Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 12:17:06 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: UNITE! Info #28en: 4/8 Chemical fuels, not "fossil", I.


UNITE! Info #28en: 4/8 Chemical fuels, not "fossil", I.
[Posted: 23.02.97]

[Continued from part 3/8]


(4) Why the chemical fuels are NOT "fossil"  [Posted: 18.08.96]


This item contains [which is continued in posting (5)]:

REPLIES TO LISA R. AND BARKELY R. ON OIL, NATURAL
GAS AND COAL

I had originally planned to continue this series with, first, 
an account of the "deep gas" project in Sweden in the 1980:s
and early 1990:s and the sharp conflict over that project, and 
then some details on each of those 10 points I enumerated in 
posting (1) as evidence of the mainly non-fossil origin of the
fuels in question. In order to reply at once to some objections 
raised, I'm changing this plan a little. My reply to Lisa and 
Barkley continues also in posting (6), "The particular case of 
China".


Lisa Rogers and Barkley Rosser,

You've both commented on the first three items of this little
series of mine and have made some objections concerning both 
the scientific and the political issues involved in the present 
sharp conflicts over energy in general. I'll reply to you both in 
some separate postings, since the various questions involved here 
are both big and important, deserving, I think, as complete
answers as I can possibly give you and others. And those
different postings will by necessity be long enough even as
separate ones. 
   
This one (ctd. in (5)) is directly on the question of the origins 
of oil, natural gas and coal. And so is, in part, item (6) of the 
series which I'm posting today too, on the particular case of China, 
in which I'm including not only that partial direct reply but also 
some points on oil and energy policy which I think are very 
interesting to note in connection with that country and the 
different social systems which in quite recent decades have existed 
there.


Yet another posting, when I get around to writing it, I intend to 
contain a few brief notes on a question you both raised, that of 
the history of "our" countries the USA and Sweden as far as 
nuclear energy is concerned, and a third will be on that (as your 
replies once more show) "deeply mysterious" but deeply 
significant question again (which some people have objected to 
my going into on 'sci.energy' but which does belong there, too): 

Why on earth is there, since two-three decades back at least, 
this enormously sharp conflict over the energy issues, and who 
is it that wants what and needs what in that conflict?

In this present posting, I'll touch very little on the political 
side of things and above all reply to your objections on some
scientific points to what I wrote on the chemical fuels.


GOLD STUFF

And I'm pleased to hear, Barkley, that (astronomer) Thomas Gold 
was your brother-in-law's major professor and that you have a fair 
amount of respect for him. I on my part don't have enough knowledge 
to want even to guess on whether his theory on cosmology is correct 
or not, but I think he deserves great credit for pushing, in the 
face of extremely strong opposition on obviously political grounds,
the (originally Russian, it seems) certainly correct cosmic or 
"deep-earth-gas" theory on the origins of the chemical fuels. If 
you by any chance should know where to find more of his writings on 
that subject, in particular, some more recent ones, that would be 
of great interest to me.


A) WOULDN'T OIL BE BROKEN DOWN INTO METHANE? 

Your objection, Lisa, that the long-chain hydrocarbons, such as 
those which make up oil, would all be broken down into methane at 
such high temperatures as there were at the early stage of the 
formation of the earth, I think I can tell is a correct
observation in itself, even if I'm no physicist either, but it
doesen't really hit the "deep-earth-gas" theory on oil origin. 

What this theory - no doubt correctly - asserts is that there in
the formation of the earth must have been enormous amounts of 
methane present, that much of that methane is still there, above 
all in the earth's mantle, i.e. at depths greater than some 10-50 
km, and that large amounts of that again have been (probably still 
are) seeping upwards though the crust, in many places in that 
crust being stopped and held capitve for long periods. And it's at 
some points in that process, i.e. under comparatively quite "cool" 
conditions, that some of that methane has polymerized (the 
molecules have combined to form chains) into long-chain hydro-
carbons, i.e. oil etc.

This (at least theoretically, and a lot of practice has already
borne that theory out, too) means that there's so much oil on
earth, and, at somewhat greater but still fairly easily attainable 
depths, in many hitherto "unknown" places, that "you can manure 
the fields with it", to use a Swedish expression for plenty. Why 
some people are so strongly against this becoming a publicly well-
known fact - that's another matter, which I've already written and 
quoted several things on and which I'll return to once more in one 
of those other replies I promised.

As I quoted, in my posting (3),  from that now quite old article 
by Gold and Soter in the Scientific American, June 1980:

"Other pathways will cause the methane to be trapped temporarily 
below relatively impermeable strata, where it will then contribute 
to the known deposits of natural gas." And:

"Finally, some of the methane, travelling on pathways that
convey it through hydrocarbon deposits, including oil of
biological origin, will become dissolved in those deposits.
If, as is likely, it is held there for a long time, chemical
changes will probably occur, including some that will cause
the carbon and the hydrogen to polymerize into the existing
hydrocarbon molecules."

Has it really been proved then, that such polymerization 
(chain-forming by methane into oil etc) has indeed occurred, 
and, if it has, how? To tell the truth, I don't know at all 
whether that process today has been understood. But overwhelming 
evidence does point to its having occurred, on a large scale. 
And on the composition of oil and the relation of that to the 
"fossil" theory, I'll give you a couple of quotes I intended
to bring in some later item of my "chemical fuels" series:

Bergstroem, "Gas och olja....", Sweden, 1985 (p. 13):

"There also are other problems," [with the "fossil" hypothesis]
"for instance, the question of how the transformation from
biological material to crude oil occurs. The well-known E.
Teller (1979)" [I assume he refers to the man who, rightly or
not, became known as "the father of the hydrogen bomb"]
"summed-up his comprehensive experience thus (in transla-
tion):" [and now re-] "'I've gone to the best geologists and 
the best oil experts and I can give you an authorative answer:
Nobody knows'. For the discussion, this does not matter 
much, since it isn't known how oil could arise out of other
material either. One can only point to the established fact:
in one way or another, it has arisen."  

Gold & Soter, 1980 article (p. 132 in the magazine):

"The British chemist Sir Robert Robinson has written that 'it
cannot be too strongly emphasized that petroleum does not present 
the composition picture expected of modified biogenic products, 
and all the arguments from the constituents of ancient oils fit 
equally well, or better, with the concept of a primordial 
hydrocarbon mixture to which bioproducts have been added.'"


B) "SCEPTICAL" ON "NON-", "CLEARLY" MOSTLY "BIO"?

The above also contained a reply to your objection, Barkley, that

>there may be some non-biogenic oil on earth, although
>I am sceptical on that one, but clearly most of the
>economically available is biogenic.

Here, IMO your "may" is a nice, though small, "oil concession"
but your "sceptical" and "clearly" are both unfounded, and also
were advanced without your giving any reasons for them. And
as an explanation for this latter, I suggest that either you're in
fact friendly disposed towards the present-day "established"
Inquisition on these matters, or you're afraid it may come and
pull your toe nails out one by one if you oppose it - this is no
joking matter at all; these people mean business! - or you're
simply floundering in the practically omnipresent ideological
net of that Inquisition and would have to make a conscious
effort to realize the existence of this net, cut yourself loose 
>from it and thus be able to think more clearly on these matters.

I'm including this "bit of politics" since you also, Barkley, 
called on me to "get real". In reality, it's you and many other 
writers who're fancying themselves as Marxists who are standing 
on your heads in these questions and even are being used as
"ventriloquists' dummies" by the main forces of capitalism in
them. This "ventriloquist" trick in fact is one of the *big 
"awful" secrets* in present-day society. But back to the fuels:


C) DO OIL FIELDS AND SEISMIC ZONES REALLY FIT?

I wrote about a geographical correspondence beween oil and gas 
fields and volcanic and seismic zones. You replied:

>Texas and the Persian Gulf are not major seismic zones, nor
>is Western Siberia. Nor have I heard of much oil in Japan.

Gold and Soter in the 1980 article I've mentioned also wrote:

"Let us now examine some of the evidence for the escape of
methane from the interior of the earth. A likely place to look is
along the crustal faults and fissures of the tectonic-plate
boundaries, which ought to provide the best access to the
deep interior."

[A fact which many people know and which I, too, have a vague
idea about is that the continents and the seas are resting on
a relatively small number of so-called tectonic plates, somewhat
resembling giant ice-floes, which are joined together but which
sometimes move a little in relation to each other, which is the
reason for at least the really big earthquakes. These, as far as
I know, occur only in those faults and fissures mentioned here.]

"Indeed, hydrocarbons appear to be largely associated with 
such places. Large concentrations of dissolved methane have
been measured in waters overlying plate boundaries and rift
zones. For example, the deep brines of the Red Sea contain 
about 1000 times more methane than normal seawater does. Hydro-
thermal plumes found issuing from sea-floor vents on the 
East Pacific Rise contain high concentrations of methane."

"Lake Kivu, which occupies part of the East African Rift Valley,
contains some 50 million tons of dissolved methane for which
there is no adequate microbial source. We think it probable
that all these waters are supplied by nonbiological methane
seeping up through deep crustal fissures."

"Another line of evidence connecting nonbiological hydro-
carbons with such features is the striking correlation between
the major oil and gas regions and the principal zones of past
and present seismic activity. Oil fields often lie along active 
or ancient fault lines. Most of the known natural seeps of oil 
and gas are found in seismically active regions."

"The most spectacular seeps of gas are called "mud volcanoes", 
which are hills (if not substantial mountains) built up from
sediments by the intermittent and occasionally violent 
eruptions of gas, sometimes carbon dioxide but most often
nearly pure methane. Almost all the mud volcanoes are found
on or near the major active fault lines and sometimes running
parallell to lines of real volcanoes."


And there's much more in that article on the connection "deep
gas" - seismic activity. In Bergstroem's 1985 book in Swedish,
"Gas och olja...", there are two figures on pp. 26-27, the first
one (after Gold & Soter 1982) showing  a very close
correspondence between the locations of oil and gas fields
and those of seismic activity in one region, the "East Indian
Arc of Islands", or the Sumatra-Java-Timor region, and the
second one (after various sources) showing the distribution
of hydrocarbon leaks and that of earthquakes on earth.

This last-mentioned map i.a. shows a lot of hydrocarbon
releases along the entire length of one big tectonic fault that
I know of, the one going from Morocco by way of the
Mediterranean, Northern Greece, Rumania, the Baku area,
Turkey, Iran/Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, China to Japan. 
Along this fault, as all know, there precisely are many large 
oil and gas fields. Why Japan so far has "no" oil I cannot tell. 
Bergstroem's map does show some hydrocarbon leaks there. 
Has deep drilling (more than 5 km) been tried in Japan? I don't 
know that either. 

But I do know that it was, in China, when that country was still
socialist (up until 1976-78). And since China is of particular
interest concerning oil and energy policy in general, I'm posting
today an item (6) of this series on "The Particular Case of China", 
containing i.a. part of my reply directly on the origins question.

And here, I'll also add that the 1980 Gold & Soter article too had 
a map on oil-gas fields and seismic activity, with comments 
(p. 134) which provide some answers concerning two more of the 
areas you mentioned, Barkley: Texas and Western Siberia. The 
text under that map reads in part:

"Many of the known hydrocarbon reservoirs, including those of
Alaska, Texas, the Caribbean, Mexico, Venezuela, the Persian
Gulf, the Urals, Siberia and southeastern Asia, lie on 
deformation belts. The correlation is consistent with the view
that hydrocarbons of non-biological origin come up from deep
in the earth through fissures in the crust. They may augment
hydrocarbons of biological origin."

[Continued in posting (5) - part 5/8]



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