Gasoline primer

Here is a comment made by a professional geologist on another site regarding the Gold theory:

"the fact remains that the abiotic theory of petroleum genesis has zero credibility for economically interesting accumulations. 99.9999% of the world's liquid hydrocarbons are produced by maturation of organic matter derived from organisms. To deny this means you have to come up with good explanations for the following observations.

1) The almost universal association of petroleum with sedimentary rocks.

2) The close link between petroleum reservoirs and source rocks as shown by biomarkers (the source rocks contain the same organic markers as the petroleum, essentially chemically fingerprinting the two).

3) The consistent variation of biomarkers in petroleum in accordance with the history of life on earth (biomarkers indicative of land plants are found only in Devonian and younger rocks, that formed by marine plankton only in Neoproterozoic and younger rocks, the oldest oils containing only biomarkers of bacteria).

3) The close link between the biomarkers in source rock and depositional environment (source rocks containing biomarkers of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, those indicating marine conditions only in marine sediments, those from hypersaline lakes containing only bacterial biomarkers).

4) Progressive destruction of oil when heated to over 100 degrees (precluding formation and/or migration at high temperatures as implied by the abiogenic postulate).

5) The generation of petroleum from kerogen on heating in the laboratory (complete with biomarkers), as suggested by the biogenic theory.

6) The strong enrichment in C12 of petroleum indicative of biological fractionation (no inorganic process can cause anything like the fractionation of light carbon that is seen in petroleum).

7) The location of petroleum reservoirs down the hydraulic gradient from the source rocks in many cases (those which are not are in areas where there is clear evidence of post migration tectonism).

8 ) The almost complete absence of significant petroleum occurrences in igneous and metamorphic rocks (the rare exceptions discussed below).

The evidence usually cited in favour of abiogenic petroleum can all be better explained by the biogenic hypothesis e.g.:

9) Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in igneous rocks (better explained by reaction with organic rich country rocks, with which the pyrobitumens can usually be tied).

10) Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in metamorphic rocks (better explained by metamorphism of residual hydrocarbons in the protolith).

11) The very rare occurrence of small hydrocarbon accumulations in igneous or metamorphic rocks (in every case these are adjacent to organic rich sedimentary rocks to which the hydrocarbons can be tied via biomarkers).

12) The presence of undoubted mantle derived gases (such as He and some CO2) in some natural gas (there is no reason why gas accumulations must be all from one source, given that some petroleum fields are of mixed provenance it is inevitable that some mantle gas contamination of biogenic hydrocarbons will occur under some circumstances).

13) The presence of traces of hydrocarbons in deep wells in crystalline rock (these can be formed by a range of processes, including metamorphic synthesis by the fischer-tropsch reaction, or from residual organic matter as in 10).

14) Traces of hydrocarbon gases in magma volatiles (in most cases magmas ascend through sedimentary succession, any organic matter present will be thermally cracked and some will be incorporated into the volatile phase, some fischer-tropsch synthesis can also occur).

15) Traces of hydrocarbon gases at mid ocean ridges (such traces are not surprising given that the upper mantle has been contaminated with biogenic organic matter through several billion years of subduction, the answer to 14 may be applicable also).

The geological evidence is utterly against the abiogenic postulate."

[Troubleshooter]

What we have here is a case of dueling geologists/geophysicists.

Which doctor is more right?

I'm not sure that any of us here are educated enough in that field to pick the right story.

[xoxoxoBruce]

God made oil to make people happy,.....except Arabs.

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

What we have here is a case of dueling geologists/geophysicists.

Which doctor is more right?

I'm not sure that any of us here are educated enough in that field to pick the right story.

Gold (now deceased) was neither a geologist nor a geophysicist. He was trained as physicist and did some work in astrophysics. One of his theories (which had no basis in the evidence available at the time) was that the first lunar landing would result in the space craft being buried under hundreds of feet of loose dust which he postulated covered the surface of the moon. We all know how correct he was on that one.

The paper which you cite by him was never published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal of any credibility. I might also add that as a biologist, I have great difficulty with Gold's extremely shakey hypothesis that vast qunatities of anerobic bacteria live deep below the surface of the earth. Even if this were true, the most likely by-product of such colonies would be methane, not petroleum. Bacteria are far more aligned with the animal kingdom than the plant, due to differences in cell wall composition, among other things. Anerobic bacteria are unlikely to build up enough carbonaceous materials to form things like coal beds or petroleum reserves. It takes plants performing the miracle of photosynthesis to do this.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Gold (now deceased) was neither a geologist nor a geophysicist. He was trained as physicist and did some work in astrophysics. One of his theories (which had no basis in the evidence available at the time) was that the first lunar landing would result in the space craft being buried under hundreds of feet of loose dust which he postulated covered the surface of the moon. We all know how correct he was on that one.

Be nice, everybody has hits and misses. He did get the neutron star right after all.

Originally Posted by marichik0

The paper which you cite by him was never published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal of any credibility. I might also add that as a biologist, I have great difficulty with Gold's extremely shakey hypothesis that vast qunatities of anerobic bacteria live deep below the surface of the earth. Even if this were true, the most likely by-product of such colonies would be methane, not petroleum. Bacteria are far more aligned with the animal kingdom than the plant, due to differences in cell wall composition, among other things. Anerobic bacteria are unlikely to build up enough carbonaceous materials to form things like coal beds or petroleum reserves. It takes plants performing the miracle of photosynthesis to do this.

One of the reasons I bring various sources to the table here is so that others who may have seen sources I haven't can review them. Are there any sources other than Gold that support the theory?


This is someone who sums up my position pretty well.

I'm worried about the motivation of people who would profit from a limited oil supply writing the checks for the people who are supposed to be doing the research on this. Call me paranoid but...

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

I'm worried about the motivation of people who would profit from a limited oil supply writing the checks for the people who are supposed to be doing the research on this. Call me paranoid but...

I am quite willing to join you in a case of the paranoid jitters. In my case, however, my concern is over the folks in big oil writing the checks for research on alternate forms of energy, including synfuels. Again and again, "Big Oil" will cite some piece of research claiming synfuels, et al. are not feasible, and again and again it turns out "Big Oil" funded the research in question.

Colorado's Western slope is potentially awash in shale oil - not even "potentially"; IS awash in shale oil. How much longer must the good men of the 3rd Infantry Division have their blood be awash in the Persian Gulf before someone stands up to the various boards of directors of "Big Oil" and says "no more!"?

Why is it that the American people allow the blood of our sons and husbands; brothers and fathers to be spent on the dry desert soil of some foreign country; merely so Shell Oil's profit margin can look good to its investors? Does ANYONE have ANY idea of what the true cost of a barrel oil comes to these days? Throw in the expense of the 3/3 ACR at your beck and call plus the cost of rebuilding countries in the Middle East which we casually destroy, and oil shale PLUS reasonable environmental controls is a rip roaring bargain by comparison.

Just don't let anyone at Royal Dutch Petroleum hear you say that.

[hot_pastrami]

Originally Posted by marichiko

One of his theories (which had no basis in the evidence available at the time) was that the first lunar landing would result in the space craft being buried under hundreds of feet of loose dust which he postulated covered the surface of the moon. We all know how correct he was on that one.

Well, according to an interview with Thomas Gold (linked by UT here), this was not true. He says he made a statement which was miscontrued, and then spun the wrong way by his opponents:

I concluded that very fine-grained material seemed likely on the lunar surface. The opposition believed that everything was volcanic - that the moon was enormously volcanic at one time even though now one can't see the littlest volcano on it. They said the flat plains are just lava fields and flows. They got NASA to train the astronauts in the lava fields near Flagstaff; when the astronauts came back, they said they hadn't seen any ground that was anything like the area in which they trained.

What happened, to my great annoyance, was that the other side wanted to ridicule me before the landing by saying, We think it's all hard stuff but Gold thinks you're going to sink out of sight the moment you step onto the surface. It was completely a slander. As I had written, when I step out of a plane in Denver I'm stepping onto a mile of fine granular material - because it all washed out from the mountains - and I don't sink out of sight. I would not have worked on a camera to go to the moon if I had thought it was not going to work. But it was published that Gold says when they step off the ladder they will sink out of sight. And newspapermen, as you probably know, read other newspapers, and these things tend to propagate.