgassing rate" [24]
  4. Another source (can't find at the moment: involved subduction in Central America area) also mentioned most volatiles were not released in the area.
  5. "the amount of water subducted (900 teragrams/year) (2) is significantly larger than the amount of water released by midocean ridge volcanism (200 teragrams/year) (2) and arc volcanoes (perhaps tens of teragrams/year) (2, 3) combined." ... "If we assume a CO2 content similar to that observed in western U.S. springs dominated by metamorphic fluids (25), our analysis also seems to permit a global, "deep" CO2 flux of roughly 200 teragrams/year" [25]
  6. Volatiles seem to leak through wide swaths of the crust.
    1. "Our recent work on crustal permeability suggests a large capacity for water upflow through tectonically active continental crust," [26] (same as preceding)
    2. "travertine depositing springs (in addition to the hot springs and gas fields that have been the focus of work by others) provide an important record of regional mantle degassing for the western United States. Based on the distribution of travertine and travertinesprings, the entire mantle under the western United States may be heterogeneously degassing." DOI:10.1130%2F1052-5173(2005)015%5B4:CSLBTM%5D2.0.CO%3B2
  7. How much water and carbon is released from divergent boundaries areas?
  8. I am aware that carbonatite formations suggest that carbon-rich and water-rich magma in the crust (and by implication in the top of the mantle) might not mix.
  9. I haven't seen information about the mantle flow (nor dispersion or concentration) of carbon, water, or hydrogen, which ends up at divergent boundaries. If what is created comes from subduction, how does it get from here to there?
  10. An interesting assortment of geochemistry composition numbers is in http://earthref.org/GERM/
(SEWilco 05:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC))
Do not forget. Carbon is the fourth element in order of abundance in universe. 200.199.63.208 12:51, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atomic typo

possible "typo" in section: The geological argument for abiogenic oil Given the known occurrence of methane and the probable catalysis of methane into higher atomic weight hydrocarbon molecules...

i think the phrase "higher atomic weight hydrocarbon molecules" was probably intended to read, "higher molecular weight hydrocarbon molecules"

my first (attempted) Wikipedia edit; hope my format isn't too awful! Questioner1K 15:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC) ("questioner1K")

[edit] Methane reforming

I removed this because it said "if" which is a supposition, and secondly, went on to say "if the high temperature reaction and low temperature reaction take place".

This is illogical and not what Scott (2004) said anyway. How are two reactions supposed to take place at the same time, in the same rock, at different temperatures (and probably pressures)? It is totally illogical.

The Scott experiment, I reiterate, detected inter-elemental bonds in a vapor via laser raman spectroscopy. If they detected C-H bonds at one temperature but not the other, it cannot be said that two separate reactions occurring under the same conditions equate to a single whole reaction to create methane out of rock.

It is like saying that if you find a reaction in ice it can affect with a compound in water vapor in the air.

Besides which, the whole "Laboratory evidence" section is based off the Scott experiment; it could do with a better depiction of the real conditions and results of the experiment.Rolinator 00:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

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