This paper, by Tommy Gold, has been widely discredited. Sure, he won a nobel prize, but in astrophysics. His fellow Cornellians thought little of his idea. The best proof was that Tommy never found a barrel of oil, much less the endless supply he was looking for. ALL of the arguments against abiotic are now dead, killed by careful organic geochemistry.
In brief: 1) oil is found in arcs: Oil migrates along gross geologic features, such as large scale faults. In fact, faults are considered the pipes from the hot 'kitchens' to the reservoirs. In 1993 I was involved with a group at Cornell that drilled into a fault, and actually found some oil in migration (a rare thing, give infrequency of migration on human timescales).
2) hydrocarbon rich areas are rich down to basement. See 1, above, with the caveat that no one ever drills into basement (WAY too expensive), so how would you know?
3)odd even ratios not present in some oil. Odd/even ratios different than one are a sure sign of biological origin (bugs prefer to make chains of a set length). However, as organic sediments get buried, hydrocarbons "mature" (break down into simpler compounds; this is well understood and very repeatable in the lab). As they cook, these ratios tend to disappear, since the break-down reactions don't differentiate odd versus even; hence you get a distribution that grows more random the more 'cooked' the oil. Other factors effect odd/even ratios, such as biodegredation, phase fractionation, and water washing. All of these affect gross compositional ratios, meaning that blanket statements are kind of simplistic.
4) methane is found in many places. Methane MAY be abiogenic. This doesn't imply that higher-weight hydrocarbons are abiogenic. In fact, abiogenic methane has a distinctive isotopic signature.
etc.
The proponents of this theory tend to come from other fields (such as Tommy), and don't have a good grasp of organic chemistry or organic geochemistry.
To be more accurate, the idea that oil comes from 70 million year old organic matter is pretty much dead is completely false and discredited. Oil is sourced from Kerogen, an organic rich matter enbedded in source rock that undergoes a set of slow reactions in response to increasing temperature and pressure resulting from burial. This can ben conclusively proven by:
The existance of "biomarkers", organic molecules found within oil with clear biological precursors (e.g., pristane and phytane are derived from chlorophyll)
The fact that you can put kerogen in a tube in a lab, heat it, squeeze it, and get oil out
The utter, utter failure and wasted $$$ of fools who drill in non-organic rich areas
Though both land and labor are cheaper, the main reason that production is cheaper in the middle east is that the reservoirs are bigger, and easier to drain.
The biggest, easiest pools in the US were drained years ago, leaving smaller and/or more technologically-intensive reservoirs. E.g., deepwater GOM oil costs ~$10/bbl to produce, while Arabian light out of the Persian gulf costs less than $5 to produce and deliver to the US.
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This paper, by Tommy Gold, has been widely discredited. Sure, he won a nobel prize, but in astrophysics. His fellow Cornellians thought little of his idea. The best proof was that Tommy never found a barrel of oil, much less the endless supply he was looking for. ALL of the arguments against abiotic are now dead, killed by careful organic geochemistry.
In brief:
1) oil is found in arcs: Oil migrates along gross geologic features, such as large scale faults. In fact, faults are considered the pipes from the hot 'kitchens' to the reservoirs. In 1993 I was involved with a group at Cornell that drilled into a fault, and actually found some oil in migration (a rare thing, give infrequency of migration on human timescales).
2) hydrocarbon rich areas are rich down to basement. See 1, above, with the caveat that no one ever drills into basement (WAY too expensive), so how would you know?
3)odd even ratios not present in some oil. Odd/even ratios different than one are a sure sign of biological origin (bugs prefer to make chains of a set length). However, as organic sediments get buried, hydrocarbons "mature" (break down into simpler compounds; this is well understood and very repeatable in the lab). As they cook, these ratios tend to disappear, since the break-down reactions don't differentiate odd versus even; hence you get a distribution that grows more random the more 'cooked' the oil. Other factors effect odd/even ratios, such as biodegredation, phase fractionation, and water washing. All of these affect gross compositional ratios, meaning that blanket statements are kind of simplistic.
4) methane is found in many places. Methane MAY be abiogenic. This doesn't imply that higher-weight hydrocarbons are abiogenic. In fact, abiogenic methane has a distinctive isotopic signature.
etc.
The proponents of this theory tend to come from other fields (such as Tommy), and don't have a good grasp of organic chemistry or organic geochemistry.
Sorry for the rant, but some statements are just stupid. More information can be found at Woods Hole Organic Geochemistry group ( http://dynatog.whoi.edu/ ), at the Newcastle U site ( http://nrg.ncl.ac.uk ) or on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_geochemistry )
The biggest, easiest pools in the US were drained years ago, leaving smaller and/or more technologically-intensive reservoirs. E.g., deepwater GOM oil costs ~$10/bbl to produce, while Arabian light out of the Persian gulf costs less than $5 to produce and deliver to the US.