The Myth Of Unlimited Abiotic Oil

The simple truth is that it doesn't exist. However, this has not stopped some individuals from exaggerating the findings to create this mythical unlimited reserve of oil.

You don't have to look far to find these modern snake oil salesmen. Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. and Craig R. Smith is an excellent example. I should probably point out that Mr. Corsi's PhD is in political science rather than something that would be relevant to petroleum like geophysics or chemistry. The real brains for this can be found in the book's description:

This book reveals the conclusions reached by Dr. Thomas Gold, a professor at Cornell University, in his seminal book "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels" (Copernicus Books, 1998) and accepted by many in the scientific community that oil is not a product of fossils and prehistoric forests but rather the bio-product of a continuing biochemical reaction below the earth's surface that is brought to attainable depths by the centrifugal forces of the earth's rotation.

The basis of this theory is that oil is not a fossil fuel formed from organic materials that were deposited millions of years. His theory is that oil and natural gas are actually formed in the Earth's mantle and these then make their way up into the crust where they can be found and exploited. I have nothing against Dr. Gold. He came up with a theory and waited to see if his theory might be proven correct. Unfortunately it has not. The arrogance of Mr. Corsi is that he suggests that he has in some way either added to or validated Dr. Gold's theory. Such a notion is laughable from a man who has done nothing but sat at his desk and written a politically based book that desperately hopes that Dr. Gold is right.

There are scraps of evidence that people like Mr. Corsi point to with great frenzy. These, while interesting to scientists, amount to nothing in terms of oil. I'll be happy to cover these. The first idea is that the theory must be true because the Russian scientists believe it and they are now producing much more oil than before. In Corsi's own words:

The abiotic oil theory has been central to Soviet science since the end of World War II. Looking deep within the Earth for oil, Russian has advanced from being a relatively oil-poor country in the 1950s, to being today the world's second largest exporter of oil, contending strongly for first position with Saudi Arabia.

This paragraph is a pretty clear distortion of the facts, either by ignorance or by deception. Russian oil production fell sharply when the former Soviet Union collapsed. As Russia concentrated again on oil production the exports rose again. Russia has made a few new finds but these are small compared to the known reserves and were made in the same way that all other oil fields are discovered. From the the EIA , as of 2007:

"Russia holds the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. Russia is also the world's largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter and the third largest energy consumer."

There has been no increase in the estimated oil reserves for Russia. There is no new science at work and no great new fields of oil have been discovered. The primary reason why Russia's export volume has risen so much is that Russia is desperate for money and has resorted to using water injection to extract the oil faster. This does work but the fields will be depleted relatively quickly.

The EIA data that I linked to above is the best in the world. In order to make his slanted case Corsi picks from it very selectively. For example here Corsi points to a single number to try to prove that the overall reserves of oil are increasing:

Today, the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that we have 1.28 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves worldwide, more than ever before in human history, despite decades of increased usage.

This really shouldn't be much of a surprise. What has increased is known reserves as opposed to actual reserves. We didn't do exploration in out of the way places or offshore back in the 1960's but this technology has improved a lot in the last 40 years. The US's reserve estimates increased with the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field and then increased again more recently with the discovery of the oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. The estimated reserves of Saudi Arabia have increased since the 1960's and we've added new discoveries like the oil fields in the North Atlantic, Mexico, and Venezuela. What Corsi does not mention is that the OPEC estimates may have been artificially inflated since volume share among OPEC countries is based on reserves. It has been suggested that OPEC countries began inflating their reserve estimates to get a bigger share of the export quota. Specifically there has never been any third party verification of the OPEC estimates.

Another example is the claim that the Eugene oil field increased in volume and that this proves that oil is being made abiotically. The article The Myth of Peak Oil is a typical example:

Eugene Island is an oil field in the gulf of Mexico, 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana. It was discovered in 1973 and began producing 15,000 barrels of oil a day which then slowed to about 4,000 barrels in 1989.

But then for no logical reason whatsoever, production spiked back up to 13,000 barrels a day.

This sounds really impressive. The field apparently peaks at 15k bpd which falls off to 4k bpd but then sees an amazing surge amounting to 60% of its original volume due to refilling from a deep pool of abiotic oil. Actually, no, since most of his numbers are incorrect. The truth is that in 1979 Eugene was producing 90,000 barrels per day. Ten years later in 1989 production was down to 20k bpd and continued to fall to 15k bpd by 1992. Then production rose again and peaked at 30k bpd in 1996 but had fallen back to 15k bpd four years later. So, what we have in reality is a field that had fallen to 17% of its peak production. That temporary surge amounted to only 17% of the original volume instead of 60%. We also know where it came from. It seeped into the Eugene field from a nearby field through a known fault in the rock strata. This information is important only in that it could help extract oil more efficiently. This type of seepage also shows up in the Gulf of Mexico. Temporary refilling due to adjacent seepage in two fields out of 40,000 world wide is nothing like proof of unlimited oil.

And, even if the total volume of known oil reserves has increased we have also seen shifts to less desirable oil. The desirable oil is light, sweet crude that Saudi Arabia is famous for. Light means that it flows and pumps easily; and sweet means that it is low in sulphur. The oil from Venezuela is not in this class and even Saudi Arabia has begun to produce a higher volume of less desirable oil. We've also had to resort to more novel methods of oil extraction such as gas repressurization, carbon dioxide injection, and water injection. In some areas the oil is too thick (like axle grease) so very hot steam is injected to make the oil thin enough to pump. Here is a link to a newer enhanced extraction method, TM-98 "that will enhance oil production from older, poorly-producing wells.". All of these enhanced recovery methods cost more than just drilling a hole and having the oil gush out as it does in the movies.

Corsi is now also pointing to hydrocarbons produced in deep ocean geothermal vents as proof of abiotic oil. This is quite a stretch. Most of the deep ocean hydrothermal vents release sulphur compounds which feed bacteria. A much smaller group produces some hydrocarbons which feed bacteria in the water. This is described at Science Daily, A Deep Sea Hydrocarbon Factory:

"The process of hydrocarbon production occurs in two steps. In the first, an iron compound in rock strips water of its oxygen, liberating hydrogen gas. In the second step, hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide (from the degassing of magma) combine to produce methane and water. The Minnesota team discovered that rocks rich in chromium minerals accelerate the second step, while also producing more complex hydrocarbons, ethane and propane."

This process won't work for the abiotic theorists since their process supposedly occurs in the mantle where there would be no water. Secondly, notice that the heaviest hydrocarbon produced is propane which is not even as heavy as the heavier components of natural gas, much less the long hydrocarbon chains in crude oil. Finally, we know where fossil fuels come from. It is common to find fossils in coal deposits so there is no doubt about their origin. Crude oil on the other hand gets strained as it flows through the porous rock strata leaving any large fossils behind. Even so it still contains plenty of microscopic fossils again showing that it is indeed biological in origin. This has been well known for a long time and the claims of scientific debate about abiotic oil are right up there with similar claims about perpetual motion machines.

Tasmanian Devil, Most Powerful Bite Myth

I've now seen from several different sources the remarkable claim that the Tasmanian devil's bite force is the strongest of any living mammal. This assertion would be truly extraordinary if it were true. Unfortunately, it is not.

In reality, the bite force of lions, tigers, Grizzly and Polar Bears dwarfs that of the Tasmanian Devil. The Tasmanian Devil's bite is also less powerful than that of the Mountain Lion, Leopard, Gray Wolf and Jaguar and only about half that of the Spotted Hyena. In fact, the idea that a 26 pound marsupial has the strongest bite of any living mammal seems strange indeed. One has to wonder where this odd notion came from. The idea is actually a misunderstanding of a scientific study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society (Series B), Bite club: comparative bite force in big biting mammals and the prediction of predatory behaviour in fossil taxa.

A comparison of bite force from 39 living and extinct species is given in Table 1. The column, CBS (N) is the actual bite force. We can plainly see that the bite force of the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus Harrisii, is 418 which is less than that of, say, Lycaon Pictus, the African Hunting Dog at 428. Both of these are dwarfed by the bite force of the African Lion at 1,768. Clearly, the Tasmanian Devil isn't even in the running for the title of highest bite force for a living mammal.

The confusion comes from the last column, BFQ, Bite Force Ratio. This value is given as CBS (N) / BoM (kg) = BFQ, or Bite Force divided by Body Mass equals Bite Force Quotient. Now, we can see that the Tasmanian devil has a bite force ratio of 181. The African Lion only has a bite force ratio of 112. The Jaguar is closer at 137. The reason why the Tasmanian Devil has such a high bite force ratio is twofold: First, the Tasmanian Devil is a scavenger and needs a strong bite to break bones. Secondly, the Tasmanian Devil has a very large head in proportion to its body. In older adult males the head can be one quarter of the entire body weight. No real predator would be very effective with such a high head ratio. In other words, the large head size of the Tasmanian Devil makes it a poor predator. The enlarged jaw muscles needed to generate the proportionately large bite force of the Tasmanian Devil also interfere with brain size. For example, although the raccoon is similar in size to the Tasmanian Devil the raccoon has a brain 2 1/2 times larger. Although the smaller brain of the Tasmanian Devil makes it less intelligent than the raccoon its oversized olfactory bulbs give it an enhanced sense of smell as would benefit a scavenger in locating carrion.