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May 29, 2002
The Washingon Times
Bruce Bartlett
On April 16, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, published a startling report that old oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico were somehow being refilled. That is, new oil was being discovered in fields where it previously had not existed.
Scientists, led by Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University, speculate that the new oil is surging upward from deposits well below those currently in production. "Very light oil and gas were being injected from below, even as the producing was going on," he said.
Although it is not yet known whether this is a worldwide phenomenon or commercially important, the new discovery suggests there may be far more oil and gas within the Earth's core than previously thought.
Mr. Kennicutt is not the first to suggest that vast hydrocarbon deposits may lie well below those currently known. In 1995, the New York Times reported that geochemist Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts had also found evidence that oil was moving upward into reservoirs from somewhere far deeper.
With growing improvements in technology that are making possible oil drilling at greater and greater depths, it may soon be economically feasible to explore and produce oil from these deep deposits.
The existence of oil much farther below the surface than it was previously thought to exist raises new questions about the origins of oil and natural gas. It has commonly been thought they are the decayed remains of long dead plants and animals. However, as hydrocarbons are found at extreme depths, this explanation becomes increasingly implausible.
Astronomer Thomas Gold of Cornell University has long been dissatisfied with the dead dinosaur theory of oil's origins. He argues that oil and gas are in fact the remains of methane left over from the Earth's origin. Methane, he points out, is one of the most common minerals in the universe. When the stars and planets were formed eons ago, it was one of the central building blocks from which matter formed.
If Mr. Gold's theory is true, it makes sense we would continue to find hydrocarbons everywhere within the Earth's core, and not just at the surface, where plants and animals exist. Thus the new research is at least consistent with Mr. Gold's theory, even if it still remains to be proven.
May 29, 2002
The Washingon Times
Bruce Bartlett
On April 16, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, published a startling report that old oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico were somehow being refilled. That is, new oil was being discovered in fields where it previously had not existed.
Scientists, led by Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University, speculate that the new oil is surging upward from deposits well below those currently in production. "Very light oil and gas were being injected from below, even as the producing was going on," he said.
Although it is not yet known whether this is a worldwide phenomenon or commercially important, the new discovery suggests there may be far more oil and gas within the Earth's core than previously thought.
Mr. Kennicutt is not the first to suggest that vast hydrocarbon deposits may lie well below those currently known. In 1995, the New York Times reported that geochemist Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts had also found evidence that oil was moving upward into reservoirs from somewhere far deeper.
With growing improvements in technology that are making possible oil drilling at greater and greater depths, it may soon be economically feasible to explore and produce oil from these deep deposits.
The existence of oil much farther below the surface than it was previously thought to exist raises new questions about the origins of oil and natural gas. It has commonly been thought they are the decayed remains of long dead plants and animals. However, as hydrocarbons are found at extreme depths, this explanation becomes increasingly implausible.
Astronomer Thomas Gold of Cornell University has long been dissatisfied with the dead dinosaur theory of oil's origins. He argues that oil and gas are in fact the remains of methane left over from the Earth's origin. Methane, he points out, is one of the most common minerals in the universe. When the stars and planets were formed eons ago, it was one of the central building blocks from which matter formed.
If Mr. Gold's theory is true, it makes sense we would continue to find hydrocarbons everywhere within the Earth's core, and not just at the surface, where plants and animals exist. Thus the new research is at least consistent with Mr. Gold's theory, even if it still remains to be proven.
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