Oil not always a ‘fossil fuel’
by Carl Wieland
iStockphoto/sculpies
It is well known that oil can form from buried animal matter, and that coal (which
is buried vegetation) is in some instances being turned into oil underground. For
some time now, a number of researchers have speculated that oil can also form from
non-living sources, such as methane from deep in the earth. E.g. Cornell University’s
Dr Thomas Gold (1920–2004) argued that oil is a “renewable primordial
soup continually manufactured by the earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous
pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria,
making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”1
Crude oil and natural gas [can in many instances be] generated without the involvement
of fossils—Vladimir Kutcherov, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Vladimir Kutcherov, of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, says that his
research team has now conclusively demonstrated that “crude oil and natural
gas are generated without the involvement of fossils.”2 The researchers simulated the environment deep underground
in order to show how such organic substances would be generated from non-organic
minerals by heat and pressure.3
The controversial research has huge potential implications. For one thing, it neutralizes
the challenge from the Bible’s critics that there could not have been enough
creatures alive on Earth at the time of Noah’s Flood to explain all the oil
and gas.
It confronts the idea that we are running out of oil.
It also confronts the idea that we are running out of oil, suggesting instead that
by drilling deeper and in different host rocks, much more oil will be found.
The year before this announcement, Kutcherov pointed out that there were some oil
fields, such as in Vietnam, pumping the black gold from rocks such as granite.4 If oil forms only from buried
creatures, the host rocks should be sedimentary (laid down by water), not igneous
like granite.
Related articles
References and notes
- As we’ve previously reported in:
Gushing oil surprise, Creation 27(3):9, 2005.
Return to text.
- Fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for crude
oil and natural gas, Swedish researchers find, Science Daily, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910084259.htm,
12 September 2009. Return to text.
- Kolesnikov, A., Kutcherov, V. and Goncharov, A., Methane-derived
hydrocarbons produced under upper-mantle conditions, Nature Geoscience
2(8):566–570, 2009. Return to text.
- Langreth, R., Endless oil?—Radical Russian researchers
say we are looking for oil in all the wrong places, Forbes.com, www.forbes.com/2008/11/13/abiotic-oil-supply-energenius08-biz-cz_rl_1113abiotic.html,
13 November 2008. Return to text.
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