The Debate Over the Origin of Oil
The abiotic theory of the origin of oil, which suggests that oil is not derived from organic material, is still widely ridiculed in the United States as a “conspiracy theory” by the scientific community, despite most geo-scientists acknowledging that the idea of oil being produced by buried dinosaurs and ancient forests is no longer tenable.
The prevailing view among US geo-scientists is that oil is derived from ancient biological debris, such as plankton and algae, and is therefore considered a “fossil fuel”, even though the term “fossil” refers to the structure of an animal or plant filled with minerals, rather than the actual animal or plant itself.
Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow-in-residence at the Post Carbon Institute, argues that the assertion that all oil is abiotic requires extraordinary evidence to overcome the abundant evidence that ties specific oil accumulations to specific biological origins through a chain of well-understood processes.
Seppo Korpela, a professor at the Ohio State University Department of Mechanical Engineering, explains that fossil fuels form when organic matter in sedimentary layers is deprived of oxygen, allowing anaerobic bacteria to turn the organic material into kerogen, a substance that can be thought of as “immature oil”.
Kerogen Formation and the Fossil Fuel Process
Kerogen is a loose, geological term that refers to the naturally occurring, solid, insoluble organic material that occurs in source rocks and can yield oil upon heating, and is not a term typically found in chemistry textbooks or used by professional chemists.
The process by which kerogen is supposed to transform into “fossil fuel” involves the accumulation of dead organic material on the bottom of oceans, riverbeds, or swamps, mixing with mud and sand, and then being subjected to heat and pressure to produce oil, with the “oil window” being the zone at depths of between 6,000 and 13,000 feet where the temperature and pressure are suitable for this process to occur.
The process of transforming organic layers into kerogen, a dark and waxy substance, occurs over time as more sediment piles on top, resulting in heat and pressure that transforms the organic layer, and this process is described in the Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary.
The kerogen molecules eventually crack into shorter and lighter molecules composed almost solely of carbon and hydrogen atoms, which can turn into either petroleum or natural gas, depending on how liquid or gaseous the mixture is, as explained by the concept of kinetic cracking of kerogen into petroleum.
Chemical textbooks typically do not provide chemical formulae for kerogen, and the transformation from kerogen to fossil fuels appears to be more a matter of faith than an observed process that can be described in a precise chemical formula and replicated in a laboratory, according to M. Vandenbroucke of the French Institute of Petroleum.
Experimental Evidence for Abiotic Methane Production
In 2004, a research team led by Henry Scott of Indiana University, including Dudley Herschbach, a Harvard University research professor and Nobel Prize winner, successfully synthesized methane in a laboratory without using organic materials by squeezing together iron oxide, calcium carbonate, and water at high temperatures and pressures, testing a fundamental principle of the Fischer-Tropsch equations.
The experiment, which involved temperatures as hot as 500 degrees Celsius and pressures as high as 11 gigapascals, demonstrated the possibility of producing methane through abiotic means, which challenges the conventional understanding of the origin of oil and gas, and has implications for the concept of kerogen and the transformation of rock into hydrocarbon fuel.
The scientists conducted an experiment using a “diamond anvil cell” mechanism, which consisted of two diamonds, each about three millimeters high, to compress a small metal plate holding a sample of iron oxide, calcite, and water, in order to simulate the conditions deep within the earth.
The diamonds were chosen for the experiment because they are one of the hardest substances on earth, can withstand tremendous force, and are transparent, allowing scientists to use beams of light and X-rays to identify the contents of the cell without disrupting it, as explained by researchers including Henry P. Scott, Russell J. Hemley, Ho-kwang Mao, Dudley R. Herschbach, Laurence E. Fried, W. Michael Howard, and Sorin Bastea.
The goal of the experiment was to prove that a hydrocarbon of the petroleum family could be produced via simple inorganic reactions involving no biological agents, and remarkably, the experiment was successful in producing methane, the principal component of natural gas, at temperatures around 500 degrees Celsius and pressures of seven gigapascals or greater.
Hellbound and Down 