NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.detnews.com/2002/editorial/0205/29/a11-500860.htm

I came across this article by chance and was wondering if anyone knows anything else about this theory of the origins of oil?

Oil is a fossil product of decomposition of plants under immense pressure and heat. It exists because millions of years ago, vast forests covered the planet which were buried in the ground and eventually decomposed to oil. This fuel is not inexhaustible and mankind would do good to look for better fuels like hydrogen cells.

Oil is a fossil product of decomposition of plants under immense pressure and heat. It exists because millions of years ago, vast forests covered the planet which were buried in the ground and eventually decomposed to oil. This fuel is not inexhaustible and mankind would do good to look for better fuels like hydrogen cells.

Did you read the article?

Although this discovery would seem to disprove the theory that oil is the product of decomposition (if it is ever proven with more facts), it still does not make it renewable. It would still be exhaustable, but it would just take many more decades or centuries of use to exhaust it.

Oil can't go too deep anyway. What temp does it catch fire?

Oil can't go too deep anyway. What temp does it catch fire?

Dunno, but it does not really matter. Without oxygen there wont be any fire

Did you read the article?
I read the first few sentences and closed it after that since it is an oil-lobby endorsement article. Oil has been researched for centuries and one article cannot overthrow what we already know about oil and how it has been "made".

I read the first few sentences and closed it after that since it is an oil-lobby endorsement article. Oil has been researched for centuries and one article cannot overthrow what we already know about oil and how it has been "made".

Respectable answer, consider the question withdrawn.

Dunno, but it does not really matter. Without oxygen there wont be any fire

Touche.



What happens when Oil hits the liquid layer below the crust? Does it just mix together without flaming?

I have to say this is bogus. I knew someone who was a geologist for Shell Oil and he said what oil companies look for are earth strata containing particular fossils of a certain geologic period. I forget which but it's not important. After he told me this he quipped it's how Shell got its name. Something to think about, unless that's part of a huge price fixing conspiracy too. :D

What happens when Oil hits the liquid layer below the crust? Does it just mix together without flaming?

no, it would combust if it hit the liquid rock but it doesnt, i'll find a pic giving some perspectice on the thickness of the crust

Yes it is if you consider a million years a short period of time ;)

Interesting article. I hope it's true and there is a vast amount of crude oil deep within the earth. I doubt oil would burn deep in the earth no matter how hot it is because there can't be much oxygen gas down there. (correct me if i'm wrong) , instead it would probably be vaporized.

no, it would combust if it hit the liquid rock but it doesnt, i'll find a pic giving some perspectice on the thickness of the crust

Would be better to get some perspective of how deep oil is drilled now compared to how thick the crust is.

it's not just the decomposition is it? my geology teacher in highschool said that even given millions of years, the oil fields wouldn't renew because the condtions have changed so much. the organisms had to decompose in the presence of cirtain prehistoric bactirium in an anerobic, high pressure environment that no longer exists

Would be better to get some perspective of how deep oil is drilled now compared to how thick the crust is.

i cant find a pic but i have found out, the deepest ever hole for oil was 6km deep but typicly they are a maximum 3-5km deep, the average thickness of the crust below the continents is about 32-40km deep.

as gigatron pointed out
nature does indeed produce petrolium and natural gas
by the proccess mentioned

it does this however, at a rate something like a 1/1000th
or less, of that at which human society has been burning it
for the past century. a time during which its rate of
consumption has continued to accellerate.

i haven't heard estimates as to how much remains in the
ground vs rate of consumption mentioned lately
so i cannot say with certainty
but strongly suspect it is a fraction of what we have
already consumed.

it took nature many times longer then anything resembling
our human species has even existed to produce what we've
consumed in the last century.

i, along with many others, don't KNOW exactly WHEN it will
run out, but you can bet you jewels it WILL.

and we are by no means lucky for it to not as yet have.

environment isn't a parlour game about ugly fish, pretty
butterflys and fur bearing carnivours, it is also where
our air and water our own species could not survive without
come from.

and our biggest harm to those natural cycles of renewal we
all depend on comes from the combination of our consumption
of oil and our shere unnatural numbers as a species

and we HAVE other and better ways of generating energy and
transportation then burning oil and coal or even burning
anything. if we were as smart as we like to immagine, our
policies and priorities would be about using them instead

=^^=
.../\...

one article cannot overthrow what we already know about oil and how it has been "made".

This isn't just "one" article, its been a well known theory for a long time. Just take a look at this articl from 1986:-

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf047/sf047p12.htm

I do A level chemistry and I don't understand half of what is in here, so maybe it's a bit pointless debating this.

we have infinite sources of energy on earth (sun, wind, the seas tie and don't know the other word :p)

in +-50years all the oil will be gone orso
then everyone who hasn't changed yet will be screwed

Why not use Nuclear power? It's not inexhaustible either but we'd get a lot more and cleaner power if only oil companies would not stop them by simply buying all nuclear research.

What was said earlier about oil being made a "long" time ago in circumstances now no longer present: Not true. Natural gas is made by the same proces (just didn't have that much time as oil) and is still formed, so therefor oil is still formed as long as we don't pump up all the natural gas.

my belief is that fusion will hold the answer, if more money is poured ino research then it could well beome a reality before oil supplys run out, a 1mm pellet of deutrium fuel contains the same energy as a barrel of oil

Why not use Nuclear power? It's not inexhaustible either but we'd get a lot more and cleaner power if only oil companies would not stop them by simply buying all nuclear research.


Then we have the problem of tonnes and tonnes of radioactive waste to deal with....

As for solar, wind, tidal power, using just those wouldn't produce enough electricity.

nuclear waste is not a problem to get rid of. There are many places in this world where there is no human life (even some places where there is no animal life). Salt mines are now being used as dumps. Nothing lives there. Plus there always will be space or the sun or the moon.

Nuclear waste is not a problem if only those damn environmentalists would tie theirselves to the tracks or the road

I would have pleaded for fusion IF that was possible to control it at the moment. Since it isn´t I prefer Nuclear above Oil.

I would have pleaded for fusion IF that was possible to control it at the moment. Since it isn´t I prefer Nuclear above Oil.

no i think you will find it is using inertial confinement, long story short i think there is a fusion reactor in a lab somewhere that they have managed to get more power out then they put in.

Maybe there is, but we are not supposed to know about it yet. Controlled Fusion Power is not yet possible to me since government(s) and researchers have not given word to us that is if fact is possible and they have a realisable way to do it.

I read the first few sentences and closed it after that since it is an oil-lobby endorsement article. Oil has been researched for centuries and one article cannot overthrow what we already know about oil and how it has been "made".

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss a scientific theory based solely on the fact that it challenges "what we know from centuries of research". It sounds plausible enough to me...

Nevertheless it doesn't seem to change the fact that oil isn't a (practical) renewable resource, and that we're still burning the majority of the essential ingredient of plastics (think medical equipment, insulation, nylon, polyester, backpacks, desks, lamps, fences, syringes, nebuliser vials, bottlecaps, bottles, sanitary food packaging, nappies, cabling and electrical insulation, computer and appliance casings...) for CAR fuel, like there's no tomorrow!

Nuclear would be a clean, viable option that i'd support if only energy companies (read: fellow human beings) could be trusted not to cut safety corners to save on costs or effort...

The potentially disastrous consequences leave too little a margin for error than i'd like to trust people with, given that a company's primary obligation is to its shareholders rather than to the recipients of the service and the general public. Of course, the natural thing to do would be to cut corners.

Oil - Highly polluting and not renewable

Coal - A primary contributor to the greenhouse effect and dirty

Nuclear - Waste products radioactive longer than known history

Solar - We are fine for the next 2 billion years but current tech needs to improved still

Wind - Can only be used in some places

Dams - Messes up rivers by damming them

Hydrogen cell - clean source and pollutants but energy output needs to improve.

Fusion - still to be proven to be cost-effective if it works

Yes, but only to the same extent that McDonalds “food” is Digestible.

Wind - Can only be used in some places
A coworker of mine tried to set up his own windmill once. The power company came along and quickly put a stop to what he was doing.

no i think you will find it is using inertial confinement, long story short i think there is a fusion reactor in a lab somewhere that they have managed to get more power out then they put in.

According to the laws of physics you can never get more power out of a system than you put in, so that would be pretty interesting.

And as for nuclear power and comments like "if it weren't for teh damn environmentalists", it's not the environmentalists, it's the NIMBYS. Would you want a radioactive waste storage facility down the road from your house?

A coworker of mine tried to set up his own windmill once. The power company came along and quickly put a stop to what he was doing.

He should move to the Netherlands then! ;)
Corporate greed at it's best.

According to the laws of physics you can never get more power out of a system than you put in, so that would be pretty interesting.

yes, what you seem to have failed to realise is that there is a fuel involved and that is where the energy is stored

A coworker of mine tried to set up his own windmill once. The power company came along and quickly put a stop to what he was doing.


Wow. We are setting up a windmill right now to provide power for a barn that isn't going to be used all that much. Power company cannot do a thing to stop us either. Infact we can turn around and then sell them back the excess energy :)

About the original article, it's interesting. There's no real proof either way right now, so I'm not really planning to say whether I think it's true or not, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with the theory.

Personally I think we should invest in solar power, nuclear power, and fusion. Solar and fusion still need more research, however, nuclear power right now is viable, although I think there would have to be very strict controls on safety procedures and such, to make the possibility of a meltdown as minimal as humanly possible.

The penalty for failure to adhere to safety procedures for a nuclear plant would have to be strong enough to actually be a deterrent.... Very very strict penalties....

Anyways, I think those 3 are good ideas (until we come up with a new one) due to the fact they have much less impact on the environment than any others, and solar power is renewable for a few billion years. Nuclear power... well I suppose technically it's not renewable, but it's going to last a long time until we get solar and fusion working well enough...

As for radioactive waste produced by nuclear power? I don't know what everyone so has against the idea, but what's wrong with creating temporary storage facilities (preferably under-water, I've heard water has a significant damping effect on the radiation? Although that might be wrong), and then when they are full enough, ship em off towards the sun. No one's going to miss them, and the sun sure isn't going to mind.

On an ending note, can anyone give me more information about fusion? Like a link to some good solid information about the research, about how it works, the theories behind it and such. I've heard alot about it, but know very little about how it actually works.

It doesn't matter if fossil fuels are an inexhaustible resource. We can't mine anything but the strata oil reserves. The rate at which they are being filled won't be enough in a decade anyways. That and fossil fuels are bad for the atmosphere, it's time that man accepted that and gradually began switching to more environmentally friendly methods of powering our society.

Environment is NOT the problem. The problem is that in a few decades time there will have to be major changes in our society as a whole IF we don't start changing NOW. So all we have to do is start introducing and implementing new power sources, but oil companies a blocking researches and "clean" power companies.

This article looks like nonsense. For one thing if oil was produced the way they claim it would be found at random areas around the earth, under mountains, forests, hills, everywhere. But it's only found in the ocean and in areas that were submerged millions of years ago. Why? Because it's the remains of dead fish.

NO not just dead fish, but other organics that were once land creatures as well. Those areas were not always underwater.

There are a few things missing here.

One the oil fields are filling back up, wich to me would indicate that the oil is actually in the ground itself and it pools in these pockets that we drill into. The current rate I last heard was not to shabby. Of course SUV's could undermine that.

Second yes there is a lot of oil under the oceans. And it leaks out constantly, naturally. Just one month's leakage is more than a dozen Valdez spills. If only someone could come up with a way to seperate that from the sea water, we'd all be doing better.

We have enough known oil to last will into the next century. Places like Anwar are still untapped. And don't believe those pretty scenery photos of Anwar either. That area of the reserve is so far removed from the oil fields it's pittiful.

Yes we really need to move to other power sources, but untill the tech can catch up, then we are stuck with oil.

Anyways, I think those 3 are good ideas (until we come up with a new one) On an ending note, can anyone give me more information about fusion? Like a link to some good solid information about the research, about how it works, the theories behind it and such. I've heard alot about it, but know very little about how it actually works.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/fusion/reactors.asp
http://pa.essortment.com/fusionpower_png.htm

As to the idea of nuclear/fission power,
1.people won't like living near nuclear waste (unless you lied to them)
2.people know that the waste has a half life of a million years
3 expensive to ship off to the sun
4.same tech behind the japan bombs (a golfball of uranium) could blow up a few facilities and kill some people
5.uranium will also run out

personally i think the way to go is fusion/cold fusion or some perpetual motion device encorporating toasters, but i don't think thats gonna happen...

I forget what lab it was in Europe that made a major breakthrough in fusion. What they did was use a large magnetic containment chamber to contain the heat that they generated using powerful lasers. With the intense heat fusion could be possible. But it wouldn't be efficient. The amount of energy required to create the reaction would be far greater than the output of the reaction. That kind of machinery just takes too much to operate. So then the problem of cost comes in. Just a single test would cost too much to actually perform. So with that several more problems arise with politics and funding. I don't think we're going to see fusion any time soon. It's just too expensive. And if we did manage fusion, who's to say we could control it?

Aslo, note on fission. Some suggest shooting waste into space. Not only is that expensive, but extremely risky. If there were to be but one techinical difficulty with the shuttle travelling with the waste, it could crash back to Earth and cause a major fallout. Also, finding a crew to man the shuttle would be difficult. I know satallites aren't manned, but there is still a manned shuttle to take them up to space. It wouldn't be safe for a crew.