Is there an endless supply of oil?

A scientific theory that is gaining some currency

In doing some research on my modest energy investments, I came across a link that led me to a website called Energy Probe where I discovered a very interesting article entitled Endless Oil by Canadian environmentalist, Lawrence Solomon, which if true, could cause anti-fossil fuel Greens to turn hotly red.

According to Solomon, there is new evidence to support Russian and Ukranian geological scientists who are convinced that the time-honored and universally-taught belief that petroleum deposits are derived exclusively from long-dead plants and dinosaurs is about as scientifically sound as the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Rather, they say, hydrocarbons may be developed in an abiotic process by the high temperatures and huge pressures existing far below the earth's 25 mile deep mantle, some 40 to 95 miles beneath our feet. This theory, first proposed in 1877 by Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table (which should vouch for his scientific credentials) has been widely accepted by Russian/Ukranian earth scientists since the early 1950's. According to this abiogenic theory, existing pools of petroleum are being continually replenished and new ones being created as newly-formed hydrocarbons migrate upward through cracks in the mantle.

While the concept has had little past support in the West, an article published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience, co-authored by the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, the Lomonosov State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in Moscow and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, reports research that indicates this process is scientifically viable.

In other words, the world itself may be the world's largest oil producer in an ongoing natural process. If these scientists are right, rather than running out of oil as the doomsayers loudly proclaim, we may have an endless supply.

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