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To be real, or not too real..that is the question. I found this on a forum...this was posted by the same guy that posted that story to me about the hummer being greener than the prius...:p, so be careful ;)

BLACK-GOLD BLUES
Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel'
New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply
Posted: February 01, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com


A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.

The lead scientist on the study ? Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle ? says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59991

HAHAHAHA

This quote is especially ridiculous:

"While organic theorists have posited that the material required to produce hydrocarbons in sedimentary rock came from dinosaurs and ancient forests, more recent argument have suggested living organisms as small as plankton may have been the origin."

NO SCIENTIST would ever posit such folly.

http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/08/18/oil_myths/index.html

(subscription required)

Petroleum may be in short supply these days, but the United States does have a related surplus: myths of oil abundance.

You don't have to drill deep into our political discourse to find suspect stories about oil, with politicians peddling the flagrantly false notion that China is producing oil off the coast of Florida, while right-wing activist Jerome Corsi claims oil is not a fossil fuel but "a natural product the Earth generates constantly."

Such declarations serve a political purpose: to make oil drilling seem like an easy solution to our current energy crisis, to marginalize warnings that we are running short on oil, and to stymie efforts at conservation or developing alternatives to fossil fuels.

.............................

Corsi prefers to cite a lone American academic supporter of the idea: Thomas Gold, the late Cornell astrophysicist and habitual scientific maverick who proposed that inorganic methane shoots up from the earth's mantle into the crust and turns into oil. (Most methane is, like oil, an organic fossil fuel made of hydrogen and carbon.)

Gold never fully detailed how this supposedly happens. And there are other problems with the idea. To name only two: Inorganic methane has been found only in tiny quantities, and it has a specific chemical signature never found around oil deposits. "No one would doubt that inorganic hydrocarbons do occur," says Michael Lewan, a petroleum geochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "But the oil we are currently producing is of organic origin."

The evidence for oil's organic origins is robust and diverse. Briefly, it includes biomarkers, or chemical compounds found in both ancient organisms and petroleum formed at the same time; geochemical evidence allowing scientists to match types of oil with their source rocks; lab experiments mimicking oil formation; and literally a world of geological data helping us find oil today.

With that in mind, consider Corsi's level of argumentation in this November 2005 WorldNetDaily article, as he discusses Thunder Horse, a drilling area that BP operates in the Gulf of Mexico:


Moreover, Thunder Horse also defies "fossil-fuel" oil theorists who like to argue that oil comes from dead dinosaurs and decaying ancient forests. With the water depth of nearly 2 miles, Thunder Horse is truly an ultra-deep project. From the floor of the Gulf, BP has drilled down another 6 miles to hit oil. What evidence is there that any ancient dinosaur ever walked on land that is now 8 miles down? Moreover, geologists identify the deposits in which BP has found oil in the Thunder Horse Field as Miocene, a period that occurred in the Cenozoic Era, some 24,000 years ago. Dinosaurs by then were long gone, having disappeared at the end of the Mesozoic Era, some 65 million years ago.


Corsi makes multiple scientific mistakes here. Scientists never argue that oil comes from "dead dinosaurs and decaying ancient forests." Again, oil derives from fossilized marine microorganisms. The Miocene was not a point in time "24,000 years ago." It lasted from about 5 million years ago to 23 million years ago. In geological language, it's an epoch, not a period, and according to BP, the rocks at Thunder Horse appear to be 5 to 11 million years old. Moreover, oil tends to seep upward over time, so we typically extract it from rocks that are younger than those in which it was formed anyway. Finally, while dinosaur references are irrelevant to oil, basic geological concepts -- erosion, plate tectonics -- explain how any creature might walk on land that later becomes deeply submerged. The National Research Council suggests students should know these concepts by the eighth grade.

Lewan summarizes matters: "I feel that the evidence right now for the organic theory, for our major economic occurrences [of oil], is overwhelming. And the evidence for inorganic sources right now to explain our current discoveries is unsubstantiated."

Isn't WorldNetDaily the same news organization that played a large part (along with tabloid Fox News) in generating a "controversy" between creationism and Darwin's theory of evolution?

Now they say oil is inexhaustible. I would go on to say that because when you dig a hole, dirt tends to fall down into it and fill it back up, dirt is inexhaustible. Therefore you could keep digging dirt out of that hole forever and not run out of dirt. You just have to wait for it to fill back up completely.

The people who claim dinosaurs couldn't have walked on land that is now 8 miles beneath the sea bed betray their own misunderstanding of geology.

The issue about oil is not where it came from, but how much is there and how fast is it being replenished. It doesn't matter if there is an endless supply, if that supply takes a long time to replenish. It will be all used up.

A good example of this is ground water. Ground water is replensihed from the surface. If you dig a well and take out all the water in the aquifer then it may take 50 years to replenish it. To late for this years crop and for crops in the years to come.

We need to find a new source of energy regardless where the oil comes from.

I prefer Wiki's explination. Less drama & more science. I'd be willing to believe the theory can be true and does represent some hydrocarbons, but not the vast majority of oil which can be harvested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

Unfortunately, we'll have an awful hard time proving that oil is finite so long as the craving for it pushes technology that recovers more and more of it. Conventional oil has gone from 30% to 60% recovery in our lifetimes. Economics have allowed us to push harder, drill deeper, and break moral barriers for it. Soon, the oil sands opposition will evaporate and oil shale will gain interest.
So long as there is an oil option, the real alternative transportation fuels & technologies will be stifled. We can no longer consider the availability of oil as the limiting factor in its use. Climate change, human health, and clean air are my favorite reasons to keep my litres/week as low as possible.

My son works in mining and has several friends that work in the oil industry and according to him and some news items here and there a lot of oil finds have been from closed out/dried out wells.....somehow they can replenish themselves, but that does not mean we will have oil forever, we will use it at a much greater rate than it can replenish.

When Germany was short of oil during WW2 they came up with ways to run their cars on refined coal dust!

If all of a sudden there were no more vehicles that used oil the US would still need about 800 million barrells a year for roads, plastics, cosmetics, meds, and etc.

I wish I had kept the article, but last month I read about bugs with altered DNA were emitting a good quality oil as the mority of their waste!

".......Economics have allowed us to push harder, drill deeper, and break moral barriers for it. Soon, the oil sands opposition will evaporate and oil shale will gain interest..........."


Agreed - but its going to cost you $10 a gallon

If all of a sudden there were no more vehicles that used oil the US would still need about 800 million barrells a year for roads, plastics, cosmetics, meds, and etc.

Well, we currently consume just under 21 million barrels per day (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922041.html), which works out to 7.65 billion barrels per year. We'd be reducing oil consumption by an order of magnitude if your numbers are correct.

I'd say that'd be a huge win.

I agree with BestMapMan.... it is more a question of rate... it took a very very very long time to build up the oil we have now... we are using it faster than it is made... so even if the process is still going on it doesn't solve the problem of using faster than it is produced.

How can any of you say "we are using it faster than it is made" when there is conflicting evidence and a host of unanswered questions about exactly that issue? In the case of oil the economics are not based on scarcity, whether you want to believe it or not.

Is there an 'endless' supply? I have no idea, and I strongly suspect that nobody else really does either. Are we using it faster than it is being replenished? Ditto. The only factual evidence I have is that known reserves are higher now than they have ever been, and there are many many ways to explain even that fact.

I still want to use less of the stuff, and I especially want to stop importing it from the Middle East. No amount of oil is worth the cost in lives being paid in that region.

How can any of you say "we are using it faster than it is made" when there is conflicting evidence and a host of unanswered questions about exactly that issue? In the case of oil the economics are not based on scarcity, whether you want to believe it or not.

Is there an 'endless' supply? I have no idea, and I strongly suspect that nobody else really does either. Are we using it faster than it is being replenished? Ditto. The only factual evidence I have is that known reserves are higher now than they have ever been, and there are many many ways to explain even that fact.

I still want to use less of the stuff, and I especially want to stop importing it from the Middle East. No amount of oil is worth the cost in lives being paid in that region.

good points :)

As nothing in science ever is known 100% and ideas should always be open to change as new data becomes available and confirmed.... I agree it can not be 100% known...

I also agree... even if oil was unlimited I would prefer a RE power EV or PHEV and still want to reduce my energy usage.

I can say "using it faster than it is made" because that is what I think... I think that because ....

No matter what the rate of natural production is... there are geological limits to the production and natural limits to the amount of usable material being contributed to that process... thus it can not be endless... there must reach a point at which the usage rate is higher than the natural production rate... given our increasing global usage every year... our usage continues to grow by the year...

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Now from what I have read I think we long ago had our usage rate pass the natural production rate.... but if we look at Exxon's own publications... which should be the most optimistic....

All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas.

So even Exxon in 2005 admitted that all the easy sources have been found ...

From what I have read from all sources even the very positive oil company ones... we have already past the peak of oil discovery... and are finding less and less new oil every year... as big as the Earth is... we have just about explored it all... not 100% yet... but getting there...

While at the same time even the positive oil company point of view tells us of the reduced oil production from oil fields...

I agree this is not direct proof that our usage rate is faster than the natural production rate... but given the declines we have seen even from the positive published reports from oil companies ... it seems to me to strongly suggest that we have long ago past the rate of natural production... and have been dipping at increasing rates into the stockpile of oil that was produced over millions of years...

Even Exxon recognizes the limits of the worlds oil supplies...
Exxon Estimates the world has at most 5 Trillion Barrels of oil including the undiscovered...
Exxon Estimated since it was first discovered we have used 1 Trillion of those barrels already... this comes from
The following release from Exxon in 2007
http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/tomorrows_energy.pdf

As far as I know we first discovered oil in ~1556....

But when you look at the increasing rates of our usage you see that while it might have taken us ~500 years to reach our current rate of usage... our rate has been increasing drastically in the last few decades...

Exxon even from the positive happy place ... admits that in 2005 the world used 230 million barrels of oil per day... which was up from the 205 million barrels a day Exxon admits the world used in 2000... even Exxon expects the world to be using over 330 million barrels of oil per day by 2030... and Exxon further admits that the largest increases are yet to come when most the 3rd world countries start getting some of the energy intensive things like cars that we in the first world countries already have...

Even Exxon makes it clear that they from the optimistic side think that oil and other fossil fuels are a limited finite supply... that we long ago passed a rate of usage that was not sustainable...

The difference is only that Exxon from the optimistic point of view expects everything to be fine well into 2030... and for us not to really start running out of oil until until about ~2050.

Even if we assume Exxon is correct in its optimistic view... that means that children born today will be middle aged when Exxon expects oil to be running out.

Of course Exxon expects other forms of energy to fill the gaps... with research and technology... so that we will not need the oil that will be lost in order to provide the energy we want.... so Exxon spends over $3 billion dollars a year on energy research and still pulls in over $40 Billion in profit.

I have heard that before. I don't recall the name of the theory. There have been a lot of oilfields in this country which have closed down because it became too difficult to extract the oil and I never heard of one that anybody went back to revisit and found that the well had been refilled. I suspect that there may be more known reserves now (if that is a true statement) than ever before is probably because the technology for finding it has improved.

Personally, I believe that the supply is finite rather than infinite and that it is in our best interest to explore renewable energy sources.

Oil fields don't close because it becomes too dificult per se, but the cost/benefit becomes too low. Drilling for oil at a production cost of 30/barrel makes little sense if you can only sell it at 25/barrel. That same source becomes a gold mine when oil hits 100/barrel.

Personally I believe that drilling and investing in renewable resources are not mutually exclusive, so it's silly to frame the debate as such. It's unknown as to when the benefit of renewable energy is going to be realized, so it would be silly if it wasn't dangerous to stymie production efforts until then.

Even if tomorrow a car that ran on water came out, it'd still takes decades before a significant transition took place to that energy source; and we are probably still decade or more from such a car (not one that runs on water, lol, just one that runs on renewable energy).

Just the act of going after more difficult oil supplies will continue to keep prices higher, thus driving capital toward alternative energy...so imo, keep drilling and exploring new sites.

@jstol3

Funny you say that, because there are departments in these companies now, who's only task is to look at old fields, and see if they can make any money by investing new technologies to allow them to get more oil from older fields.

I also agree that supply is finite, but the market will take care of that, if we let it. The problem is, artificial controls on the supply does not let the market take care of itself, so we get an artificially inflated price due to speculation that nothing will be done. If we force everyone to something else before it is ready, things will be just as bad as all the wells running dry.

It looks as though the speculators have had their day and are moving on to their next target (maybe stocks again?). I do believe they've successfully killed off behemoth SUV's at the very least, for which I thank them profusely. They may also have put an end to the latest round of horsepower wars -- about which I'm a bit less happy, because horsepower wars tend to being a rising tide that raises all boats. Plus I'm a bit of a HP junkie, truth be told. The good news is that my 'horsepower fix' gets 21 MPG. :)

I do not believe the speculators have had their day. Oil peaked because of supply and demand. The Suadi's ramped up production and the price came down. And it will stay down..... until demand again out paces supply. And then life will be even more difficult. We will be forced to give up more than our SUV's, we will loose cheap energy. We will loose air- conditioning. We will loose cheap transportation. We will loosejobs. then we will loose our ability to feed ourselves. It will happen surely and slowly, then all at once things will change.

Let face it, demand already outpaces supply (of classic oil). If oil/gas were free, we would use it up faster than it could ever be pumped, and in a few years "peak" wouldn't be a question of when....we could look at the historical records & see when it happened. We would burn through every last drop faster than we probably can imagine. So market prices, no matter who was involved in setting them or why, control our demand.

I can believe that oil fields refilled, but there is no magic or new process involved. It just a semi-porus material where outer reaches have moved into the center. A bit like wringing dry the center of a wet rag. Let it sit for an hour, and the water from the out portions will move to the center & you can wring some more oil out, but the water wasn't created by the rag...it just moved within it.

On the other end of the spectrum, is never ending oil. Ethenol is an example of us producing our own oil products which we could probably do to any level of demand, but at a cost. I'm just hoping we don't get too good at it so that fuel is too cheap and we keep burning our future with the gas.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

The government's latest numbers (reviewed this month) on what we have for domestic oil reserves and oil usage. Looks like there's enough to fuel America for about 3 years. Seems to me this is a serious problem! And that we should drill as little as possible for strategic reasons.

Also see: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/data_publications/crude_oil_natural_gas_reserves/current/pdf/ch3.pdf#page=2

Shows our proven reserves are declining, not increasing.