User:Tombreed22
THE FIVE STEP ORIGIN OF OIL
Whie oil is generally thought to be organic in origin, there is no detailed account matching the new knowledge of the behavior of the ocean bottoms. The following is deduced from various pieces of knowledge of the continental drift, gas hydrates and petroleum chemistry. (I have always been interested in fossila and renewable fuels since working for Shell Oil 66 years ago.)
ENERGY SOURCE: Sunlight only penetrates ~ 10 meters in the Epi-pelagic layer on top of the worlds oceans and lakes. This is where algae and microorganisms turn sunlight into biomass plus oxygen, most of which react on death to regenerate CO2 and H2O. However, some of the biomass sinks to the ocean floor some 6 km below, leaving the oxygen to form our atmosphere.
ENERGY TRANSFORMATION: At normal one atmosphere pressure the biomass would anaerobically degrade to methane in the absense of oxygen, but at the pressure of 60 ATM of the ocean floor, it forms a gas hydrate of one methane surrounded by 7 atoms of water. This is an "energy ice" and was first observed in 1965 when the Glomar Challenger brought up "ice cores". That fizzled, and burned, when lit.
ENERGY TRANSPORT: Continental drift and magma upwelling is causing the ocean floor and the ~ 1 km thick layer of gas hydrate to separate along a ridge and move at a rate of ~ 1 cm/yr under the continents. (Finger nails grow about 1 cm/yr.)
OIL FORMATION: As the gas hydrate passes under the continental shelf, it is heated from the ocean floor temperature of 2 C to the continental temperature of about 150 C 6 km below the surface. At this temperature and pressure the methane decomposes according to
CH4 ===> "CH2" (oil) + H2
The high pressure H2 easily diffuses out through the alumina-silicate continental shelf, leaving the oil behind.
The oil forms pools which rise along the continental shelf. (According to this theory of oil formation, one should drill for oil in the location of old continental shelves. And diagonally into the shelf ocean interface.