the handstand

Cathles and his team estimate that in a study area of about 9,600 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, source rocks a dozen kilometers down have generated as much as 184 billion tons of oil and gas. "That's 30 percent more than we humans have consumed over the entire petroleum era," Cathles says. "And that's just this one little postage stamp area; if this is going on worldwide, then there's a LOT of hydrocarbons venting out."
Below the Gulf of Mexico, hydrocarbons flow upward through an intricate network of conduits and reservoirs. They start in thin layers of source rock and, from there, buoyantly rise to the surface. On their way up, the hydrocarbons collect in little rivulets, and create temporary pockets like rain filling a pond. Eventually most escape to the ocean. And, this is all happening now, not millions and millions of years ago, says Larry Cathles, a chemical geologist at Cornell University.
"We're dealing with this giant flow-through system where the hydrocarbons are generating now, moving through the overlying strata now, building the reservoirs now and spilling out into the ocean now," Cathles says.
He's bringing this new view of an active hydrocarbon cycle to industry, hoping it will lead to larger oil and gas discoveries. By matching the chemical signatures of the oil and gas with geologic models for the structures below the seafloor, petroleum geologists could tap into reserves larger than the North Sea, says Cathles, who presented his findings at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans on March 27.
This canvas image of the study area shows the top of salt surface (salt domes are spikes) in the Gas Research Institute study area and four areas of detailed study (stratigraphic layers). The oil fields seen here are Tiger Shoals, South Marsh Island 9 (SMI 9), the South Eugene Island Block 330 area (SEI 330), and Green Canyon 184 area (Jolliet reservoirs). In this area, 125 kilometers by 200 kilometers, Larry Cathles of Cornell University and his team estimate hydrocarbon reserves larger than those of the North Sea. Image by Larry Cathles.
Cathles and his team estimate that in a study area of about 9,600 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, source rocks a dozen kilometers down have generated as much as 184 billion tons of oil and gas " about 1,000 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent. "That's 30 percent more than we humans have consumed over the entire petroleum era," Cathles says. "And that's just this one little postage stamp area; if this is going on worldwide, then there's a lot of hydrocarbons venting out."
According to a 2000 assessment from the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the mean undiscovered, conventionally recoverable resources in the Gulf of Mexico offshore continental shelf are 71 billion barrels of oil equivalent. But, says Richie Baud of MMS, not all those resources are economically recoverable and they cannot be directly compared to Cathles' numbers, because "our assessment only includes those hydrocarbon resources that are conventionally recoverable whereas their study includes unconventionally recoverable resources." Future MMS assessments, Baud says, may include unconventionally recoverable resources, such as gas hydrates.
Of that huge resource of naturally generated hydrocarbons, Cathles says, more than 70 percent have made their way upward through the vast network of streams and ponds, venting into the ocean, at a rate of about 0.1 ton per year. The escaped hydrocarbons then become food for bacteria, helping to fuel the oceanic food web. Another 10 percent of the Gulf's total hydrocarbons are hidden in the subsurface, representing about 60 billion barrels of oil and 374 trillion cubic feet of gas that could be extracted. The remaining hydrocarbons, about 20 percent, stay trapped in the source strata.
Driving the venting process is the replacement of deep, carbonate-sourced Jurassic hydrocarbons by shale-sourced, Eocene hydrocarbons. Determining the ratio between the younger and older hydrocarbons, based on their chemical signatures, is key to understanding the migration paths of the oil and gas and the potential volume waiting to be tapped. "If the Eocene source matures and its chemical signature is going to be seen near the surface, it's got to displace all that earlier generated hydrocarbon " that's the secret of getting a handle on this number," Cathles says.
Another important key to understanding hydrocarbon migration is "gas washing," Cathles adds. A relatively new process his research team discovered in the Gulf work, gas washing refers to the regular interaction of oil with large amounts of natural gas. In the northern area of Cathles' study area, he estimates that gas carries off 90 percent of the oil.
Ed Colling, senior staff geologist at ChevronTexaco, says that identifying the depth at which gas washing occurs could be extremely useful in locating deeper oil reserves. "If you make a discovery, by back tracking the chemistry and seeing where the gas washing occurred, you have the opportunity to find deeper oil," he says.
Using such information in combination with the active hydrocarbon flow model Cathles' team produced and already existing 3-D seismic analyses could substantially improve accuracy in drilling for oil and gas, Colling says. ChevronTexaco, which funds Cathles' work through the Global Basins Research Network, has been working to integrate the technologies. (Additional funding comes from the Gas Research Institute.)
"All the players are looking for bigger reserves than what's on shore," Colling says. And deep water changes the business plan. With each well a multibillion dollar investment, the discovery must amount to at least several hundred million barrels of oil and gas for the drilling to be economic. Chemical signatures and detailed basin models are just more tools to help them decide where to drill, he says.
"A big part of the future of exploration is being able to effectively use chemical information," Cathles says. Working in an area with more oil by at least a factor of two than the North Sea, he says he hopes that his models will help companies better allocate their resources. But equally important, Cathles says, is that his work is shifting the way people think about natural hydrocarbon vent systems " from the past to the present.
http://www.geotimes.org/june03/NN_gulf.html THE ERADICATION OF CONVENIENT POLITICAL EXPLANATIONS FOR GREED AND WAR A Letter last year.From Ardeshir http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38645 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Posted: May 25, 2004 About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil. By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s. Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a "deep fault" at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source. Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil. Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil? An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates. The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows: * Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth. * At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil. * Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas." * In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs. * In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes. * Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan. * Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil. There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr.Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas. In his 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biospere," Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to "deep earth" formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life. He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry - oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from? Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product. > Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up. Dr. Gold strongly believes 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 attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs." Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East. Could this be true? In August 2002, in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)," Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of "The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum." Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude: The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment. He was quoted as stating that "competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century." Deeply entrenched in our culture(political world of Lies?JB,ed.)is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place. If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low- cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100. A Hedberg Conference, sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, was scheduled to discuss and publicly debate this issue. Papers were solicited from interested academics and professionals. The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set.(I cannot find any updating of potential Conference on this subject, JB,editor)

What is a Hedberg Research Conference?

The AAPG Research Committee will from time-to-time select a topic for critical examination. They will invite scientists from various disciplines, including geology, geophysics, geochemistry, reservoir engineering, and others to discuss state-of-the-art concepts, methodologies, case histories, and future directions of the particular research topic. These conferences are held in informal settings with a maximum of about 100 attendees. The Hedberg Research Conference series is considered one of the most respected research forums in the world, and usually deals with critical emerging energy resource issues, with the goal of advancing our collective understanding of the issue being considered.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists
Institute of Petroleum For half a century, scientists from the former Soviet Union (FSU) have recognized that the petroleum produced from fields in the FSU have been generated by abiogenic processes. This is not a new concept being reported in 1951. The Russians have used this concept as an exploration strategy and have successfully discovered petroleum fields of which a number of these fields produce either partly and entirely from crystalline basement. Is this exploration strategy limited to the petroleum provinces in Russia or does such a strategy have application to other petroleum provinces like the Gulf of Mexico or the Middle East? Some believe this is a possibility for fields in the Gulf of Mexico, and others argue for application to fields in the Middle East.

UPDATE ON THE DEBATE from Joe Webb
Friends, In the article, 'Small is beautiful for doing oil deals with Iraq', James Boxell writes: "While the world's biggest listed oil groups bide their time and hope for the political and security situation in Iraq to stabilize, small companies such as Ireland-based Petrel are looking to take advantage of their hesitance."

"All the big international oil companies want access to Iraq's ll5 bn barrels of proved resources...But despite conspiracy theories coming out of Kuwait last year that the country had already been carved up between BP and ExxonMobil, with Chevron-Texaco picking up the scraps, the 'supermajors' are sitting tight."

Boxell then discusses the more adventurous small oil entrepreneurs who "...want to be in the next edition of The Prize , (Dan Yergin's history of the global oil industry)" He remarks on the continued instability in Iraq, that the bureaucracy has no experience in "..how to deal with the international companies [ Mahdi Sajjad, of Gulfsands]." So, not much is happening.

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A couple years ago, I referenced several articles appearing in FT on this issue, that Big OIL did not want this war, was nervous about fixing what was unbroken, etc. FT also ran a few pieces on how 'we are running into oil , not out of it' ; that is, more and more oil is being discovered, and natural gas is also becoming big and will soon compete with oil, and that there is about 100 years of oil and gas in the ground at current rates of consumption.

Now , this is commercial oil. It is arguable that strategic oil is another matter. Reality and perception thereof are two different things. It is possible that an oil war, despite the reality of 100 years' worth in the ground, could be sought by irrational planners. (A rational oil war would seem to be 50 to 75 years in the future.) So, if you think the neocon war planners are actually irrationally
pursuing an oil war, fine. However their rhetoric, couched as it is in 'democratic imperialism' and clearly conceived as a strategy for securing the realm for Israel by having the US fight Israel's wars, does not include war for oil. (Granted, it would not be smart to so advertise.)

However, their discourse is political, not economic. States pursue their self-interest. It is not in the US's interest to alienate 300 million Arabs and 1.3 billion Muslims. However, Israel is triumphalist and could care less as long as it has theUS in its hip-pocket. The neocons are working for Israel.

The $50 plus barrel price for oil is indirect evidence that this is not an oil war. If this were a successful oil war, the price would be falling as the last thing this and other economies need is higher energy costs. With oil glut in the ground, yet with huge security issues and investment risk due to unstable crude prices, and lack of refinery capacity, higher demand from Asia....the price is bid up. Finally , add 200 plus billion dollars to the price of a gallon of gas....it makes no economic sense. The only sense it makes is political: war for Israel.( I appreciate that some will argue that it is still Empire Building, and with that I agree. However, it is joint US/Israeli Empire building in the Middle East which will fail.)

As for oil "conspiracy theories coming out of Kuwait", the US left must have moles in Kuwait. Actually Israel has moles in the US left who argue the 'oil war' thesis to keep the goyim barking up the wrong tree.

Joe Webb