King Abdullah, the country’s ruler, put it more bluntly: "I keep no secret from you that, when there were some new finds, I told them, 'No, leave it in the ground, with grace from God, our children need it'."Isn't that sweet? It's for the children. So they can blow us up.
TAKING CONTROL AWAY FROM THE DICTATORS
ReplyDeleteThe way to take availability of oil away from the control of the dictators is to increase supply they can't control.
Objection: The dictators control too much oil to ever wrestle the control of supply away from them.
Answer: Wrong. Control of supply is decided on the margin. Each addition to supply at the margin eats into the effective ability to hold back oil in a measure larger than the actual addition of supply.
In other words, each addition to supply is magnified in effect.
So, allowing increased exploration and production in the U.S. would have a significant impact on the dictators' control of oil availability on world markets.
Also, other countries like Brazil, which is working closely with American companies to explore and produce its oil and is listed on the New York stock exchange, can add to the marginal supply which really is the leverage on oil availability.
Indonesia dropped out of OPEC May 28, 2008. Indonesia wasn't producing enough to justify its membership, sometimes exporting oil and sometimes importing oil.
This is a country, Indonesia, that is ripe for Western oil companies to invest capital and apply advanced technology to increase exploration and production, in a way that benefits both Indonesia and the oil companies.
This model can be repeated in many countries around the world. In this way, control over oil availability can be wrestled away from the dictators.
But paramount is increasing exploration and production in the U.S. and its territorial waters.
Remember, it's the cumulative effect on the marginal supply in world oil markets, so no oil well is too small to make a difference. Each well contributes a greater impact on availability than the actual number of barrels produced.
America can do a better job to roll back the dictators' control of oil avalability.
Why aren't we doing it?
SPINDLETOP: THE ABIOTIC GEOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE 1901 TEXAS OIL GUSHER
ReplyDeleteEugene Coste: Canadian Mining Institute Journal: The Volcanic Origin of Natural Gas and Petroleum (1903)
(Available by direct link at left-hand column under Eugene Coste)
Interested in the geology of Spindletop, the 1901 gusher that put Texas at the heart of the American oil industry? This is the scientific paper to read. It may be the best paper for a geological understanding and visualization of abiotic oil.
The descriptions and explanations for abiotic oil are convincing.
At the heart of the paper is the idea that "solfataric" action, a kind of volcanic process, akin to mineral fumaroles and sulpher "vents" is the process for oil migration to the surface.
Most people know that Spindletop was a salt dome, but never before reading this paper, had this writer seen anything that gave a convincing geological explanation for the presence of the salt dome.
This writer had written extensively about the salt -- petroleum association, featuring salt domes and "abyssal" salt in many oil producing geological formations. Even going so far as to postulate that salt is the product of an abiotic process, rather than a depositional, evaporative process, as is commonly assumed among "fossil" theory geologists.
Mr. Coste is the backup for this writer's contention: unbeknownst to this writer, Mr. Cost had made the postulate for abiotic salt formation over a century before.
This explains the presence of oil and salt without the need to imagine giant stagnant seas of salty water. These explanations never made a lot of sense to this writer.
On the other hand, Mr. Coste's explanation is vivid and easy for the mind's eye to create a mental picture of the process.
Also, the presence of sulpher and other minerals in and around oil are also explained by this 'solfataric' proces. Further, it explains and provides evidence bearing on many of the great questions of today.
Put Eugene Coste and J.F. Kenney together and a solid picture of the abiotic process as a whole emerges in the mind's eye.
If there is one paper to read which will help prove abiotic oil for someone who has studied the subject, but is still on the fence, this is it.
From Spindletop, and the Gulf of Mexico, to the subsalt found above the Carioca oil field off the coast of Brazil, to Ghawar king of the oil fields, salt and oil have been found in association with each other.
Mr. Eugene Coste's contribution to abiotic oil theory is remarkable and in this writer's eye dispositive.
"SOURCE ROCKS", THE ACE IN THE HOLE FOR FOSSIL THEORY?
ReplyDeleteReference,
Eugene Coste,
Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers: Rock Disturbances Theory Of Petroleum Emanations (1914).
(Available by direct link at left-hand column, under Eugene Coste)
One of the things you will read over and over in "fossil" theory literature, whether of the Peak oil variety, or oil geologists reports and analysis of oil bearing geological formations, is discussion of "source rocks."
It's evident, particularly in the Peak oil denouncements of abiotic oil, that these advocates believe the presence of "source rocks" is their ace in the hole with which to trump abiotic oil theory.
What are source rocks?
Source rocks are where "fossil" theory geologists claim crude oil in the form of organic detritus accumulated and "matured" into petroleum before migrating into reservoir deposits.
That's the "fossil" theory claim in a nutshell.
These rocks are also simply called by their geological names: Shale, mudstone, and limestone, and even sandstone.
Mr. Coste describes the consistent characteristic of these rocks as "impermiability."
This is the key contention in the paper and a powerful idea:
An impervious rock such as shale can not act as both a "source rock" and be impervious at the same time. The two functions are incompatable.
These shales, sandstones, mudstones, and limestones, most of which are sufficiently close-grained, retain water in the capillary spaces between grains to render them impervious.
The below passage is a quote of Mr. Coste:
"Yet without an iota of evidence we are asked to admit the reverse of what we see everywhere to be the case; and we are told by advocates of anticlinal [fossil] theory that these imperious rocks which confine the gas and oil in their present reservoirs are themselves the source from which these substances were obtained."
Mr. Coste points out you can't have it both ways. Which is exactly what "fossil" theory has done. You can't explain how the "kerogen" matures in the "source rock" and passes out into the reservoir, and at the same time expain how these same rocks are impermiable. It has to be one or the other, it can't be both.
Mr. Coste firmly points this impossibility out to the reader.
Surely, Mr. Coste's point makes sense: If the "source rock" has the permiability to allow matured "kerogen" to pass out into the reservoir rock, it can't turn around and have the impermiability to then act as a cap rock to trap the oil in the reservoir deposit.
And it these "source rocks" have the permiabiltiy to allow mature "kerogen" (oil) to pass out -- wouldn't all that oil and gas simply pass up toward the surface and not be trapped at all?
Again, you can't have it both ways. But that's exactly how "fossil" theory has been set up.
How convenient. Or is it terribly inconvenient?
Why does "fossil" theory insist on this physical inconsistency and outright impossibility?
Because it's a necessity for their theory to work.
And why is that?
Because the shales, sandstones, mudstones, and limestones are the only place where geologists could find any traces of organic detritus for their "fossil" theory -- so "fossil" theorists were stuck having to have oil pass through impervious types of rocks.
"Fossil" theory has a big problem. Again.
How much easier is it to picture oil and gas moving up through the permiable sands and through fratures in the impermiable cap rock layers?
Pretty simple.
Eugene Coste makes another remarkable contrubution to abiotic oil theory.
Dear OilIsMastery,
ReplyDeleteI once again offer my thanks to you for providing the Eugene Coste scientific papers.
High and low had I searched the internet for basic abiotic scientific work. And, while I had found a lot of informative work, like J.F. Kenney and others, Mr. Coste's work is illuminating in many ways I didn't know about until reading his work, here, on this website.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Anaconda
Anaconda,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of the Bakken formation?
How much oil is really there and how much can we really get to?
Is it really very light sweet crude?
jmadison,
ReplyDeletePardon for the delay in responding.
The Bakken oil formation is called a "sheet" oil formation because there are two layers of shale caprock with dolomite mineral interspersed with oil between the shale layers.
Since the oil is dispersed in the "sheet" there tends to be no sizable deposits, so that while this formation has been known for sometime, the oil majors, noticably ExxonMobil, have not been active.
And until recently, verticle drilled oil wells that "hit" oil, could go "dry" because, it was thought, the dolomite formed honeycombs within the two layers.
That problem has been overcome by drilling "slant" or horizontal wells, believed to breakup the honeycomb walls of dolomite.
Also, pressure injection technology is being used to breakup the dolomite, not the shale as commonly reported.
There's lots of oil, total estimates have risen dramatically over time, but since it's dispersed over a large area, and trapped in this honeycomb network of dolomite, this is an ideal area for a large number of smaller wells, perfect for "Indiana Jones" type prospecting, although, the 'cat is out of the bag' and lease expenses have shot through the roof.
"Fossil" theory holds that the dolomite was laid down as sediment. Abiotic oil argues that the dolomite is a 'solfataric' mineral that migrated up into the formation with the oil, rising from a "source fault".
A key difference between "fossil" and abiotic theory is that there are no "source rocks" in abiotic oil theory, the shale is a caprock, or oil trapping rock formation, so it's important, but it's not the source of the oil. Rather, in abiotic theory the "source faults" are where oil eminates from.
Here's where it gets interesting. Because the oil rises in 'solfataric' plumes from "source faults" and associated fissures related to larger tectonic faults, there are two distinct implications for the Bakken formation: That because the oil rises from "source faults" there are likely be larger oil deposits than generally believed in areas above these "source faults" within the "sheet." And, also, there are likely oil deposits below the "sheet" in deeper oil trapping formations.
So, a "smart" Indiana Jones could drill above identified faults, or even discover unknown faults and find larger oil deposits in those areas.
Locating faults and deeper oil trapping caprock is important, because these 'solfataric' plumes trend in arcs that correspond to "source faults" and associated fissures in the area.
One caveat: Plumes are shaped like a funnel; so, towards the top, they plump out, like a "mushroom" head, and are more concentrated at the bottom. Hit a 'play' at the base of one of these plumes in close proximity to a "source fault" and a strong producing oil well is the result, but attempting to "hit" the base, increases the chance you will miss the oil deposit and drill a "dry hole."
In the sheet, the consistency of the oil is likely to be the same all over, so light sweet crude is expected throughout the formation. Deeper deposits possibly could have more sulphur, but the oil is so light that suggests it's not a problem.
In fact, the "light" aspect of the oil suggests there are deeper deposits of similar "light sweet" crude.
All in all, the Bakken formation is a good thing for American oil production because it's an area ideal for smaller "wildcatters"; and smart wildcatters can locate larger deposits of oil.
Isn't that what it's all about. Being smarter gets you rewarded.
Hopefully this is responsive to your question.
Bests regards,
Anaconda