I did a search using the word “oil” and came up empty-handed, although this topic must have been discussed somewhere.
Does some natural process in the Earth’s core produce crude oil?
The term is abiogenic oil. Here’s the Wikipedia article to get you started.
Definitely, unequivocally not.
It is possible that some fraction of petrochemicals originate from abiogenic processes in the mantle. If this is the case, it’s more than likely to be a tiny fraction. But the important takeaway here is that it is in the mantle, and** the mantle is not the core**.
Sorry, I was thinking about stuff that was way below the surface and the word “core” came to mind first. Always baffled me why they named that layer of this planet after a baseball player.
Anyway, your answer is so definite, leads me to think you may have explored this area personally to come to such a definite conclusion.
That’s not needed, just read the Wiki article and supporting citations. While it’s not conclusively ruled out by the evidence, there’s little to support the idea that any significant portion of petroleum is created in this manner.
No, I’m just trained as a geologist.
Etymology of “mantle”. The most prosaic use of the noun “mantle” is a cloak (on a person) or a cover (on a bed). The application of “mantle” to geology is because it’s a layer of hot rock distinct from and covering the core.
ETA: The surname “Mantle” is apparently an English occupational name, one who makes cloaks. (At least if you can believe a website that wants to sell you its genealogy and family name tchotchkes.)
It’s a lovely fantasy – it implies unlimited oil! But oil explorers have looked into it (for obvious reasons!) and never found any sign of it working.
There was a scientist some time ago who believed in this idea. He tried to prove it by drilling very deep wells to try to capture some of the oil. He was able to gather funding (not from the government, though) and tried drilling wells in order to prove the theory. All were failures and I haven’t heard from/about him for a long time.
Bob
I just read the Wiki article referenced above, but the only name I saw was Thomas Good and I do not believe that that was the name of the person doing the drilling.
Was that the one where he opened a hole to Hell?
Tommy Gold is the person who most famously espoused this theory. He was a very distinguished scientist with a number of controversial ideas. For example, with Fred Hoyle and Hermann Bondi, he proposed the now thoroughly discredited steady-state theory of the universe.
Guy with some background in oil and gas exploration here. There may be some abiogenic methane (the lightest, simplest hydrocarbon compound) but this has not been proven definitively.
Oil, however, is mainly made up of much more complex molecules than methane, ones that are naturally broken down by heat into simpler compounds, and likewise do not spontaneously form in the absence of heat. It gets hotter the deeper one goes in the earth, and beyond some threshold depth that varies from location to location, the thermal conditions are such that oil simply cannot exist.
In addition, oil and gas are almost exclusively found in sedimentary rocks; i.e. rocks laid down from surface. And not just any sediments, but ones laid down in marine (oceanic) environments. This strongly suggests that the source materials for oil and gas are laid down at the same time as the rocks enclosing them. And they are: countless numbers of single-celled marine organisms that live briefly, die, sink to the ocean bottom, end up covered in sediment and over a long time, their organic molecules are very slowly ‘cooked’ into oil and gas.
Pardon my ignorance, but I’d always assumed oil was organic matter of all kinds (plants, dinosaurs, etc.) trapped and decaying for millennia. Is it true that single-celled organisms are more the cause of oil creation?
Even if true, it would be irrelevant. We all know that there are natural processes which produce hydrocarbons. But it doesn’t matter, for practical purposes, whether those processes are biological or not. What matters is how big the reserves are, and how quickly those reserves are replenished.
Is this some variant on creationists trying to explain dinosaurs? I mean, are some people arguing oil can’t come from ancient decayed trees because the earth isn’t that old after all (so we can all carry on believing Genesis is literal truth, oil will never run out, and if God hadn’t meant us to use the world in any way we like, he wouldn’t have made it and us the way we are)? Or some such nonsense.
It’s more of an attempt by people financially involved in the petroleum industry to try to allay fears that there will come a time when all the oil is pumped and burned/used up to keep governments from supporting research on alternative energy than a religious thing.
Obligatory XKCD link
https://what-if.xkcd.com/101/
-in other words the fraction of dinosaur is small to zero, depending on the source.
Yeah, we’d be better off trying to create Star Trek replicators and produce the oil that way than count on some unseen, unknown process to just keep the petroleum-based civilization moving along.
Sick burn!
Have I mentioned that I love that man?
Until a real geologist answers your question, here’s my understanding:
Terrestrial ecosystems don’t actually deposit much carbon in the ground, on balance. Nearly all of the carbon in those dead trees and dinosaurs will be eaten by bacteria and fungus, and be returned to the air as CO2.
Wetland ecosystems can create large deposits, when plants are continually sinking into a stagnant bog, or when there is sudden flooding and burial of huge amounts of carbon. The key is that carbon ends up in an anaerobic environment where decomposition is minimal. These deposits turn into coal. I’m not entirely sure why they don’t turn to oil – perhaps they never got buried somewhere with enough heat and pressure?
In the oceans, single-celled marine organisms are the dominant part of “marine snow”, which constantly builds up sediments on the sea floor. Oceans are huge and productive, so this is the biggest net source of carbon sediments. In the most productive seas, these sediments can build up layers hundreds or thousands of meters thick. Some of these sediments end up in ocean floor subduction zones, where they are driven deep under the continental crust and encounter the heat and pressure necessary to turn into oil.