Right Wing Fantasy and Fiction on Fossil Fuel

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Amazing how many Americans fall in lockstep with the idiots preaching this crap!

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Did you hear that Alaska has more oil than the Middle East?

Busting the myths about cheap and unlimited oil being broadcast by Rush Limbaugh, Jerome Corsi and other ignoramuses.
Read more: Environment, Alaska, Science, Oil, Environment & Science
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By Peter Dizikes

Aug. 18, 2008 | Petroleum may be in short supply these days, but the United States does have a related surplus: myths of oil abundance.

You don't have to drill deep into our political discourse to find suspect stories about oil, with politicians peddling the flagrantly false notion that China is producing oil off the coast of Florida, while right-wing activist Jerome Corsi claims oil is not a fossil fuel but "a natural product the Earth generates constantly."





Such declarations serve a political purpose: to make oil drilling seem like an easy solution to our current energy crisis, to marginalize warnings that we are running short on oil, and to stymie efforts at conservation or developing alternatives to fossil fuels.

Along with these high-profile claims, an array of books, Internet forums and YouTube videos constitute a subterranean layer of storytelling, creating a narrative of perpetually cheap domestic oil being denied to us by a dictatorial government. These stories may be working: Offshore oil drilling is now favored by 63 percent of the electorate. But there's another side to them: They reveal our inability to accept that the United States is not always a land of plenty.

"In America, we're a frontier nation, and so the idea is that just beyond the next ridge is the perfect farmland, a giant oil field or an abundant supply of timber," says Robert Kaufmann, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. "People don't like the idea that the frontier is now closed and we've got to live within limits."
These narratives also require spectacularly limited scientific literacy about oil: what it is, how we find it, how much remains. Let's take a brief tour of some claims worthy of tabloid headlines.

"Oil is not a fossil fuel!"
What is oil? A wealth of evidence shows it is a fossil fuel derived from ancient marine microorganisms. Essentially, oil comes from plankton fossils that have been covered by sediment at the bottom of bodies of water. Occasionally in such settings -- when there is no oxygen around and the temperature stays between about 120 and 210 degrees for up to a couple of million years -- these fossils become heated into oil.

The upshot: Oil is a finite resource that takes a long time to create, but we use it quickly. So wouldn't it be great if oil were an inexhaustible, inorganic substance? A few researchers, notably Soviet scientists in the 1950s, have tried unsuccessfully to make this case. Corsi, known for his attacks on John Kerry, and now making the media rounds with a loopy book on Barack Obama, also promotes this view. In 2005, Corsi coauthored a book, "Black Gold Stranglehold," asserting that oil is inorganic and abundant, and he continues pumping out related columns at the conservative current-events site WorldNetDaily.

Corsi prefers to cite a lone American academic supporter of the idea: Thomas Gold, the late Cornell astrophysicist and habitual scientific maverick who proposed that inorganic methane shoots up from the earth's mantle into the crust and turns into oil. (Most methane is, like oil, an organic fossil fuel made of hydrogen and carbon.)

Gold never fully detailed how this supposedly happens. And there are other problems with the idea. To name only two: Inorganic methane has been found only in tiny quantities, and it has a specific chemical signature never found around oil deposits. "No one would doubt that inorganic hydrocarbons do occur," says Michael Lewan, a petroleum geochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "But the oil we are currently producing is of organic origin."

The evidence for oil's organic origins is robust and diverse. Briefly, it includes biomarkers, or chemical compounds found in both ancient organisms and petroleum formed at the same time; geochemical evidence allowing scientists to match types of oil with their source rocks; lab experiments mimicking oil formation; and literally a world of geological data helping us find oil today.
With that in mind, consider Corsi's level of argumentation in this November 2005 WorldNetDaily article, as he discusses Thunder Horse, a drilling area that BP operates in the Gulf of Mexico:

Moreover, Thunder Horse also defies "fossil-fuel" oil theorists who like to argue that oil comes from dead dinosaurs and decaying ancient forests. With the water depth of nearly 2 miles, Thunder Horse is truly an ultra-deep project. From the floor of the Gulf, BP has drilled down another 6 miles to hit oil. What evidence is there that any ancient dinosaur ever walked on land that is now 8 miles down? Moreover, geologists identify the deposits in which BP has found oil in the Thunder Horse Field as Miocene, a period that occurred in the Cenozoic Era, some 24,000 years ago. Dinosaurs by then were long gone, having disappeared at the end of the Mesozoic Era, some 65 million years ago.

Corsi makes multiple scientific mistakes here. Scientists never argue that oil comes from "dead dinosaurs and decaying ancient forests." Again, oil derives from fossilized marine microorganisms. The Miocene was not a point in time "24,000 years ago." It lasted from about 5 million years ago to 23 million years ago. In geological language, it's an epoch, not a period, and according to BP, the rocks at Thunder Horse appear to be 5 to 11 million years old. Moreover, oil tends to seep upward over time, so we typically extract it from rocks that are younger than those in which it was formed anyway. Finally, while dinosaur references are irrelevant to oil, basic geological concepts -- erosion, plate tectonics -- explain how any creature might walk on land that later becomes deeply submerged. The National Research Council suggests students should know these concepts by the eighth grade.

Lewan summarizes matters: "I feel that the evidence right now for the organic theory, for our major economic occurrences [of oil], is overwhelming. And the evidence for inorganic sources right now to explain our current discoveries is unsubstantiated."


Next page: "North Dakota is the new boomtown!"


"China is drilling for oil in America's backyard!"
Perhaps you've heard some GOP politicians recently claim that China is drilling for oil in Cuban waters near Florida. Give credit where it's due: Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, better known for another kind of prospecting in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, was promoting this notion back in 2006. That April, Craig complained on the Senate floor that China could potentially drill in Cuban waters, then released a statement claiming that soon "it may be possible to see Chinese oil rigs from the shores of the Florida Keys."

Actually, in early 2005, Cuba had announced a deal with the Chinese firm Sinopec, apparently for onshore production, but not offshore drilling. But across the country, people like California congressional candidate Tom McClintock see the oil rigs now. "The vast oil fields off the coast of Florida that American law prevents Americans from developing are now being drained by the Chinese government drilling in Cuban waters," he wrote this month in an Op-Ed.

Such claims are bad spin and bad science. They also ignore the geological realities of oil: Exploration precedes production. That means surveying the terrain and drilling test wells -- generally the slowest kind of drilling, since companies like to study the kind of rock they're finding, the types of microorganisms present, temperature and pressure data, and record everything in geophysical well logs. "When you're drilling an exploratory well, it's a geology experiment," says Philip Budzik of the government's Energy Information Administration. The EIA estimates it would take at least five years to begin production in U.S. waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, where drilling is now banned. The process often takes longer. Suffice it to say, China is not drilling for oil off the coast of Florida.

How much oil is there, anyway? The EIA says U.S. waters in the area contain 3.82 billion barrels, half our annual national consumption of 7.6 billion barrels. But it would take decades to extract. If the offshore drilling ban were removed in 2012, the EIA states, it "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."

"Alaska has more oil than the Middle East!"
Have you heard that there's enough oil in Alaska to supply the United States for the next two centuries, more than in the entire Middle East, but a government plot is keeping it underground? If so, attribute it to Lindsey Williams, a kind of oil evangelist, who's been making these claims since the 1970s.

Back then, Williams coauthored a book, "The Energy Non Crisis," asserting that vast political machinations were preventing oil companies from exploiting Alaska's riches. Today he's on YouTube, saying Alaska has "possibly the largest oil pool on the face of the earth," which remains untapped "by order of the government." New drilling, Williams suggests, will lower gas prices within 12 months. If you like implausible oil stories, this is for you. One of Williams' YouTube clips has been viewed nearly 500,000 times, and a generic version of the story holds that Alaska has more oil than the Arabian peninsula.

Now consider reality on Alaska's North Slope, the oil area that includes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It can take two or three years to drill a single exploratory well there, because such drilling is only possible for a few months at a time in the winter, when the permafrost is frozen hard enough to support equipment. Meanwhile, infrastructure can be transported there only by ship, in two or three summer months. To drill permanent wells, oil companies lay down a thick gravel "pad," acres in size, which allows for year-round drilling, by keeping equipment and housing safe from summer thaws and preventing them from melting the permafrost. Pipeline corrosion problems have been extensive. The EIA forecasts that if Congress opened up ANWR, it would take eight to 12 years to even start production.
Does this sound like a place that will produce more oil than the Middle East? Alaska is about the same size as Iran, four-fifths as big as Saudi Arabia, and huge portions of the state consist of mountain ranges where drilling is impossible. The EIA estimates that about 10.4 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from ANWR, just over a year of American consumption. Saudi Arabia alone has about 260 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The verdict here: Get real.

"North Dakota is the new boomtown!"
Forget Alaska. Lately drilling advocates have been dreaming about a lifetime supply of cheap American oil coming from the Bakken Formation, a layer of rock underneath North Dakota, Montana and southern Canada. In April, Rush Limbaugh cited estimates that "175 billion to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil" are located in the Bakken, meaning it "is expected to be one of the greatest booms in oil discovery since oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938."

The truth is different. Companies are drilling in the Bakken, but an April survey from the USGS reported approximately 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of oil could be extracted using cutting-edge technology, or about six months of U.S. consumption. Moreover, says Richard Pollastro, a geologist who led the USGS survey, "that's what is technically recoverable, not necessarily what is economically recoverable." Essentially, oil prices would have to increase for companies to extract it all.

The Bakken Formation reminds us that oil is largely found in one place: inside rocks. "People view oil fields as these underground swimming pools of oil, which they are not," says Kaufmann, of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. "It's more like an oil-soaked brick." The Bakken Formation consists of a layer of sandstone in between two layers of shale, and the so-called matrix porosity of the rocks -- how easily oil comes out -- fluctuates greatly. "The geologic conditions vary from township to township, county to county," says Pollastro. "You could drill a partial well and have it bring in a half a million barrels of oil, and you can drill one half a mile away and have it bring in 50 barrels of oil." This adds uncertainty to exploration and extraction costs.

That's the catch: Geologists believe there are more than 4.3 billion barrels in the region. But obtaining them would require new drilling technologies, which would demand greater investment. The Bakken hardly heralds a return to cheap oil. Indeed, it suggests America has little cheap oil left. Some discoveries touted today would have produced shrugs decades ago.

"There's a reality out there people don't want to recognize," concludes Kaufmann. "Clearly technology has improved. Oil prices are higher. We deregulated the industry. We've done almost everything. There are a few areas offshore that are closed off. It's not going to make a difference. The sooner people realize that and stop dreaming about energy independence or one huge undiscovered field that's going to solve all our problems, the better off we'll be."

[Rohirrim]

"In America, we're a frontier nation, and so the idea is that just beyond the next ridge is the perfect farmland, a giant oil field or an abundant supply of timber," says Robert Kaufmann, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. "People don't like the idea that the frontier is now closed and we've got to live within limits."

That sums it up perfectly. What we need in this country is a paradigm shift. Of course, given the way human beings do things, we will accept that paradigm shift right after we finish fighting a hundred years of oil wars. Mad Max, baby.

[Spider]

I have heard the same thing about Alaska more then once , from a preacher here that used to preach up in Northern Slope of Alaska ......

[Garcia Bronco]

I read an article recently that said they fould oil deeper in the crust than they should have for oil. Indicting it might not be a fossil fuel.

[Bronco Bob]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

I read an article recently that said they fould oil deeper in the crust than they should have for oil. Indicting it might not be a fossil fuel.

Just because you read an article doesn't make it true. Anyone can write
an article. The question is, does who wrote the article know what they
are talking about.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Bronco Bob

Just because you read an article doesn't make it true. Anyone can write
an article. The question is, does who wrote the article know what they
are talking about.

I agree , i havent talked much about Alaska cause I havent been there and seen it for myself , but I have a hard time believing a preacher would bull**** me .... But i am not sold that there was the amount of oil under the Prudhoe Bay area, now the pipeline is almost 800 miles long , and i sure in the hell dont know about whats what up there .......

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

An arm and a leg for gas


by Jaime O'Neill | August 18, 2008 - 10:53am

— from the Paradise Post

Ten years ago, Osama bin Laden said that one of his objectives was to get the price of oil up to $144 a barrel, a goal that was achieved within the past few months, thanks to cooperation from George W. Bush and the oil boys. Ten years ago, the price of a barrel of oil was $11; today it's about thirteen times that much.

The Republicans have been selling the idea that the spike in oil prices is the fault of Democrats and environmentalists, but millions of square miles of oil leases sit idle in the country while John McCain campaigns for more oil company theft of the resources we all own on public land.

One month after Sept. 11, an article in The New York Times warned of "possible nightmare scenarios" that would give Osama bin Laden just what he wanted. One path to huge increases in the price of oil would be a U.S. invasion of Iraq that would put oil supplies at risk. Iraq sits atop one of the world's largest oil fields.

But if you think paying over $4 for a gallon of gas is expensive, how would you feel about giving up the life of your son or a daughter for it? Because that's what some 8,000 American mothers and fathers have been asked to pay for the oil deals in Iraq that have brought a gusher of profit to Exxon-Mobil, BP, and a handful of other big outfits.

The Iraqi oil fields have been divvied up among the world's top oil companies. That oil, nationalized by Saddam Hussein some 40 years ago, has now been privatized, and now those big oil companies, for whom the war in Iraq was jiggered up and fought, have had a nice pay day, courtesy of all those mothers and fathers who so generously contributed the lives and limbs of their offspring for the greater profit of BP and Shell.

So, if you ever wondered what that war in Iraq was all about, now you know. We spent trillions of public cash to ensure billions in private profits, a dubious national energy policy, and a criminal waste of lives and money.

Since Iraq had no link to the Sept. 11 attacks, as we were told so often, and since Iraq did not have the weapons of mass destruction that were going to nuke us just about any minute back in 2003 (remember Condi Rice and her warnings about mushroom clouds?), and since the Bush administration brushed aside all intelligence reports contrary to what they wanted the public to believe, we now know that there was only one reason for that rush to war - and that reason was oil.

We invaded a sovereign nation and killed thousands of innocent civilians, and all of that death, destruction, and abrogation of international law was done in pursuit of profit at the pump.

But that price of gas is still cheap compared to what those bereaved mothers and fathers have paid for it, and cheap compared to the price paid by the tens of thousands of young Americans who have suffered catastrophic injuries, all those soldiers who suffered wounds that have disfigured their bodies and dismantled their dreams. We pay $4 a gallon; they paid an arm or a leg.

But better those young people bleed than the nation take measures toward conservation. According to Dick Cheney, speaking back in 2001, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

And a year later, George W. Bush told the nation: "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption."

So the idea was to consume our way out of a dependency on foreign oil, and a "sound, comprehensive energy policy," as advocated by Cheney, would have been to open all protected areas in the United States to oil drilling, despite the fact that undeveloped U.S. oil reserves in places like ANWR are a) a literal drop in the bucket, b) not enough to keep up with increased global demand for oil in places like China and India, c) utterly unlikely to reduce the price of oil, and d) a boon to oil companies, and not consumers.

Condoleezza Rice had an oil tanker named after her, and once served on the Board of Directors of Chevron. VP Dick Cheney headed up an energy company before taking up his current job in "public service," and the private enterprise experience of George W. Bush was pretty much limited to his failures as an oil man before he was bailed out of losses by his father's oil biz friends.

So, the next time you pay $100 to fill up that gas hog SUV, you can thank the Republicans who thought consuming more was a good idea, and who decided that at the time oil company profits were shooting off the charts that taxpayer subsidies to those companies was also a good idea. It would never be a good idea, however, to tax windfall profits, even in times when oil company profits were in the stratosphere, and working Americans were deciding which necessities they'd do without in order to put gas in their cars to get to work.

This is the same Republican Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the oil companies, that has been so far behind the curve in encouraging new technologies for powering our nation, and so busy telling the lie that vast new vistas of domestic oil drilling will bring down the price of gas at the pump. That won't happen; not in your lifetime, not in mine. Even the oil men, like T. Boone Pickens, acknowledge that fact.

But politicians like John McCain are happy to pledge the lives and limbs of future young men and women as they stand guard on those profits in Iraq from now 'til hell freezes over.

[Garcia Bronco]

Originally Posted by Bronco Bob

Just because you read an article doesn't make it true. Anyone can write
an article. The question is, does who wrote the article know what they
are talking about.

It was based on an actual find, so no, my BS meter didn't indicate anything really amiss. I'll try to find it when I have time. The article said that they found oil essential way below the rock from a time period when there aren't fossils in the rock. It's one find though.