We all know that oil came from dinosaurs, or, at least, from the decomposition of organic (i.e., formerly living) materials–hence the term “fossil fuels” and the Sinclair dinosaur. But is it really true? Were there really enough dinosaurs–or even plant life–to create the billions and billions of gallons of known oil reserves? What is the physical process that converts dead reptiles and/or ferns into a homogeneous carbon compound that bears little resemblance to the molecular structure of plants and animals? (“Heat and extreme pressure” seems a little vague–and anyway, I thought that produced diamonds, not oil.) Has the process been duplicated in the laboratory? Isn’t the source of oil more likely to be natural geologic processes? –Larry Orr, via e-mail
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Forgive me for hitting the energy questions pretty hard lately, but every trip to the gas pump these days brings the subject painfully to mind. Evidently you’ve forgotten my 1986 adumbration of “abiogenic” oil, which focused on the work of the scientific maverick Thomas Gold. Like you, Gold doubted the conventional wisdom that petroleum derived from plant and animal remains. Instead he thought it was produced from inorganic material deep within the earth, the implication being that there was a lot more down there waiting to be found than most experts thought. With that in mind, Gold persuaded oil prospectors in Sweden to bore an ultradeep hole in that country’s Siljan Ring, the site of an ancient meteorite strike that had cracked the earth’s crust. Gold hoped to find primordial petroleum seeping up through the fissures, far below the level at which oil is normally found–proof of his theory.
I won’t rehash the A-oil vs. B-oil arguments other than to say that (a) oil can be produced in the lab using both processes; (b) each side agrees that in nature some oil is produced the other side’s way; and (c) circumstantial evidence strongly favors a B origin for almost all found to date. That hasn’t deterred the A team, though, which brings us back to the Siljan Ring. The 6.7-kilometer borehole completed in 1990 didn’t come up a gusher but did recover 15 tons of oily sludge. When the B-oil crowd objected that it was just drill lubricant, the Swedes dug another hole using a water-lubed drill and again struck sludge. Eh, it’s probably B-oil that migrated from elsewhere, said scoffers. In short, nothing got settled. Professor Gold having gone the way of the plankton in 2004, a few other Western scientists have taken up the A-oil cause, although foes far outnumber fans.
