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Geoscientists are cringing as news reports dredge up what they have long considered
a preposterous assertion about the origin of oil: that none of the fossil fuels
found on this planet come from fossils. The idea, heavily debated in Russia
during the 1950s and 1960s, holds that the world’s oil is not made of decomposed
biological organisms; rather, it forms inorganically at near-mantle depths then
migrates up to the crust.
The newest incarnation comes from J.F. Kenney, a self-proclaimed oil and gas
driller from Houston who worked with three Russian scientists, including Vladimir
Kutcherov of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas. Their paper on inorganic
hydrocarbon formation, published in the Aug. 20 Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has generated coverage in Nature, The
Economist and New Scientist and led to an interview of Kenney on
National Public Radio (NPR). PNAS published the paper at the request of Academy
member Howard Reiss, a chemical physicist at the University of California at
Los Angeles. As per the PNAS guidelines for members communicating papers, Reiss
obtained reviews of the paper from at least two referees from different institutions
(not affiliated with the authors) and shepherded the report through revisions.
The paper examined thermodynamic arguments that say methane is the only organic
hydrocarbon to exist within Earth’s crust. The report also discussed the
hypothesis that high pressures of 25 to 50 kilobar or more are needed for establishing
natural petroleum hydrocarbon molecules. The authors also included a description
of laboratory experiments in Moscow that created petroleum products from marble,
water and iron oxide under 50 kilobar of pressure and 1,500 degree-Celsius temperatures.
But the news stories, Kenney says, are written on the premise that “I have
‘developed a thermodynamic argument that demonstrates that the hydrocarbon
molecules of natural petroleum cannot evolve spontaneously at the low pressures
and temperatures of the near-surface crust of the Earth.’ Such is absolute
nonsense.” To which many geologists would agree. But, Kenney adds, “The
fact that the hydrocarbon molecules which comprise natural petroleum cannot
evolve spontaneously at the low pressures and temperatures of the near-surface
crust of the Earth has been known by competent physicists, chemists and chemical
engineers for over a century. In my article, I only reviewed this knowledge
briefly, using the efficient formalism of modern thermodynamics.”
Kenney’s slap in the face to the competence of modern geologists is not
winning him any converts. Even astrophysicist Thomas Gold of Cornell University,
who wrote two books on the subject of inorganic oil on Earth, is surprised by
the media’s response. “There is nothing new about any mix of hydrogen
and carbon at pressures of 40 kilobar or so, and temperatures of greater than
800 degrees Celsius, forming oil.”
Most commercial drilling occurs in sedimentary rock where source material temperatures
range between 75 and 200 degrees Celsius. In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Gold spearheaded a project, which he says also involved Kenney, to illustrate
the prospects of abiogenic oil and gas by drilling into crystalline rock in
Sweden. But the granite did not yield an economically viable result.
Still, Kenney appears undaunted. During the interview on NPR, he said he found,
while working with Kutcherov over the last 10 years, inorganic oil and gas fields
in the northern flank of the Dnepro-Donetsk basin in the Ukraine that are greater
than the entire reserves in Alaska.
Kenney and his Russian colleagues’ paper in PNAS is “an excellent
and rigorous treatment of the theoretical and experimental aspects for abiotic
hydrocarbon formation deep in the Earth,” says organic geochemist Scott
Imbus of ChevronTexaco Corp. “Unfortunately, it has little or nothing to
do with the origins of commercial fossil fuel deposits.”
While geologists agree that crude oil can come from inorganic means, the majority
of commercially recovered petroleum, they say, is organic. And they are frustrated
with advocates of this alternative theory who dismiss evidence of a biological
origin or interpret organics in crude oil as contaminants. Such an idea is anathema
to the well-established understanding that biomarkers in petroleum are a result
of living organisms transforming the complex molecules, dying and then being
subjected to burial processes that turn the biomarkers into petroleum products.
The idea of finding an abundance of crude oil ready for the tap at depths currently
unreachable is tantalizing. But, says geochemist Alexei Milkov of the Deep Ocean
Exploration Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a graduate
of Saint-Petersburg State University in Russia, “I’ve never met an
industry geologist that uses abiogenic theory to find oil and gas fields, and
that includes Russian industry geologists. These guys pay money for mistakes
and can’t afford using wrong theories to continue exploration.” A
key factor in deciding whether to put money in exploration of a frontier basin
is the potential quality and extension of source rock, Milkov adds. “This
strategy apparently works for them so far.”
That’s a pity, says Roger Sassen, deputy director of Resource Geosciences,
a geochemical and environmental research group of Texas A&M University.
“The potential that inorganic hydrocarbons, especially methane and a few
other gases, might exist at enormous depth in the crust is an idea that could
use a little more discussion. However, not from people who take theories to
the point of absurdity,” he says. “This is an idea that needs to be
looked into at some point as we start running out of energy. But no one who
is objective discusses the issue at this time.”
Christina Reed
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