Russian Researchers Say Rains Boost Oil Reserves

A group of Russian scientists at the oil and gas research institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, led by Azary Barenbaum, have come up with a new explanation of the nature of oil and gas formation. They argue that huge reserves of hydrocarbons may take only decades to be formed, not millions of years, as earlier believed. The new theory was published this month in the leading Russian scientific magazine Nauka I Zhizn (Science and Life).

Researchers have registered an increase in oil reserves in oil-rich provinces where deposits were explored and have been developed for many years and where oil consumption is comparatively high. Those oil-rich areas include the Russian province of Tatarstan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Texas and Oklahoma in the U.S., and Mexico. Depletion of reserves is possible only in the oil and gas exploration areas where consumption levels are low, holds Professor Barenbaum. He insists that formation of oil and gas is not so geological as climatic by nature, related to the water cycle and circulation of carbon on our planet.

The decisive role in that process belongs to carbon infiltrating the earth