| Author | Message | ||
     Blake |
This could be HUGE!... Scientists Say Petroleum Not a Product of Dead Dinosaurs Ramifications? Anyone?  | ||
| Lake_bueller |
Either way, it doesn't make sense. The article states at the very end that"it is impossible to ever literally run out of oil". Whatever the source of crude oil, it will eventually run out at some point. | ||
| Sportsman |
I think what he's saying is that as supplies dwindle, price goes up, so demmand dwindles, and that will maintain balance never completely exhausting supply. Bottom line is oil has been the most economical form of energy to this point, but that will not be that way forever. If some genius figures a way to seperate H2 from O and gets it under a hood, there will be lots of cheap oil everywhere. | ||
| Bomber |
Car&Driver had a great piece in the mid 70s (!) during THAT oil shortage, showing the there was an "all the oil's gonna disappear any day now" scare on the average of every 11 years since oil because a commonly used fuel and lubricant . . . . compared oil to whale oil (the previous high-priced lighting fuel and lubricant), and showed how the demand for whale oil did not diminish appreciably until such time as a better (more cost effective) altenative showed up, and, then, hey, presto, whale's breathed easier, asnd the cost of whale oil (which was, of course, in more limited supply than it had been just decaeds before) plummeted . . . . just like sportsman sez | ||
| Glitch |
Jim Dumesic, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of chemical engineering and co-founder of Virent, explained how at the Nanotechnology Conference last Thursday. Dumesic and Randy Cortright, another UW-Madison chemical engineer, have discovered a way to turn sugar into hydrogen, right in the engine of a car. | ||
| Mikej |
Should be a sweet running engine if they ever get the conversion process functionally small enough. | ||
| Fullpower |
none of us alive now will "run out of oil" you may well run out of money at some point, but there will be plenty of petroleum products still available. | ||
| Charlieboy6649 |
Another point to consider is how much oil is recycled. Look at the federal regs on all the oil drained from our cars. Straight to alternate use... | ||
| Road_thing |
Current thought among most (if not all) American practitioners of the fine art of petroleum geology is that the abiogenic theory is a load of crap. Pardon my French. r-t | ||
| Bomber |
well, thang, if that's true, mebbe we can extract methane from it? | ||
| Road_thing |
I'll get right to work on that, Bomber. That project will fit right in with the rest of what's going on in my gar..er..entropy lab! r-t | ||
| Blake |
I'd not be bowled over that a bunch of Americans would scoff at a Russian theory that if valid would change the way the petroleum exploration industry thinks. | ||
| Blake |
I'd be interested in seeing some actual factual arguments on the subject though. | ||
| Road_thing |
I'd be interested in seeing some actual factual arguments on the subject though No. I won't hit that lure. This is like arguing evolution. You either believe the science or you don't. But, if you read the article on the Dneiper-Donets basin production, where the inorganic, crystalline basement rocks are productive, and look at figure 2 (the cross-section depicting the productive fault block) you will see that the productive, inorganic basement rocks are juxtaposed across faults with the Carboniferous rocks, which are also productive in the field and which are decidedly not devoid of organic material. That petroleum almost certainly comes from the Carboniferous rocks, not the basement. Same thing happens offshore Vietnam and onshore California. Inorganic basement rocks with porosity and permeability can become charged with petroleum when they are in contact with organic source rocks. Now I'm going to the entropy lab to sand the primer on my S2. r-t I am such a dumb ••••, I know better than to argue with Blake, why am I doing this? | ||
| Blake |
Ya know, I hear you get all that carbunkiniferous buildup when yer jetted too rich. Not sure what that has to do with geology though. | ||
| Timbo |
Considering the belief that oil is the byproduct of dead dinosaurs... I've always wondered why the regions that are the most rich in fossil finds have very little if any "fossil fuels" anywhere near them. While regions of the earth that have almost no fossil evidence are the most rich in oil resources??? If you took a million dead elephants and piled them all up, what would you have in a thousand years? A pile of dust. What would you have in ten million years? A smaller pile of dust, and most definitely not anything I would want to put in my motor. Science has never been able to recreate or observe the process of oil deriving from decomposition, despite valiant efforts to do so. Can you imagine the ramifications if we could "make" our own oil from the processes of decomposition and adding massive pressure or any other influence upon the decaying matter? Do you think others have not? Saying oil comes from dead dinosaurs is like saying gold comes from ancient eagle excrement. It just seems silly and child-like to actually believe the theory that oil comes from dead creatures that lived millions of years ago, IMO. Timbo | ||
| Blake |
You've seen vegetable oil right? The term "dead dinosaurs" is a bit simplistic. If I recall the theory is that plate tectonics and subduction pull large pools of organic matter into the depths of the earth where it is transformed under hear pressure into various other forms of hydrocarbon. Where the hydrogen comes from I'm not sure. Maybe water or acid? Thing will splain it to us. | ||
| Road_thing |
>> Thing will splain it to us. << Yeah, I can splain it to you but I can't understand it for you! Blake is correct, the dinosaur thing is an oversimplification for lay people. Current thinking is that the organic material from which petroleum is generated is mostly derived from microfauna in the oceans; stuff like diatoms, ostracods, foraminifera, etc. as well as some plant material that may wash in with riverborne sediments. All this stuff is deposited along with mud and silt in deep, oxygen-deprived water which prevents oxidation and allows the organic material to "ferment" in a reducing environment. Over geologic time (millions of years) huge thicknesses of this ooze accumulate and are buried deeply enough to be subjected to sufficient temperature and pressure to "cook out" the petroleum, which then migrates upward into porous and permeable reservoir rocks. Reservoir rocks are generally sandstones or porous limestones, but can be fractured crystalline rocks like those in the Dneiper-Donets basin previously referenced. If the reservoir rocks in the subsurface are contorted into structural configurations which can prevent the upward-migrating hydrocarbons (which are lighter than water, remember) from reaching the surface, then "pools" of oil and gas form underground. In case anybody's interested, the definitive text on the subject is: Petroleum formation and occurrence : a new approach to oil and gas exploration By: B.P. Tissot & D.H. Welte Springer-Verlag, 1978. ISBN: 0387086986. This is where I come into the picture. Using my trusty seismograph and my many years of accumulated experience, I (and my fellow explorationists) choose locations which we believe are favorable for the accumulation of oil and gas in those "pools". Then we find somebody willing to finance the drilling of a well to see if we're right. We drill the well and, if we're right (which is by no means a universal outcome) we find a commercial accumulation and produce and sell oil and gas at outrageous prices to a hapless and defenseless public  . If we're wrong, we plug and abandon the well and go try again somewhere else . Just for your reference, acquiring seismic data costs anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 per square mile. Plan on at least 100 squares to get started. Before you can drill, you have to buy oil & gas leases from the landowners, and those will run from $100/acre for really rank wildcat acreage, to $1500-2000/acre in a hot trend. You'll need at least 1000 acres under lease before you can get serious about drilling a well. To drill and evaluate the hole starts at around a million bucks (for a real cheapie) and commonly pushes up into the tens of millions. If the well is dry, you plug and abandon and restore the location to its original condition. Figure on another $200-300,000. If the well is good, you get to "complete" the well--you run steel pipe in the ground and equip the hole to produce the petroleum. Call that another million or two. If you complete 50% of the wells you drill in any given time period, you're doing pretty darn well. Now, does anyone want to explain to me why they think oil is overpriced?? Hey, it's a living... r-t | ||
| Bomber |
Thang wrote:Yeah, I can splain it to you but I can't understand it for you! well put . . .. I'm gonna have to remember that line! Blake is correct, the dinosaur thing is an oversimplification for lay people. Hey, I'm a lay person . . .that's great news . . .think I'll go home at lunch for a nooner | ||
| Xb9er |
Timbo No offense but you are way, way out of your league on this topic. This is a simplistic summary I randomly got from a Google search (Note: where they say "millions" think "hundreds of millions"  . The article is at http://www.chevron.com/learning_center/crude/. Again it's a very simplistic explanation but it's a place to start. In the same way that real SCIENCE shows us factual evidence that coal comes from geologic processes acting on dead plant matter (see here: http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/geosurvey/oh_geol/96_Spring/Forest.htm), you can show that petroleum comes from geologic processes acting on biological matter. I realize that once people bring belief systems into this type of argument it becomes a no win situation and a terrible waste of time, so this is where I bow out. If anyone wants to discuss it further, e-mail me. The abiotic petroleum argument is interesting and from what little I know right now, there isn't enough evidence out yet. But if it is true, it would likely be a rare occurrence for oil to have formed this way and it would only account for a very small percentage of crude reserves. Mike. | ||
| Bykergeek |
Soylent Green is Made out of People! Soylent Green is People. It's People! from a favorite old Sci Fi movie.. | ||
| Sshbsn |
Good one Bykergeek!!    | ||
| Sportsman |
One thing I've learned is there is some really smart people on this board, on just about every topic! Buell's apparently appeal to more than just us heathens. | ||
| Pilk |
Sportsman, that is a huge understatement, and I whole-heartedly agree.... Pilk | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
Anybody heard of Diester? it's a form of Diesel made from vegetable oil, very clean & renewable, a good number of French towns & Cities run their municipal fleets on the stuff, & Peugeot built this little baby that runs on it too,  In fact they built 25 of them for a racing series, Peugeot TOTAL RC Diester cup. For the technically interested, its got a 2.2l 4cyl Hdi engine tweaked out to 178 horses & 380 Nm of torque! Not bad for an oil burner and all this in a package that weighs in at 800 kg, Who says green has to be slow.  | ||
| Swampy |
Yeah, sure they don't know where oil comes from. It comes from the ground! Thats why you want to keep dumping your used motor oil on the ground. You know we didn't start having an oil shortage until the seventies when the Green Weenies started saying it was a bad thing to do. Haven't you seen the Recycling Logo? I think its a big conspiracy created by the oil companies, they just save up that old oil and dump it back in the ground when the price goes up. Ya just hafta learn to keep things in balance. | ||
| Oadine |
Actually we know for a fact that petroleum products have to go thru a biological process at some point during the formation of it. This is proved by the composition of the petroleum products themselves. A normal geological product of the earth (ie rock, water etc) will have a certain degree of radioactive isotopes per kg of material. The only time this ratio of radioactive isotopes goes down is in relation to living lifeforms. A generally accepted theory is that living organisms excluded radioactive isotopes via active transport. Therefore, at some point oil is from a living cyclic system. | ||
| Swampy |
Yeah, some living person takes his used oil and dumps it back into the ground to get pumped up again by the oil company! The cycle is complete! | ||
| Xbduck |
Mr. Grumpy, On this side of the pond it is called, "Bio-Diesel", real catchy phrase isn't it. I like Diester better. At www.veggievan.org the folks go into great detail about their process of production and even have info on how you can do it. I haven't tried it yet, but my hand has been forced because my brother said I couldn't do it. They even talk about using bio-diesel with petro diesel in a blend to help cut emissions. I would really like to see how far a motorcycle with real performance numbers could go (mpg) with a diesel engine. | ||
| Jon |
How about oil being from the decomposed remains of the pre-flood population of earth? Like Humans as well as everything else? |
