[ener] Sustainable Oil?

[JC Refuge]

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=38645

Sustainable oil?

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Posted: May 25, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Chris Bennett
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com


About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.

By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s.

Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a "deep fault" at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.

Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.

Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?

An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.

The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:

Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.

At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.

Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."

In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.

In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.

Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.

Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.

There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr.Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.

In his 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biospere," Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to "deep earth" formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.

He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?

Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.

Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.

Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a "renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs."

Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.

Could this be true?

In August 2002, in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)," Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of "The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum." Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:


The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.


He was quoted as stating that "competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century."

Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.

If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.

A Hedberg Conference, sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, was scheduled to discuss and publicly debate this issue. Papers were solicited from interested academics and professionals. The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set.

[A.T.Hagan]

<i>A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.

By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s. </i>

It's been about fourteen years now since that particular well had its sudden resurgence in production. It would be interesting to know how it's doing right now and if the oil it is presently pumping is the same as it was pumping in 1990.

This has come through here a couple of times now over the last several years that I can recall, but there never seems to be any follow up.

.....Alan.

[wrs]

I think this is an interesting notion but it's been debunked by our resident experts. MS will no doubt jump on it as will Bill P and Todd, Tennessean would weigh in as well if he were still here. Let's see how long it lasts before getting debunked.

I noted that for the Goose Creek Fields in Baytown where I grew up that the production didn't follow the Hubbert Curve on another board. What I was told is that since this field was first found in 1908 it was drilled with the existing shallow technology to about 2000 feet. It turns out that with the deeper technology in the 30's that the were able to penetrate deeper to find additional oil bearing geology which extended the life of the field another 30 years. It pumped about 8m barrels per year for quite a number of years initially but tapered off and then picked back up again to consistently pump about 4m barrels per year for another 20 years. In all over 140m barrels of oil were recovered from it but it barely puts out anything these days........

[Freeholdfarm]

"The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. "

Alan, I would like to know the answers to those questions, too, but this quote above caught my attention -- seems like a lot of dots pointing to June and I wonder if this is another one? (And on Grandma's birthday, too, when we'll have a whole bunch of company from all over the country!)

Kathleen

[summerthyme]

Kathleen- no "dot" there. 2003 was LAST year.

Summerthyme

[Bill P]

Gold's theory is entertaining but actual drilling attempts have yet to prove or disprove it. Meanwhile:


Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields
By JEFF GERTH

hen visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire — a
sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the
Persian Gulf — they are reminded of its mission in a film projected
on a giant screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it
declares.

For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves
were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped
the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay
of the global energy markets.

But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry
and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the
kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming
years.

Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in
the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in
the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will
probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a
significant gap in the global energy supply.

Outsiders have not had access to detailed production data from Saudi
Aramco, the state-owned oil company, for more than 20 years. But
interviews in recent months with experts on Saudi oil fields provided
a rare look inside the business and suggested looming problems.

An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total
production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the
current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United
States Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will
need to produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million
barrels a day by 2020.

"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior
Saudi oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be
maintained."

Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running
out of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is
becoming more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the
country produces about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth
of the world's needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United
States, the world's leading energy consumer.

Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be
unfounded. Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved
wrong.

But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the
consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia
and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil
capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not
expected to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.

As a result, supplies could tighten and oil prices could increase.
The global economy could feel the ripples; previous spikes in oil
prices have helped cause recessions, though high oil prices in the
last year or so have not slowed strong growth.

Saudi Aramco says its dominance in world oil markets will grow
because, "if required," it can expand its capacity to 12 million
barrels a day or more by "making necessary investments," according to
written responses to questions submitted by The New York Times.

But some experts are skeptical. Edward O. Price Jr., a former top
Saudi Aramco and Chevron executive and a leading United States
government adviser, says he believes that Saudi Arabia can pump up to
12 million barrels a day "for a few years." But "the world should not
expect more from the Saudis," he said. He expects global oil markets
to be in short supply by 2015.

Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency,
said the Saudis would not be able to increase production enough for
future needs without large-scale foreign investment.

The I.E.A., an independent agency founded by energy-consuming
nations, and Washington see investment in energy exploration and
field maintenance as vital, but such proposals face strong opposition
inside Saudi Arabia. Tensions with the West, particularly the United
States, make such investment politically difficult for Saudi society.
For example, an effort by Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de
facto ruler, to encourage Western companies to invest $25 billion in
his country's natural gas industry essentially collapsed last year.

"Access to Persian Gulf oil reserves, especially Saudi Arabia's, is
the key question for the whole world," Dr. Birol said.

President Bush has said he wants to make the United States less
reliant on oil-producing countries that "don't like America" by
diversifying suppliers and financing research into hydrogen fuel
cells, but achieving that remains far off.

His administration backs foreign investment initiatives in the gulf
region, including Saudi Arabia, and his energy policies rely on
Energy Department projections showing the world even more dependent
on Arabian oil in 20 years. That may be enough time for governments
to find alternatives, but oil field development requires years of
planning and work.

Publicly, Saudi oil executives express optimism about the future of
their industry. Some economists are equally optimistic that if oil
prices rise high enough, advanced recovery techniques will be
applied, averting supply problems.

But privately, some Saudi oil officials are less sanguine.

"We don't see us as the ones making sure the oil is there for the
rest of the world," one senior executive said in an interview. A
Saudi Aramco official cautioned that even the attempt to get up to 12
million barrels a day would "wreak havoc within a decade," by causing
damage to the oil fields.

In an unusual public statement, Sadad al-Husseini, Saudi Aramco's
second-ranking executive and its leading geologist, warned at an oil
conference in Jakarta in 2002 that global "natural declines in
existing capacity are real and must be replaced."

Dr. al-Husseini, one Western oil expert said, has been "the brains of
Saudi Aramco's exploration and production." But he has told
associates that he plans to resign soon, and his departure,
government oil experts in the United States and Saudi Arabia say,
could hinder Saudi efforts to bolster production or entice foreign
investment.

Saudi Arabia's reported proven reserves, more than 250 billion
barrels, are one-fourth of the world's total. The most significant is
Ghawar. Discovered in 1948, the 300-mile-long sliver near the Persian
Gulf is the world's largest oil field and accounts for more than half
of the kingdom's production.

The company told The New York Times that its field production
practices, including those at Ghawar, were "at optimum levels" and
the risk of steep declines was negligible. But Mr. Price, the former
vice president for exploration and production at Saudi Aramco, says
that North Ghawar, the most valuable section of the field, was pushed
too hard in the past.

"Instead of spreading the production to other fields or areas," Mr.
Price said, the Saudis concentrated on North Ghawar.
That "accelerated the depletion rate and the time to uncontrolled
decline," or the point where the field's production drops
dramatically, he said.

In Saudi Arabia, seawater is injected into the giant fields to help
move the oil toward the top of the reservoir. But over time, the
volume of water that is lifted along with the oil increases, and the
volume of oil declines proportionally. Eventually, it becomes
uneconomical to extract the oil. There is also a risk that the field
can become unstable and collapse.

Ghawar is still far too productive to abandon. But because of
increasing problems with managing the water, one Saudi oil executive
said, "Ghawar is becoming very costly to maintain."

The average decline rate in Saudi Aramco's mature fields — Ghawar and
a few others — "is in the range of 8 percent per year," without
additional remediation, according to the company's statement. This
means several hundred thousand barrels of daily oil production would
have to be added every year just to make up for the diminished
output.

Every oil field is unique, and experts cannot predict how long each
might last. For its part, Saudi Aramco is counting on Ghawar for
years to come.

The company projects that Ghawar will continue to produce more than
half its oil. One internal company estimate from 2002 puts Ghawar's
production at 5.25 million barrels a day in 2011, more than half the
total expected crude oil capacity of 10.15 million, according to
United States government officials and oil executives.

"The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline
increases to an alarming point," said Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari, a
senior official with the National Iranian Oil Company. "That will set
bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi
output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production."

The I.E.A. warned in November that huge investments would be needed
to offset the decline rates in mature Middle Eastern oil fields — it
put the average at 5 percent — and the increasing costs of oil and
gas production. The agency, based in Paris, forecasts that Saudi
production will need to reach 20 million barrels a day by 2020.
(I.E.A. and other research estimates say that more than 90 percent of
that would be crude oil; the rest would be liquid products like
natural gas liquids that result from the processing of crude oil.)

In his speech in Jakarta, Dr. al-Husseini noted the need for
exploration, pointing out that colleagues at Exxon Mobil predict that
more than 50 percent of oil and gas consumption in 2010 must come
from new fields and reservoirs.

Harry A. Longwell, the executive vice president of Exxon Mobil, says
finding new sources of oil is crucial. Mr. Longwell, in an interview,
said that increasing demand and declining production were not new
problems, but they were "much larger now because of the world's
demand for energy and the magnitude of the numbers now are much
larger."

To offset its declines, Saudi Aramco is bringing back into production
one idle field, Qatif, and is enhancing production at a nearby
offshore field, Abu Safah. The company says that with expert
management, these fields will produce about 800,000 barrels a day.

But current and former Saudi Aramco executives question those
expectations, contending that the goal of 500,000 barrels a day for
Qatif is unrealistic and that development costs are higher than
anticipated.

Qatif poses real difficulties. It is near housing for Saudi Arabia's
minority Shiite population and contains high concentrations of
hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic gas. Its development
is "particularly challenging," according to a technical paper by
Saudi Aramco engineers presented last year in Bahrain, which said
that 45 percent of potential drilling sites "were rejected due to
safety concerns."

At Abu Safah, Saudi Aramco has experienced increasing water problems
as it has turned to submersible pumps to extract oil. Experts,
including American and Saudi government officials, say the technique
is ill advised. Saudi Aramco, in its written response to questions,
defended the use of the pumps at Abu Safah and its ability to manage
the water after 37 years of production.

One United Sates government energy expert noted that "submersible
pumps is what the Soviets went to on an indiscriminate basis in West
Siberia and it went south." Samotlor, a huge field in Siberia, once
produced more than three million barrels a day, but it declined
sharply in the 1980's after the Soviets pushed it too hard. Today it
produces only a few hundred thousand barrels a day.

[MinnesotaSmith]

The inorganic model for petroleum is not supportable by the available evidence. Neither is the idea that oil is being generated in the Earth's crust at rates high enough to keep the other side of the Hubbert Curve at bay indefinitely. Virtually everywhere drillable quantities of oil or gas have been located, there is a linkage to relatively nearby apparent source rock that is sedimentary, organic-rich, and lain down in relatively anaerobic conditions. This even applies when oil has been located by drilling into or through preCambrian crystalline (means igneous and/or metamorphic, e.g., nonsedimentary) rock. In those cases, there has been movement of rock to get the preCam rock effectively over the younger sed strata.

As far as the Helium outgassing in oil wells goes, it is not remotely evenly distributed among oil fields worldwide; Texas and Oklahoma have disproportionately far more of this than wells elsewhere. If there were a planet-wide phenomenon producing oil & gas from the mantle (layer between the crust and outer core), then relatively even quantities would be expected to be produced worldwide, or at least the amount of outgassed He should be comparable at equivalent tectonic plate boundaries. This is not the case at all.

WRT Eugene Island, I personally worked as a junior geologist on a platform there in parts of 1984 and 1985. (If a mod with a tight lip wants to know, I can supply drilling contractor, rig #, oil company, and well names; I kept track of this for resume purposes, and still have this info.) EI was a place at normal jack-up rig depths (under 220' depth to sea floor bottom). Drilling rate for the first several thousand feet was basically as fast as the drill floor crew could connect 30' joints of pipe up and trip them in; the sediments were extremely soft, what they call "gumbo" shale. Shale dominated most of the strata the whole way down (to over 12,000', if memory serves w/o getting my well experience file out), as is normal on the Gulf Coast. Sulfur dioxide was not a problem that I saw; those wells were all "sweet". There was a problem with shale overpressure; I saw one drill string get stuck and had to be broken off by guys who were flown in that lowered explosives down the well bore. (Do a google search for "D exponent" if you want to learn more about shale overpressure WRT oil well drilling.) An overpressured zone means that deposition of sediments (mainly clay-rich stuff) occurred faster than the water and volatiles could escape. OP shale means that if drill mud density (called "weight" in the oil patch) isn't watched very closely, the bottom of the well bore will tend to close in on the drill string and you get stuck. OP sandstones/siltstones (both called "sands" in oil field) do something much worse; as sands have much higher permeability than shales, you are likely to get the whole 2 or 3 miles of drill string suddenly flying up out of the hole, which is kind of exciting. Additionally, lots of gas, which may or may not be flammable (depends upon the methane/water/CO2 proportions) tends to come up as well; a few thousand ppm of sulfur dioxide are good for killing everyone nearby if you get that, too.

Anyway, I saw small plant fossils repeatedly under a 40x scanning scope in the drill cuttings there; I have zero doubt that I would have seen an abundance of microscopic plant fossils as well, had I had a 200x+ power microscope. The particular strata we were drilling into to produce oil from were well known, and extended over a large geographical area. Faulting and overpressuring were the main geological surprises I personally ever saw there; as both can appear/disappear over short distances, there is no shock to that IMO.

In the final analysis, daydreams like the idea that the planet is producing oil at anything like our consumption of it has to be considered hilarious, given the evidence that is currently available.