[ROCKMAN]

Ah, the biogenic vs abiogenic debate has surfaced again. The following are just the thoughts of a geologist that has searched in the US for commercial concentrations of oil and NG for more then 4 decades. As such I was never concerned about the source…just what geologic conditions they might have become trapped in. Of course, had I been exploring in global regions with little or no history of drilling I might have been very focused on potential source rocks: no source rocks…no accumulation potential. Such as some areas of the coast of Alaska and the east coast where drilling results indicated no hydrocarbon source rocks: neither biogenic nor abiogenic.

I’ve been part of companies that have developed billions of bbls of oil and trillions of cuft of NG and no one involved ever questioned if biogenic or abiogenic: the efforts were solely focused on identifying geologic conditions conducive to accumulating hydrocarbons. As such I have no interest in joining the current debate. As far as it matters in my portion of the petroleum industry all hydrocarbons can be abiogenic. Or none at all.

Carry on, gentlemen.

[diemos]

Hi Rockman,

Thanks for chiming in to let us know that you don't care what the answer is.

However, when it comes to the question of how we are going to power industrial society and its associated standard of living into the indefinite future. The issue of whether hydrocarbons are an endlessly renewable resource and it's just a matter of "Drill, baby, drill", or whether hydrocarbons are a one time inheritance that we are burning through as fast as we can dig it up and burn it and eventually other arrangements will need to be made is sort of the entire point of this site.

Please continue to do your excellent job of digging the stuff up, I sure enjoy burning it.

[peakoilwhen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', ' ')the efforts were solely focused on identifying geologic conditions conducive to accumulating hydrocarbons. As such I have no interest in joining the current debate.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')If you'd stuck with the original biotic belief that oil is only found in so-called sedimentary formations then many of today's good basement rock wells would still be undiscovered.

[peakoilwhen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peakoilwhen', 'a')ll this economic waffle is uninteresting. What is interesting is the geology of ethane. Today methane is accepted by everyone in science to be produced abiogenically in the interior of worlds. When they saw everyone else, petrologists dutifully followed suit and accepted methane was produced abiogenically. The pressure in the mantle is enough to press hydrogen atoms onto the carbon atom.

But that leads to an interesting question, at what point in the HC chain list do fossil fuel believers think that abiogenic processes fail? Rockdoc has a minor heart attack everytime he is forced to use his only argument against abiogenic petroleum : the mantle is too hot so petroleum will break down into natural gas. Break down to what... 100% pure methane? Or is ethane and propane abiogenic too? And if propane, perhaps a tiny bit of butane and pentane get thru too?
What are the hydrocarbon seas on Titan made of? 100% methane? Or is there some ethane there as well?
All in all its a slippery slope, or a pandora's box for fossil fuel believers. Once they open the lid on abiogenic hydrocarbon, there's no going back, and the lid is already open because methane has been ousted as abiogenic. Ethane is next in line.

[diemos]

Methane is a carbon atom connected to 4 hydrogen atoms.

When it gets hot enough the hydrogen will react with the material in the surrounding rocks to form hydrides leaving behind a free carbon, otherwise known as soot.

You need to stop getting your science from investment newsletters and wishful thinking and pick up a textbook.

[peakoilwhen]

[diemos]

Really.

Chemistry 101.

You will learn many interesting and useful things.

[peakoilwhen]

there's a reason why you didn't post the actual chem 101 syllabus relevant to this discussion.

show me one , JUST ONE chemistry 101, from any of the world's chemistry 101 courses where you learn :
mantle pressure carbon, hydrogen, hydride reactions
lucky you, you have every chemistry 101 course from over 100 universities to choose from.

you can't. because no chem 101 syllabus exists that covers mantle pressure reactions, let alone the particular mantle chemical reactions we're interested in.

that's another one of your turds flushed away. Wonder what crap you'll come out with next.

[ROCKMAN]

POW - "Thats a non-sequeter. If oil is abiogenic and comes from the mantle then you can drill deeper to find more oil." Obviously you know absolutely nothing about drilling for hydrocarbons. Very sad that you post here when you don't even understand the basics. And yet you challenge someone with more then four decades working in the petroleum industry. But that's your option to look the fool. I'll not waste time with you and suggest others do the same. For your own basic education I suggest you search "oil window".

Adios, niño.

[peakoilwhen]

i know what the oil window is. And its a fair point, one that RD insists is an unresolvable problem from abiotic theory.
I don't agree.
a.) I'm not convinced that the crust has the same temperature and pressure with depth. There may be areas at the same dept where its cooler, and areas where its hotter. The places where its cooler and higher pressure will store hydrocarbon.
b.) if petroleum is continuously rising from the mantle, then it may rise fast enough to into your wells to avoid being cooked at low pressure \ high temperature.
it must get in place somehow.

in fact the concept of a petroleum window is fundamentally unsound wrt increasing pressure and temperature with depth. As the temperature increases with depth, causing the petroleum to crack, the pressure increases, thereby stopping the petroleum cracking. RD could never get his head round that, but its a pretty simple idea. Perhaps the 'petroleum window' is just another piece of bulshit they force their geologists to accept under duress of failing their exams.

[peakoilwhen]

this oil window diagram illustrates the problem i have with it. Most importantly, its describing a biotic process : its based on the assumption that oil is made from carbohydrates from the surface. Now it may be that such biotic processes do indeed have a 'petroleum window'. But don't then go assert that abiotic processes have the same constraint. Abiotic processes don't require any crust conditions to create oil, they only require the crust for storage.
Even as a worst case scenario, even if the oil window does apply to abiotic oil : i.e. oil is created in the mantle, gets to the crust then cracks to gas, it is still a temporal process, i.e. it doesn't happen in less than a pico second. There's potential to grab the oil before it cracks to gas. Also bear in mind that reserviors replenish as RGRulz used to say here. Its oil supply from the mantle.
So every time a biotic believer calls out 'oil window', it triggers my retard alert. You are jumping to a desired conclusion not because you've seen results in the lab or from what you've experienced in the field, but because you're programmed to do it without thinking by rockefeller. Keep an open mind. If you don't, then your competitors will get the deep oil and the $millions that could have been yours.

[diemos]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peakoilwhen', '
')If you don't, then your competitors will get the deep oil and the $millions that could have been yours.

[peakoilwhen]

>if you would just believe!

drilling companies have found and exploited deep oil anyway, they don't need to believe, they can do it braindead. In fact braindead companies might fare better than those who listen to their biotic retards like rockdoc who implore them not to go deep prospecting for oil because it threatens their biotic fiction.

2018 News from the modern abiotic prospecting in China.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'l')iquid hydrocarbons dominate the reservoir below 6000 m in the Rocket Mountain Basin and the North Caspian Basin. Black crude oil has been produced from the reservoirs deeper than 7000 m in the Tabei Uplift of the Tarim Basin; especially in the Jizhong Depression in the Bohai Bay Basin. Jixian Misty Mountain Formation's Well Niudong 1 at 5639 m produced natural gas and oil amounting to 56.3 × 104 m3/d and oil of 642.9 m3/d, respectively during the production test. In addition, deep buried high-temperature hill reservoirs in eastern China was declared to be found at the bottom of the hole (6027 m) at over 200 °C [8]. The discovery of deep oil and gas in the world has broken through the range of the oil-generating window (60–120 °C) and gas-generating window (0.6%–1.35%) as estimated by early kerogen theory.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')hina has very few shallow reserves, so they took my advice and drilled deep and, sure enough, found a cornucopia of hot deep oil.

the only thing rockdoc and his ilk want to do if they can't desuade drilling companies from getting the deep oil is to spend a wad of cash trying to find a sedimentary layer a few miles up so they can scream "this is where it came from". It serves no useful purpose at all - Its just money pissed away in a hopeless attempt to preserve a myth from the last century.

[peakoilwhen]

>I have no wish to debate this further
because you know you'll lose.

>whereas the temperature at the base of the lower crust is around 1200 C
where you get that from? The mantle-crust boundary can be as cool as 200C. 1200C is the average for half way to the centre of the Earth.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '1')200 C or about 3-4 times higher than the temperature that oil cracks instantaneously in a catalytic cracking unit. Anyone suggesting that oil can survive as a complex chain at those temperatures needs to revisit their thermodynamics.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'w')hereas the temperature at the base of the lower crust is around 1200 C
where you get that from? The mantle-crust boundary can be as cool as 200C. 1200C is the average for half way to the centre of the Earth.

[peakoilwhen]

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 08RG000270
chapters 5 and 6 list precambrian formation oil.

>Please explain why each and every oil deposit ever found can be typed organically with nearby source rocks.
because oil leaks everywhere. once it gets to some sedimentary* rocks you lot insist the biomarkers found there imply the oil is from there. But methophlie microbes can live anywhere where there's oil, and they don't need to be from the surface. In fact life originated as hydrocarbon eaters underground.

>Please explain why all the reactions that both create oil from kerogen and result in it's eventual cracking are explained
because you've bashed a square peg into a round hole and convinced yourself its correct because your jobs depended on it.

>I am now definitely done.
good, a honourable decision which marks the end of the age of the biotic mineral oil myth. I am now the resident oil expert of this forum. Com back if you need expert instruction on anything oil, but change your name to 'rockstudent123', so everyone knows who is the senior between us.

*btw sedimentary rocks aren't really sedimentary. They are better described as surface precipitate accumulations. It will be explained in my upcoming geology book which will revolutionize mankind's understanding.

[ROCKMAN]

diemos - "However, when it comes to the question of how we are going to power industrial society and its associated standard of living into the indefinite future." You seem to be as narrowly sighted as POW. Again the simplicity of the petroleum development process: if you can't find accumulations of hydrocarbons it matter not the source. There are very specific geologic conditions under which hydrocarbons will be trapped. Those conditions are NOT dependent on the source of the hydrocarbons.

Again I've given up the task of educating Monday morning quarter backs such as you, POW et al. It's just too much wasted space on our site. All that needs to be learned is available on the www. If some are too lazy/stubborn to take advantage of that info they are simple wasting time here. My time is too valuable. Now you, like POW and a few others, are just background noise to be ignored. For those with legitimate questions I will always be available.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peakoilwhen', '[')img]https://i.imgur.com/IktRkrA.png[/img]