Read without ads and support Scribd by becoming a Scribd Premium Reader.

Language:

Download

Go BackAdd Note

Link

Embed

Save for later

Walking through Time

A Pedestrian in TimeChasing the origins of Oil

James L BradleyAugust 14

, 2011

Chasing the origins of Oil

It runs modern society along with fueling most serious political tensions than any other substance on our world today, the question still remains on where does in really originate, andexactly what is left for our rapidly increasing consumption. It is believed that nature has beenconverting ancient dead life into the much sought after “black gold” for millions of years creatingit with a little more than heat, pressure and time – at least that is what our learned scholars tell us.Albeit fuel prices across the world are spiking, and there are the experts who tell us in too manyreports to cite is that we running out – our scientists still can’t tell us with any level of certaintywhere and how it came into being, how long it took and how much there really is left for our monsters that cruise the highways and byways of our planet, heat our home or are additives to our daily dose of medicine.There seems to be numerous theories related to the ignitable fuel, whereas we normally label itas a “fossil fuel” along with coal and natural gas, which most in the field believed it wastransformed from long dead organisms – you know, where a majority of it came from the“fossils” of plants and tiny “marine” organisms – albeit some think we can throw a large animalinto the mix here and there, a dinosaur or two may have wandered into the formula is not a far fetched idea but most think they would have made a “small” and “insignificant” contribution.The other theory running about is that there is more oil in the Earth, created in the early days of the Planets beginning, that has yet to be tapped.The number one theory, “dead stuff”, accumulated on the bottom of oceans, riverbeds or swamps, mixing with mud and sand. Over time, additional sediments piled on top of the deadstuff and as it was buried, the pressure created heat transforming the “dead stuff” into kerogen – whereas left to their own devices kerogen will eventually crack, breaking into shorter and lighter molecules composed “almost” solely of “carbon” and “hydrogen” – and depending on how liquidor gaseous the mixture is will cause the chemical mixture to either form petroleum or natural gas.What kind of times span is involved – our boys in the know aren’t really sure but the guess inthe order of hundreds of thousands of years – in other words don’t run down to the sea shore andthrow a dead plant or animal in the surf and expect to collect your gallon of oil the next day.

This theory of “dead stuff” being the grandfather of our world’s oil is called the “biogenictheory”, first laid on the table by Georgius Agricola, a German scholar and scientist, to be further supported by Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humbold almost 250 years ago,albeit German by birth he was a Russian scientist.From the same part of the planet in the 1950s emerged the other theory, the “abiogenic theory”that petroleum might seep upward through cracks formed by “asteroid” impacts to formunderground pools – in this there was a semi-rush to explore ancient impact craters for signs of oil. There has been “some” abiogenic sources of oil found, but never in any appreciable amountto make it commercially viable. That there is a controversy over the theory, which revolvesaround whether “naturally” forming oil reserves does exist at all, but how much they contribute tothe Earth’s overall reserves and how much time and effort should geologist devote to looking for them. In other words don’t expect ExxonMobile to be pawing around Winslow, Arizona.What if we found large reserves? Scientists then agree that it would mean Earth does indeedhave vast reserves of “untapped” petroleum, and consider that since other rocky objects from thesame raw material as on Earth, than it might be possible that crude oil on other planets or moonswould possibly exist.Regardless “both” processes take literally thousands of years, meaning if the Earth does containfar more oil than we currently believe – it will eventually dry up, hopefully we’ll have another form of locomotion, making plastic bags, and adding to the hundreds of items we use on a daily basis. Another hope is that we survive the turmoil that will be created by certain members of our society who derive their income and handsome profits in the control and distribution of the “black gold.”

According to our scholars 650 million years ago during the Late Proterzoic era our home-worldwas mostly oceans – with a bump or two of land mass peeking up from the depths – and sincetoday we seem to be concentrating on the close to the surface, high quality oil in Iraq (nowsuffering its 7

War in modern times for its control) I’ll track the region in my synopsis of our precious oil.It is said that it was during this time-period that the accumulation of marine sediments was wellunderway whereas animals with hard shells settled down in the deeps, along with previous animalspecies although microscopic in size – normally labeled “ichnofossils”. In the preceding map the brown represents the land, and off into the upper left-hand side of the group you’ll see theArabian Peninsula just below South China (under water), and for you Alaska fans it’s situated onthe lower right hand side of the globe.Throughout the history of our home-world, there have been more than one time when thecontinental land mass joined to form what we call a “super-continent”, where over time theyagain broke and drifted apart – some maintain that early in Earth’s life a collision with an extra-terrestrial body which broke off a piece to form our moon, shook the Earth to its core creating thetectonic plates that over years and year drifted about on its hot outer core. There is a name for this cycle, the “Wilson Cycle”, where in a recent one about 1000 to 830 million years ago mostcontinental mass formed the super-continent “’Rodinia”. Before that there was another super-continent called Nuna or Columbia – which was assembled by another global scale collisionevent. As for being the latest, the tectonic processes similar to today “must” have been activeduring the Proterozoic era.After the breakup of “Rodinia” beginning around 800 Ma, it is “possible” the continentshooked up again around 550 Ma – forming a “hypothetical” super-continent our scholarssometimes refer to as “Pannotia” or “Vendia” – where it joined the land masses of Africa, SouthAmerica, Antarctica and Australia – however, that combination of continental land masses wasnot complete, since the continent “Laurentia” (sort of equivalent to North America) had alreadystarted breaking off around 610 MA – one thing is pretty certain that by the end of the Proteroziceon, most of the continental mass lay united in a position around the South Pole.