Talk:Abiogenic petroleum origin/Archive 1

message: From VfD:
Page describing a theory about petroleum being "byproducts of the earth's core" rather than fossil biomatter.  There seems to be a small amount of literature extant on similar thoeries, but not enough for an encyclopedic article and not using this particular moniker.  The language and tone of the article suggest that it may be original research.
*Delete - TB 12:37, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  VfD May 2004 

message: I deleted "Some heavy crude oils have up to % in vanadium." from the trace metals section.  If anyone know the %, please replace the sentence
* regardless of whether oils have have vanadium, it is irrelevant to any argument here on the genesis of oils. Hell, most oils carry a whole swag of heavy metals, especially cadmium, bismuth, lead, zinc, etc. In some areas, namely lead-zinc deposits hosted in carbonate shelf platforms, oil was the critical ingredient for actually moving and concentrating lead and zinc. Its the reverse process of solvent extraction, for fuchs' sakes. So why should we be surprised vanadium gets leached from...hmm...oxidised ilmenite, magnetite, leucoxene in the sediments? Its a highly active valent metal which likes adsorbing to lipids. When its host mineral is oxidised and you have a vanadium hydroxide kicking around and no silicate melt partition coefficient telling it to get into magnetite, of course it will attach itself to some clingy sticky site on a hydroxy-hydrocarbon. Dare i even suggest an aromatic hydrocarbon? Thats why heavy metals are such a problem in the human body too. This whole abiogenic oil thing stinks like ass. Rolinator 04:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Percent Vandium

message: There is a conference of the American Organization of Petroleum Geologists meeting this July in Vienna titled "Origin of Petroleum -- Biogenic and/or Abiogenic and Its Significance in Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production". Two things follow from this:
*The decision not to delete this article was a good one.
*The name that experts in the field use to refer to this theory is "abiogenic", not "abiotic".
The conference is described here.
Hyperion 01:20, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Evidence against this hypothesis comes from the observable fact that known oil deposits are found within geological strata, suggesting they were deposited by sedimentation.
"Observable fact" sounds partisan, and furthermore, oil deposits are sometimes found way below the geological strata where they belong according to the biogenic theory, so this isn't really a fact at all. I substituted for this a finding published in Nature which seems to be the main point now raised against the abiogenic theory, based on posts by people who called themselves petroleum geologists, who were defending the orthodox theory, on two different Web sites. I also added a link to the Nature paper.
Hyperion 03:24, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change title to "Abiogenic petroleum origin"? 

message: An anonymous contributor changed my additions, changing my point that the abiogenic theory "is widely accepted in Russia" to the observation that it "has support by a large minority of geologists in Russia". Does this contributor know something I don't know? If so, I'd like to hear about it. Does he know Russian oil engineers, or read Russian, so that he gets his inside information by such means? (Although I haven't run into any Russian oil engineers lately, I am fluent in Russian.) The Web site advocating what it calls "the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins" is rather adamant that the abiogenic theory has gone through extensive examination in Russia, and is now accepted by Russian scientists as correct. Does the anonymous contributor have any information which indicates that this is not the case? If not, I will change the relevant passage back to what it was before, and expect that the anonymous contributor will not modify it again. -- Hyperion 05:10, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Russian acceptance

message: If I ever had any doubt about the abiogenic theory, it is now gone. The IP address of the anonymous contributor was 134.132.117.252. By doing a reverse DNS lookup on that address, I got the host name tuxedo.zycor.lgc.com. If you go to www.lgc.com, the site identifies itself as belonging to "Landmark, A Halliburton Company".
Now, if Halliburton needs to tamper with wikipedia articles discussing the abiogenic theory of petroleum, who can doubt that the theory is correct?
Hyperion 05:28, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible conflict of interest

message: I am a bit surprosed to read about "Cold planetary formation" of planet earth as supporting the abiotic origin of petroleum. To the best of my knowledge, current thought assumes a genesis of earth via collision of planetisemals, leading to a molten state. Also, the origin of the moon, as currently accepted (see Giant impact theory) has a hot early earth. -- Schewek 19:50, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cold Planet Formation 

message: I fail to see how extra-terrestial mathane supports the abiogenic petroleum theory. Alan Liefting 08:09, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extra-terrestrial methane gives suppot to abiogenic petroleum theory? 

message: Followup: what the heck is "riftogenic"? Wikipedia has precisely once match (right here). Google has 182 matches but they aren't too busy defining the term. Does "-genic" mean genesis, the "beginning". So is riftogenic where the rift begins?
WpZurp 03:52, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Riftogenic 

message: The lead quote from Mendeleev should at least be referenced, what 1877 publication? Verifiable source needed. Vsmith 02:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mendeleev quote 

message: Regarding the removal of my statement: "Abiogenic petroleum cannot significantly delay peak global oil production" by SEWilco.
I think the statement is a key point, relevant to all three subjects in the section (origin, peak oil production, and politics).
The following statement was an attempt at neutrality and objectivity: "One way or another, global energy production will shift to renewable energy sources, probably before the debate on petroleum sources is even settled."  I did not get into specific predictions of how the shift will occur--no doom and gloom warnings of total economic collapse.  However if you read the wiki section on peak oil, it becomes clear that economic forces will inevitably push energy production toward alternate sources.  Indeed, this trend is a simple fact, as the expanding wind and solar power industries can attest.  I also avoided timely references to the currently soaring price of oil; such a statement, while persuasive in the short term, could date quickly in the event that oil prices come down.  Again, considering skyrocketing demand even as supply (short-term) gets tapped to the limit, it is not at all evident that oil prices will ever come down (see Matthew R. Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, Wiley, 2005, ).
I appreciate a nod toward preserving a tiny kernel of what I added.  However, removal of all that in favor of a simplistic statement about planning renewable energy guts the point and and removes the relevance, paving the way for complete removal in the future.  I think this would be a disservice to the section.
:OK. Several points;
PARA 1: Many aspects of the abiogenic theory were developed in the former Soviet Union by Russian and Ukrainian scientists during the Cold War. Some proponents see a pro-Western bias in the promotion of the biogenic theory. Thus, in addition to the scientific merits of competing hypothoses, political and economic considerations often influence discussions of petroleum origins.
* Most of the non-geological and non-scentific "discussions" of abiogenic oil and peak oil I can find on google (even by going past the first 4 pages of links) relate to LaRouche and his network of websites, which all reference each other; and the authors of "Black Gold Stranglehold", who have taken aboard the Vietnamese "granite oil" example without being geologists and without actually looking at the evidence. Arguments inevitable seem to link to these two main sources, or Viallis' work of utter unscientific conspiracy theorems about price manipulation.
* Scientific discussion continues on various other aspects of, particularly, ancient life; Phanerozoic and Mesozoic oil and source rocks aren't as heavily studied, because aside from Vietnam and the one Russian example of oil in graite (which can certainly be explained by a brittle-fracture-hosted biogenic oil seeping into a horst block) all others are found in Proterozoic rocks, usually sediments. This, in turn, is plausible because stromatolites, which are clearly fossils, provide some (poor) source rocks. time, also, provides plenty of opportunity for breaching reservoirs and removing most Proterozoic oils. So, geolgical arguments are required, not MORE links to the same cavalcade of counter-culture counter-capitalist sites.
* If deep oil is in the crust (and how deep is deep? 10km?) it 'is availaable now. Modern technology allows drilling to 12km for oil. BHP has already drilled through seven kilometres of rock to get to oil; depths of >10km are not unknown. So, I ask; why aren't we tapping this inexhaustible  supply of deep oil? Or is deep oil only found at 12km...13km...15km  or is it at 40km? And if its coming up virtually everywhere, why not at higher levels? (you KNOW i believe its B.S., but bear with).
Rolinator 12:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The original phrasing seemed to assume that use of this theory required drilling an impossible number of wells down to huge new reserves, assumed how long debate would last, and forecast production of whatever "renewable energy sources" are.  We don't know what uses/benefits there may be from this theory (there may already be two oil fields from it, but observe dispute over Russian bedrock origins) and the definitions and behavior are yet to be seen.  Petroleum is an alternative energy source to whale oil, and there are several ways (some renewable) to make oil products which can be injected in current infrastructure.  Much of this does not belong here.  (SEWilco 17:03, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I removed all the assumptions you highlighted so as to avoid unwarranted predictions.  And I rephrased the new points so as to more clearly tie them in with the section.  I did not remove anything as it was an excellent and important discussion for the article.  I tried to limit assertions to those both "Malthusians" and "cornucopians" would concede.   Fluent aphasia 02:43, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Petroleum origin, peak oil, and politics 

message: I removed the following:
:[The Goldman Sachs "new prediction" is unattributed and probably incorrect.  A quick Google search suggests that Goldman Sachs predicted a price spike, and not a production peak.] 
It doesn't belong in the article as is, but does deserve consideration and modification of the article based on it. Vsmith 02:19, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  removed from article for discussion 

message: Removed the following from Future section:
:Explains the true origin of natural hydrocarbon scientifically, i.e., deep origin within the earth's mantle and its contamination at shallow levels in crust, based on physics (mainly thermodynamics), chemistry, geology, biology, astrophysics. Abiogenic Theory postulations also enclose some evidences of biogenic theory. Deep Earth Gas Theory and Deep Hot Biosphere will become a unified theory of the earth as Plate Tectonics with  implications about origin of life in earth and other planets.
An anon. using a variety of IPs starting with 200.... has repeatedly replaced the section and other POV edits. Comments? Vsmith 02:28, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: The anon editor continues daily to put in various claims advocating a deeply biased POV, subverting the purpose of the wikipedia. He or she appears to have no intention of using this talk page to discuss the perspective. Presumably they know they are engaging in simple vandalism or they would at least create a user identity.  Fluent aphasia 13:46, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The future of the abiogenic theory 

message: Carbon originating from photosynthetic processes (plant biomass, and conversely animal biomass) has an isotopic signature of strongly depleted content of 13C. Other isotopes (oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen...) are subject to biological fractionation as well. I suppose this should be mentioned in the article. Some mentions eg. here:
* http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2002/11nov/abiogenic.cfm
* http://www.geo.brown.edu/geopeople/faculty/Huang/update.html
Anybody knowledgeable care to elaborate?--Shaddack 06:13, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Isotopic analysis?

message: I do. The idea of huge, huge piles of organic matter just somehow ending up 100's of km below surface to petrofy and then reappear just below the surface has always felt a bit weird to me. Why shouldn't hydrocarbons be part of the earths crust like so many other materials? They're liquid, but so is most of earth's mantle. I don't think the theory has to do with wishful thinking of oil magnates - I do think the peak oil theory is right too. Even if the earth's crust has a huge oil supply hidden in it, we cannot as easily gain access to it as to the reservoirs that happen to be just under the surface now. Dabljuh 09:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: So, who thinks this theory has got it right?