Are We Running Out of Oil?
by
George Crispin
by George Crispin
It
is a complicated subject, but now I am familiar with the two theories
of the origin of petroleum, the conventional one that assumes that
oil is biogenic, originating as plant and animal matter and the
other, that it is abiogenic, it or its raw material having been
formed with the earth when it was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
My
learning curve began several years ago with a short article that
described the oil field beneath the Eugene 330 oil platform in the
Gulf of Mexico. I lost the clipping but did not forget the story
of a dried up oil well that was refilling itself. This spring when
I found a new discussion of Eugene 330, essentially describing the
same conditions, my original conclusions of a mantle filled with
or manufacturing petroleum were reinforced, leading to the conclusion
that the world’s supply of oil was essentially limitless But by
now the Peak Oil people were out in force and desperate to prove
that we are due to run out of oil soon, and must prepare ourselves
for war and/or starvation. This led me to:
-
C. Maurice
and C. Smithson, Doomsday Mythology: "Every ten
or fifteen years since the late 1800’s (when we began using
petroleum) ‘experts’ have predicted that oil reserves would
last only ten more years. These ‘experts’ have predicted nine
of the last zero oil-reserve exhaustions."
-
Sheik
Yamani, one time oil minister to Saudi Arabia, who stated in
a speech to Europeans, "The stone age ended, but not because
of any lack or stones. Undoubtedly the oil age will end the
same way."
-
Jean Whelan,
a geochemist and senior researcher with the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute assigned to study the Eugene field. Becoming familiar
with the phenomenon, she said " . . .. I believe there
is a huge system of oil just migrating deep underground"
-
Dr. Thomas
Gold’s book The
Deep Hot Biosphere, in which he theorizes that our oil
or the methane from which it could evolve, was formed 4.5 billion
years ago when the earth began, that it is not a fossil fuel
but picks up traces of fossils as it works its way upwards.
This theory leaves the earth with a huge supply of oil unlike
the fossil theory, which assumes oil to be the result of a one-time
dying off of animals and plants.
-
The Russian
Ukrainian Deep Abiotic Theory (except for Dr Gold, virtually
unknown in the West) has long gone beyond theory, the Russians
having brought in several fields producing abiotic oil using
super deep drilling technology. By 1946 their production had
dropped off. Now, they, along with Saudi Arabia and ourselves
are one of the three largest producers in the world. This, plus
our oil shale, and Canada’s tar sands, plus as yet unimagined
technologies, plus the fact that oil is only a part of the total
energy picture make it seem highly unlikely the world will ever
run out of oil.
One
clincher in the debate is that Peak Oil writings are terribly muddled.
The other is the suspicion that its adherents seem to fall into
Professor Kuhn’s description of people who cannot accept anything
outside their conventional world, people who cannot be scientifically
critical, whose every belief must fit their current paradigm.
May
3, 2005
George
Crispin [send him mail]
is a retired businessman who heads a Catholic homeschooling cooperative
in Auburn, Alabama.
Copyright
© 2005 LewRockwell.com
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