The Peak Oil "theory" suggests strongly that within the next 3-5 years we'll be hitting our highest level of production of oil, ever. The thing is, it's a peak, not a plateau. The day we hit that peak is the day before we begin to run out of workable oil. This theory is gaining backers left and right because it seems to be happening already. Many wells are running dry around the world and big oil companies have had to scale back their projected levels of oil production. When the oil companies do something like that, you know it's a serious situation.
Alas, according to the seriously right-wing Internet news source WorldNetDaily.Com, there is a new competing theory that suggests all this concern for peak oil is for nothing. This new theory does more than just dispute that our planet is about to begin to run out of oil, it disputes science's explanation of how oil is formed. They suggest that oil is not made from the extreme compression of bio-matter for millions of years deep beneath the surface of the planet Earth. This is the explanation that's been on the books for a very long time. Yet, this new theory suggests that it's wrong.
Now, every time some new theory pops up that happens to go both against conventional thinking and goes for an extreme change in our ways of thinking, it usually doesn't benefit the powers that be. Which then means that the theory is pounded on until it is believed only by hardcore outsiders. This is how the Peak Oil theory began. The catch with it was that while experts who believed this theory didn't get much mainstream press attention (dispite the obvious ramifications of our planet running out of oil) the reality of the situation could not be ignored. But is this new theory being pounded on for being an outlandish, extreme and pesimistic theory? Of course not, because it benefits Big Oil.... But first, here's the theory:
Methane which is created naturally through processes deep in the earth's bowels (no pun intended), rises up through the various layers of the Earth. Along the way it runs into huge pockets of extreme heat that causes heavier hydrocarbons to be left behind in the form of oil. This would suggest that all you have to do is wait for more methane to bubble up and condense oil on the way. Evidence of this process actually happening has been sited in a number of wells around the world. Wells are literally refilling.
Again, since this theory benefits Big Oil, it's already being used as justification to drill deeper in places like Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and other areas. This is where this theory doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me.
Say this theory is true. Does it mean we should put our heads in the sand (literally) and just dig deeper? No. All this means is that we won't run out of oil as we thought. But there's something that people aren't thinking about. The vulnerability of keeping all of your energy eggs in one basket could conceivably still crush our society.
What happens if we go digging deeper for more oil but don't find it? What if it turns out that it takes a while to wait for the wells to fill back up? Once we run out of the oil we can get at easily, won't it still just be like searching for any other precious material? Sure, it's there, we just need to find it or wait for it to be produced. But what do we do in the meantime? The price of oil will be through the roof and there will be hordes of people riding bikes to work.
Oil will still be a commodity more rare than it is today.
Look at what's going on in the computer world. Effectively, there is just one operating system out there that we all use for our home and business computers. That's Micro$oft's Windows OS. How many security updates have there been in the past year for Windows XP? How many in the past month? The past week? Why is it that there is almost never a virus alert on the news for Macintosh computers? First off, there has been one virus found for Macintosh OSX. And if it struck, so what? If EVERY Mac were to fall prey to it, that would mean that all of 5% of the world's computers would be out of commission.
Now imagine that scenario with Windows. If even half of the computers with Windows XP were to fall prey that would be an extraordinary amount of people our of luck.
Now think about this in terms of energy.
It doesn't make any sense for us to rely so heavily on one particular thing for anything. Oil is used in many, many different things. From fuel to the plastic that is used in your computer that you are using to read this article.
The point is when everyone is using just one thing for anything, everyone is incredibly vulnerable.
Forever we thought that oil came from dinosaurs, but now people are saying it comes from methane.
We were wrong once, what's to say we can't be wrong again?
Do we really want to pin all of our hopes on one substance when we really don't have to?
There are plenty of alternatives to oil for any number of things. There are wheat-based plastics that could reinvigorate the American farmer (if he can wrestle his farm back from the corporations, anyway). There is hydrogen, solar, wind and other ways for energy to be produced.
While there is no one solution to the problem of our excessive use of oil, but that's okay, we don't want a single solution or else we're right back where we started. We need to stretch our various sources for things like plastics and energy out so that if one thing goes wrong, we won't be just completely and utterly screwed.
Oh yeah and another thing this new theory does is encourage a healthy lack of respect for the environment. One of these years Mother Nature is going to bitch slap us and I say we're asking for it.
Read more about this new theory of how oil is created at WorldNetDaily.com.
Read about a way that's been developed to convert excess heat from smoke stacks into practical energy in an article over at Eurekalert.Org that originated at NewScientist.Com.
From WorldNetDaily.Com:
Sustainable oil?
Posted: May 25, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Chris Bennett
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a "deep fault" at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.
Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?
An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
* Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
* At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
* Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."
* In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
* In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
* Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
* Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.
There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr.Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.
In his 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere," Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to "deep earth" formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.
He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.
Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.
Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a "renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs."
Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.
Could this be true?
In August 2002, in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)," Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of "The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum." Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
He was quoted as stating that "competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century."
Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.
If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.
A Hedberg Conference, sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, was scheduled to discuss and publicly debate this issue. Papers were solicited from interested academics and professionals. The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set.
Chris Bennett manages an environmental engineering division for a West Coast technology firm. He and his wife of 26 years make their home on the San Francisco Bay.
From Eurekalert.Org:
More energy from smokestacks
New Scientist
Two inventors have come up with a simple technique for harvesting energy from waste heat. Will it work?
A SYSTEM designed to capture waste heat from industrial smokestacks and turn it into electricity could significantly boost the efficiency of power stations, drastically cutting carbon emissions, its inventors claim. It could also reduce the amount of toxic pollution released into the atmosphere.
The key to the efficiency of the heat-scavenging system is that it uses propane vapour rather than steam to turn a turbine and drive an electricity generator. This allows it to be driven by low-temperature waste heat.
When steam is used to turn a generator, it must be pressurised and raised to around 650 degrees C. Below 450 degrees C, the process no longer operates efficiently because the steam pressure drops too low. This means that the heat in flue gases below 450 degrees C cannot be used to generate electricity, and so is lost to the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why fossil-fuel-powered generating stations have an overall efficiency of only around 35 per cent. Many other industrial processes, such as chemical plants and oil refineries, also vent waste heat. Unlike water, propane's properties are much more suited to electricity generation at lower temperatures. After pressurising in its liquid state, propane's lower boiling point means it can be vaporised at much lower temperatures than water. But this propane still contains much useful heat after it passes through the turbine, so a lot of heat is still vented, and the small increase in efficiency usually does not make it worth the investment. But now Daniel Stinger, a turbine engineer, and Farouk Mian, a petroleum engineer, have developed a surprisingly simple way to harness almost all this waste heat. They calculate that a second turbine, driven by the waste heat from the first, would capture almost all the remaining energy. The first turbine's waste heat would vaporise and pressurise still more propane to drive the second (see Diagram). The pair calculate that flue gases will then emerge at a relatively cool 55 degrees C. They have set up a company, called Wow Energy (www.wowenergies.com), based in Sugar Land, Texas, to license the technology to industry once a pending patent is granted. Wow's concept should allow industry to make use of heat sources below 450 degrees C - which includes most industrial waste heat. The company's calculations suggest that power stations adopting dual turbines should be able to boost their efficiency from 35 per cent to potentially as much as 60 per cent. BP and Chevron Texaco have told New Scientist they are interested in adopting the systems to harness waste heat in their industrial plant. If even 20 per cent of industrial waste heat, say, could be converted to electricity in this way, Stinger estimates the US alone could add over 200 gigawatts of generating capacity- almost 20 per cent of its power needs. No one is pretending it would be cheap: it would produce electricity at about the same cost per megawatt as electricity from conventional steam turbines. But more power from the same fuel means less CO2 emissions. Promising as it sounds, Wow Energy's scheme, called a cascading closed loop cycle (CCLC), remains untested. But engineers who have studied it say it makes sense. "It certainly looks very feasible, and the numbers seem to pan out," says James Prochaska, an engineer with turbine maker GE Aero Energy in Houston, Texas. If CCLC can be shown to work, says Joseph Roop, an economist at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, it "opens a vista of possibilities for capturing low-grade heat that we don't currently try to exploit at all." CCLC also has another potential advantage. Because it cools smokestack emissions to about 55 degrees C, many pollutants that enter the atmosphere today, such as mercury oxide and cadmium oxide, would instead condense inside the stack, from where they could be disposed of safely through chemical treatment.
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Written by BOB HOLMES
New Scientist issue: 29 May 2004
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