Peak Oil Introduction: A Lesson In Unlearning

There are those who still think that they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression singing songs to freedom. Garet Garret

The now deceased Catholic spiritualist, Fr. Anthony DeMello, described three acts that human beings find particularly challenging. In no special order they are; to include the excluded; to turn the other cheek and to admit when we are wrong. The inability to exercise these options comes from an over-developed ego deeply entrenched in its illusions. If one is to be an unlearner, one must readily embrace the errors he or she is bound to make on the road to truth. In the case of Peak Oil, it is quite possible that this editor has been wrong.

Many of this website's frequent visitors have no doubt noticed that I have written on the subject of Peak Oil in quite a few of my pieces. To those still unfamiliar with the concept, Peak Oil describes the geo-political situation of dwindling oil reserves, thought to be an event occurring decades from now but touted by some researchers and oil industry officials as a present day reality. In the light of Peak Oil, researchers such as Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness (www.copvcia.com) make a strong case that today's War on Terror is a smokescreen for a worldwide grab of oil reserves in the last gasping breaths of petroleum-based power brokers.

This message has been successfully broadcast throughout the globe. Present at all the anti-war marches are usually signs that amplify the sentiment, "No blood for oil!" Even if people don't understand the particulars of Peak Oil, it is not hard to observe the connection that oil is playing in international politics at the moment. If Peak Oil is indeed a present reality, then the dire forecasts of global war, famine, and the literal breakdown of modern human civilization are likely to occur within this decade and carry into the next. What the world will look like on the other side of these events is left to anyone's guess. The cockroaches will be happy at least.

But what if the Peak Oil predictions are not correct? How can they not be? Isn't oil a "fossil fuel".a "non-renewable" resource? As it turns out, the assumptions of American and British science may be grossly incorrect.

At the heart of this important debate is the work of scientists in Russia and the Ukraine, which has been strongly advanced since its official birth in 1951. Trapped in a containment policy by the Western Powers during the Cold War, the Soviet Union realized that it was cut off from much of the world's oil reserves. It therefore turned its brightest minds onto the question of petroleum production.

The belief that petroleum was a fossil fuel, therefore biological in its origin, was first advanced in the 18th century. Within fifty years, however, leading scientists in Germany and France had attacked the theory of petroleum's biological roots. It was not seriously challenged again until the Soviet scientists thoroughly crushed the idea by the 1960's. Despite these efforts, the theory remains powerfully in place in the West and petroleum is still largely regarded as a non-renewable resource.

What the modern Russian and Ukrainian scientists have extensively proven is that petroleum is abiotic, meaning that it is not derived from long decayed biological matter. While the Soviet Union did not survive long enough to see the physical benefits of this theory, modern Russia certainly has. It has been reported in several sources this year that Russia has become the world's leading producer and exporter of oil. This achievement has brought Russia from the brink of collapse at the end of the Cold War to the brink of being a superpower yet again.

The implications of this science are simply staggering. Not only will the already existing oil fields one day fill up again, but new oil reserves can be found simply by digging deeper into the earth. The Russian and Ukrainian scientists have reported that the world is not running out of oil as much as we are running into it. (www.gasresources.net)

Critics of abiotic oil in the West say the science is unfounded and that deep drilling is too costly. To the charge of abiotic oil being poor science, the critics must explain Russia's emergence as an oil-producing power and the United States' decline as one. To the charge of deep drilling costing too much, critics must answer whether a decade or more of global conflict in order steal other countries' oil is a fairer price to pay than renewing our own supplies. Both war and drilling cost money, but wars also cost blood and the loss of a nation's future.

Learning that oil is a renewable resource puts the global conflicts presently occurring, and the future ones in the making, in an entirely new light. Instead of seeing these events as the dying days of a technological civilization losing its power, we can view these conflicts as yet another sordid manipulation towards increasing global fascist power. By scaring the world into a belief that its resources are limited, the global manipulators are leading us yet again into another war that need not be fought.

In the final analysis, admitting my error and realizing that Peak Oil is not a solid reality is only a partial relief. Humanity need not fight any wars over energy, as there is more than enough on this planet to supply us all. However, as with all hydrocarbon fuel sources, we have still not found a way to reduce the pollution created in their production and emission. Perhaps during this grateful reprieve, if we can avoid the manipulation into war, humans might reinvent themselves and their civilization into a more abundantly cooperative venture. In order to do that, we might have to admit we are wrong about quite a few things. An unlearned life will demand no less.

Republished with permission of author

Originally published at http://www.unlearning.org/editor30.htm

J. F. Kenney

Russian Academy of Sciences - Joint Institute of The Physics of the Earth.

Gas Resources Corporation, 11811 North Freeway, Houston, TX 77060, U.S.A.

The following articles take up, from different perspectives, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. Because that subject is one of which most persons outside the former U.S.S.R. are not familiar, a short synopsis of it and of its provenance and history, are given now.

1. The essence of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins.

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is an extensive body of scientific knowledge which covers the subjects of the chemical genesis of the hydrocarbon molecules which comprise natural petroleum, the physical processes which occasion their terrestrial concentration, the dynamical processes of the movement of that material into geological reservoirs of petroleum, and the location and economic production of petroleum. The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins recognizes that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth. In short, and bluntly, petroleum is not a "fossil fuel" and has no intrinsic connection with dead dinosaurs (or any other biological detritus) "in the sediments" (or anywhere else).

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of petroleum is based upon rigorous scientific reasoning, consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry, as well as upon extensive geological observation, and rests squarely in the mainstream of modern physics and chemistry, from which it draws its provenance. Much of the modern Russian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum genesis developed from the sciences of chemistry and thermodynamics, and accordingly the modern theory has steadfastly held as a central tenet that the generation of hydrocarbons must conform to the general laws of chemical thermodynamics, - as must likewise all matter. In such respect, modern Russian-Ukrainian petroleum science contrasts strongly to what are too often passed off as "theories" in the field of geology in Britain and the U.S.A.

As will be shown explicitly in a following article, petroleum has no intrinsic association with biological material. The only hydrocarbon molecules which are exceptions to this point are methane, the hydrocarbon alkane specie of lowest chemical potential of all hydrocarbons, and to a lesser extent, ethene, the alkene of the lowest chemical potential of its homologous molecular series. Only methane is thermodynamically stable in the pressure and temperature regime of the near-surface crust of the Earth and accordingly can be generated there spontaneously, as is indeed observed for phenomena such as swamp gas or sewer gas. However, methane is practically the sole hydrocarbon molecule possessing such thermodynamic characteristic in that thermodynamic regime; almost all other reduced hydrocarbon molecules excepting only the lightest ones, are high pressure polymorphs of the hydrogen-carbon system. Spontaneous genesis of the heavier hydrocarbons which comprise natural petroleum occurs only in multi-kilobar regimes of high pressures, as is shown in a following article.

2. The historical beginnings of petroleum science, - with a touch of irony.

The history of petroleum science might be considered to have begun in the year 1757 when the great Russian scholar Mikhailo V. Lomonosov enunciated the hypothesis that oil might originate from biological detritus. Applying the rudimentary powers of observation and the necessarily limited analytical skills available in his time, Lomonosov hypothesized that "... 'rock oil' [crude oil, or petroleum] originated as the minute bodies of dead marine and other animals which were buried in the sediments and which, over the passage of a great duration of time under the influence of heat and pressure, transformed into 'rock oil'." Such was the descriptive science practiced in the eighteenth century by Lomonosov and Linnaeus.

The scientists who first rejected Lomonsov's hypothesis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were the famous German naturalist and geologist Alexander von Humboldt and the French chemist and thermodynamicist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac who together enunciated the proposition that oil is a primordial material erupted from great depth, and is unconnected with any biological matter near the surface of the Earth.

Thus both ideas were delivered with powerful pedigrees: the wrong biological notion having been put forward by the greatest Russian scientist of his time; and the abiotic proposition approximately a half century later by, respectively, two of the greatest German and French scientists.

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