Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel'

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 abiotic theory of the origin of oil directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure.

[text taken from link]

I've written to Dr Prokurowski, the author of the Science paper, and will post her response here.

Interesting can't wait to hear the response.

Here it is:

Yeah, I know... people are spinning this thing to whatever dream they
can think of. The bottom line is that the final conclusions "we will
never run out of oil" is wishful thinking at best, and does nothing to
solve any of our problems. I don't quite get what the movement is all
about.

As far as extrapolation goes, saying "all oil is abiotic" is certainly
way too far. There may be components of it that are abiotic, but there
are currently no good methods about how to detect what percentage is
abiotic. Undoubtedly, abiotic hydrocarbon production occurs in the
shallow earths crust at places like Lost City, other hydrothermal vents,
and perhaps terrestrial analogues. Whether the same processes occur
deeper in the crust is unknown. And just as importantly, the products
must be transported, accumulated and stored for economic viability. The
oil industry has drilled more than 1 million boreholes into the earth
and has yet to come up with a good non-sedimentary source of
hydrocarbons. Granted there is a huge bias towards wells that will
produce- e.g. from the standard biogenic petroleum formation model, but
still 1 million is large number of samples.

giora

Even if the Earth does create oil it doesn't mean we would never run out. If we use oil faster than the Earth creates it, we are going to run out at some time.

I have never solidly believed that all that oil came from dinosauric etc sources.

It just never made sense.

Ashes to Ashes
Dust to oil?

Much more vegetation than dinosaurs, of course.

And if you know a bit of chemistry it's kinda hard to believe it all came from rocks, given that oil is mostly carbon and hydrogen (like living things) and rocks are mostly silicon dioxide.