Abiogenic petroleum origins

[Tummyache]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
http://www.rense.com/general54/ssust.htm

As friend introduced me to this concept last night. There are several theories, you can read about them on the Wiki page I provided, but apparently, deep oil fields are refilling. In a nut shell, it is the idea that Petroleum is not the result of petrified organic remains, but a by-product of Bacterial metabolism deep within the Earth.

Thoughts?

[Oniya]

Abiogenic means 'creation from [something] not alive'.  If the oil is coming from bacterial metabolism - and they have created oil-producing algae in labs - then it is coming from a living source.  The only difference is that there isn't a multi-million-year time frame on it.  Until they culture those bacteria and demonstrate that they create oil without scientific intervention (like the algae), I'm not putting any stock in it.

[Jude]

According to this computer simulation, it's possible, but not through bacterial metabolism:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-hydrocarbons-deep-earth.html

[gaggedLouise]

Yes, it seems bacteria can do that and there's been some attempts to smash two flies with the same swatter by making bacteria suck up CO2, then making them produce liquids that could provide a substitute for crude oil.

http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2010/04/22/future-shock-a-new-paradigm-in-advanced-biofuels-technologies/

Read about that last year and it sounds very promising.

[Oniya]

Aren't the microbes (including both bacteria and algae here) involved in that genetically modified to produce the fuel?  I agree it seems promising as a future energy source, but I don't think that it occurs without human intervention.

[Callie Del Noire]

There have been several projects looking into this. The thing is, for the moment, the time and effort involved are not good enough for commercial grade production of petroleum. Now. Of course 25 years ago only the chip producers thought they could break the gigahertz rating on processors.

Time, and work will tell. If I was a petroleum company, I'd be quietly investing in it. This would be my way to give Opec the finger and find a way to break free of the money drain.

[gaggedLouise]

Aren't the microbes (including both bacteria and algae here) involved in that genetically modified to produce the fuel?  I agree it seems promising as a future energy source, but I don't think that it occurs without human intervention.

yes, they are modified. It wouldn't happen in nature, at least not on this planet. It's the energy and climate aspects that make those attempts so interesting.

[Oniya]

Just confirming.  The information linked in the original post seemed to indicate that 'something' was naturally refilling the deep oil fields, and speculating on a metabolic process that was just 'happening' out there in the wild.  That's the thing I'm skeptical about.

Seeing the things that I have on ordinary diesel engines running on filtered restaurant fry-oil waste makes me optimistic about creating alternative fuel sources, but I temper that with quite a bit of practicality.

[Callie Del Noire]

Time, and money, are what will make this work.. or some other potential source of fuel. One of the things that has delayed this sort of thing from working is the laziness of American Business. I hate to say it but Corporate America has gotten very short sighted in the last few decades. The long view is rapidly becoming a bad word.

Time and money would make this sort of tech very lucrative. If you could turn it into a process that could be done here in the US you could flip the OPEC folks the bird and make a TON here.