Lately it seems like everyone’s concerned about the prospect of running out of oil. My colleagues talk about it a lot at our monthly editorial meetings.

Peak Oil is the concept that we will soon reach a level of production (if this has not already happened) that is the highest the world will ever see. Thereafter, production levels will fall — despite discoveries of new fields and technological advances — at the same time as demand is rapidly increasing, thanks to the industrialization of India and China.

It’s a recipe for soaring prices and economic disaster.

Before I dispute this argument, let me say that I am no fan of oil as a source of energy. It’s a great source of feedstock for plastics, but it’s a ridiculously expensive and filthy way to power our modern lifestyle. It also helps to centralize political control in few hands.

Had we made a commitment to a real space program 20 years ago rather than to NASA’s political boondoggle, we could today be providing all of Earth’s present and foreseeable energy requirements with clean power beamed from space. (For an eye-opening view of what’s possible, read The High Frontier by Dr. Gerard O’Neill.)

That’s just one technology capable of doing the job. I’m also aware of others.

But let’s return to oil. If oil is essentially decayed biomass deposited over eons then there is truly a limited supply. In that case, the only logical question is when (and not if ) we will reach the peak (commonly known as Hubbert’s Peak, in honor of the American geophysicist M. King Hubbert who first propounded the argument.)

On the other hand, have you heard of the Russian abiotic (a.k.a. abiogenic or non-biological) theory of oil?

Of Dinosaurs and Deep Holes

When I was six years old, I was obsessed with dinosaurs and paleontology.

While reading a book about paleontology, I encountered a picture of Pangaea, a hypothetical supercontinent that might have existed hundreds of millions of years ago.

A new theory had just declared that something called “continental drift” caused the Pangaean supercontinent to break into smaller continents that slowly moved apart over millions of years. Those advocating the new theory had examined the shapes of today’s continents and noticed that these could all fit together nicely, as if they were parts of a broken jigsaw puzzle.

However, the writer was no fan of this theory. He said, in essence, that it was a ridiculous theory since no force of nature could explain the movement of continents on the Earth’s surface.

My simple six-year-old mind looked at the nice fit between the eastern side of South America and the western side of Africa and decided this was probably not mere coincidence. I bought into continental drift because it seemed better able to explain the facts at hand.

Of course, since then tectonic plate movement was discovered and continental drift has become the mainstream view.

I had a similar reaction when first informed that oil deposits were the result of decaying dinosaurs and other bacteriological processes. Something didn’t — pardon the pun — smell right.

When I learned of the Russian abiotic theory, it just made a lot more sense intuitively. That’s not to say it’s right; I must express the caveat that I’m neither a petroleum geologist nor in any other way an oil expert.

Nevertheless, the “common sense” arguments advanced to support it seem persuasive to me. Col. Fletcher Prouty is an articulate advocate for the abiotic theory. Among his other accomplishments, he represented the U.S. Railroad industry at the Federal Staff Energy Seminar of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Other participants included Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger.

The following is excerpted from a letter written in 1996 by Col. Prouty:

“…I was seated with Arthur Kantrowitz [another eminence grise; founder of the AVCO-Everett Research Lab and Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth]…Kantrowitz turned to the geologist beside him and asked, ‘Do you really believe that petroleum is a fossil fuel?’ The man said, ‘Certainly’ and all four of them joined in. Kantrowitz listened quietly and then said, ‘The deepest fossil ever found has been at about 16,000 feet below sea level; yet we are getting oil from wells drilled to 30,000 and more. How could fossil fuel get down there? If it was once living matter, it had to be on the surface. If it did turn into petroleum, at or near the surface, how could it ever get to such depths? What is heavier, oil or water?’ Water: so it would go down, not oil. Oil would be on top, if it were ‘organic’ and ‘lighter.’

“Oil is neither.

“They all agreed water was heavier, and therefore if there was some crack or other open area for this ‘organic matter’ to go deep into the magma of Earth, water would have to go first and oil would be left nearer the surface. This is reasonable. Even if we do agree that ‘magma’ is a ‘crude mixture of minerals or organic matters, in a thin pasty state’ this does not make it petroleum, and if it were petroleum it would have stayed near the surface as heavier items, i.e., water seeped below.

“My D. Van Nostrand Scientific Encyclopedia says ‘Magma is the term for molten material. A natural, complex, liquid, high temperature, silicate solution ancestral to all igneous rocks, both intrusive and effusive. The origin of magma is not known.’ My Oxford English Dictionary does not even have the word ‘magma.’

“Some years ago I wrote two or three pages that appeared in the McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology, i.e., ‘Railroad Engineering.’ Even that source is a bit uncertain about the ‘origin of petroleum’ to wit:

“‘Less than 1% of the organic matter that originates in or is transported to the marine environment is eventually incorporated into ocean sediment,’ and

“‘Most petroleum is formed during catagenesis (undefined anywhere). If sufficient organic matter is present oceanic sediments that undergo this process are potential petroleum sources. Deeply buried marine organic matter yields mainly oil, whereas land plant material yields mainly gas.’ (Their idea of ‘deeply buried’ is the ‘out.’)

“All this leaves us nowhere. I still go with Kantrowitz. Since oil is lighter than water, everywhere on Earth, there is no way that petroleum could be an organic, fossil fuel that is created on or near the surface, and penetrate Earth ahead of water. Oil must originate far below and gradually work its way up into well-depth areas accessible to surface drilling. It comes from far below. Therefore, petroleum is not a ‘fossil’ fuel with a surface or near-surface origin.

“It was made to be thought a ‘fossil’ fuel by the nineteenth (century) oil producers to create the concept that it was of limited supply and therefore extremely valuable. This fits with the ‘depletion’ allowance philosophical scam.

“During one of our C.S.I.S. International Nights (1978) the Common Market Energy boss, M. Montibrial of France, told us that while petroleum was being marketed then for $20.00 per barrel or more, it cost no more than 25 cents per barrel at the wellhead. There is our petroleum problem! We were paying more than $1.50-$1.60 per gallon, 1/42 of a barrel, at that time. Interested folks need to learn more about the Chartered Institute of Transport, and not waste their time with OPEC, the ‘cover’ story.

“Those who pumped the Pennsylvania wells ‘dry’ during the late eighteen hundreds saved what they had for those better days.

“L. Fletcher Prouty”

The Russian abiotic theory includes detailed chemical analysis of processes involving heat and pressure that it is argued could and do continuously convert pre-organic materials deep within the earth’s crust to crude oil.

It would also explain the curious yet often-documented phenomenon of “dry” wells that become replenished after being left alone for decades.

Under this theory, there could never be an end to the supply of crude oil. (Left unanswered is the question of whether human demand for oil could outstrip our ability to extract it. If so — and this certainly seems plausible — the abiotic theory would merely delay the day when we must eventually switch from oil to alternative sources of energy.)

Numerous papers have been published in scientific journals discussing the abiotic theory.  However, most of them have been in Russian and not translated into English. Here’s a noteworthy exception: Kropotkin, P. N. (1985) “Degassing of the Earth and the Origin of Hydrocarbons,” International Geology Review, 27, 1261-1275.

For further details and references, see the Wikipedia entry, “Abiogenic petroleum origin.” Here’s a particularly noteworthy excerpt, “Russian geologist Nikolai Kudryavtsev was also a prominent and forceful advocate of the abiogenic theory. He argued that no petroleum resembling the chemical composition of natural crudes has ever been made from plant material in the laboratory under conditions resembling those in nature.”

Also, I find it interesting that Russia has — in recent years — made the transition from being a net importer of oil to a net exporter. They’ve had several major finds, achieved by drilling deeply in areas that do not have the right characteristics according to conventional theory. (Under the abiotic theory, major finds of oil should be recoverable at depths not functional under conventional drilling models.)

I think this subject deserves a lot more debate than it’s been receiving in the Western press. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be rushing out to buy stocks in petroleum companies, unless they are doing something technologically revolutionary.

To your profitable future,

Jonathan Kolber
November 29, 2006

P.S.: Dr. Thomas Gold of Cornell University is sometimes credited with being the architect of this theory. However, insofar as I can determine, the abiotic theory was already well articulated over the course of decades and many scientific papers prior to his claiming authorship.

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