Abiotic oil? So what?
If you read some of the online forums about energy issues you'll see people claiming that oil isn't a fossil fuel after all. Instead they claim that petroleum was formed by other mechanistic geologic processes within the earth. We won't get into a debate here about which theory of petroleum formation is correct, but if you want to read the arguments you can check out the Wikipedia article on the subject.
So what if petroleum is abiogenic? Oil fields and entire nations still reach a peak in production and then enter a terminal decline. And even though some [crackpots] claim that enough oil is formed continually to replentish what we extract, we've still been discovering less and less oil worldwide since 1964.
Some supporters of the abiotic theory claim that more oil lies deeper than the reserves that we've been discovering and producing. If that's the case, is it even feasible for us to extract it? Even with all of our technological advances in the past few decades, it's still virtually impossible to drill a well deeper than 10 km.
So if you're trying to persuade me that peak oil is a sham, you're going to have to try something better.
So what if petroleum is abiogenic? Oil fields and entire nations still reach a peak in production and then enter a terminal decline. And even though some [crackpots] claim that enough oil is formed continually to replentish what we extract, we've still been discovering less and less oil worldwide since 1964.
Some supporters of the abiotic theory claim that more oil lies deeper than the reserves that we've been discovering and producing. If that's the case, is it even feasible for us to extract it? Even with all of our technological advances in the past few decades, it's still virtually impossible to drill a well deeper than 10 km.
So if you're trying to persuade me that peak oil is a sham, you're going to have to try something better.
posted by Utah Peaknik at 1:19 PM
1 Comments:
I know several companies who are investigating polymers and materials to handle the 700°F temps necessary to recover this corrosive, very deep, very hot, also very expensive oil.
There is a certain optimism and trust that science will solve thease problems of recovery and technology will rescue us. There is a basic denial that our life style has to change. If you conserve then there will only be more for all the H3's and Escalades.
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