University of Calgary scientist Sun Kwok made a groundbreaking
announcement in a speech to the American Astronomical Society last year:
Some stars were making a complex organic compound, a fact previously
unknown to science.
The finding created a stir in the astronomical community -- these were
the most advanced organic molecules ever detected in outer space.
Kwok and his team later determined that the compound produced in solid
form by dying stars looks a lot like coal and is made over extremely short
periods of time -- just hundreds to a few thousand years.
He got some decent press out of the conference. He also received a book
from an Oklahoma oilman named Robert Hefner, who had read about Kwok's
observations and thought he would be interested in perusing The Deep
Hot Biosphere.
As Kwok sits behind a substantial wooden desk in his office at the
university, he leans forward to hold up a hardcover copy of the
controversial book by Thomas Gold, published in 1999. In it, the
astronomer-engineer-professor argues that, contrary to popular belief, oil
and natural gas are not fossil fuels.
Conventional wisdom says plant and animal matter decaying over millions
of years produce organic compounds called hydrocarbons, which become
petroleum. According to the fossil-fuel theory, it is only a matter of
time before oil and gas supplies run out.
But Gold, now a professor emeritus at Cornell University in New York
State, suggests that hydrocarbons in the Earth are extraterrestrial in
origin and that a virtually infinite store of petroleum can be found deep
inside the planet. We just haven't drilled deep enough to tap the massive
reservoirs.
When Gold initially advanced the theory around the time disco was
giving way to punk rock, it was widely dismissed as pure science fiction.
But it did persuade a Swedish company to spend $40-million (U.S.) to drill
6,800 metres down in search of pay dirt. It didn't strike any quantities
of oil or gas.
In the book (the new paperback edition has the added subtitle The
Myth of Fossil Fuels), Gold argues that petroleum is constantly being
manufactured as a byproduct of biological activity deep in the Earth and
has been present since the planet's creation 4� billion years ago.
"There are people who take this theory seriously," Kwok said, "because
if it were true, . . . then you would have a huge reservoir of oil and
natural gas, which is far beyond what our so-called known reserves have
today. The so-called energy crisis would be a non-issue."
Kwok was familiar with the Gold thesis before he spoke at the
conference, although he didn't refer to it when he announced his
discovery. But he said Hefner was bang-on in making the connection to his
astronomical findings by sending the book.
Kwok said his observations out in space give Gold's theory credence
here on Earth.
In November, 1995, the European Space Agency
launched a satellite carrying a powerful telescope known as the Infrared
Space Observatory.
Kwok, his University of Calgary colleague Kevin Volk and U.S. scientist
Bruce Hrivnak used the equipment to observe about 30 stars from 1996 to
1997. With the infrared telescope, the researchers examined the stars to
determine their chemical composition. Telescopes in the past could take
pictures of the stars, but couldn't capture their chemical makeup.
The team found that the organic compounds they discovered are belched
out into interstellar space in huge quantities. One star threw out 600
trillion tonnes of material -- most of it hydrogen, a small fraction of it
was carbon -- per second.
It's possible that when Earth was being formed, some of this substance
would have survived the trip here to become embedded in the guts of the
planet, Kwok said.
Robert Ehrlich, a physics professor at George Mason University in
Virginia and the author of several books demystifying scientific concepts,
thinks Gold may be on to something. Ehrlich includes the theory that oil,
gas and coal may not be fossil fuels in his most recent book published by
Princeton University Press, Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might
Even Be True.
Hydrocarbons, Ehrlich explains, have been found throughout the solar
system, in solid and gaseous forms on comets and asteroids and in
interstellar space.
But critics of the theory say primordial hydrocarbons would never have
survived the heat and shocks that accompanied Earth's formation. Gold's
original idea suggested these hydrocarbons were just gas. But Kwok said
solid organic compounds would have a greater chance of survival.
"The question is whether they arrived and became part of the primordial
Earth. If enough of them survive, then you have to raise the question, Do
we need biological things to make coal, oil and natural gas?" Kwok
said.
It means extraterrestrial compounds, which could have been left over
during the formation of Earth, may be broken down and converted into
petroleum deposits.
Is there any concrete evidence that this supports Gold's theory?
"Unfortunately not," Kwok laughed. I'm not sure he's right, but it
seems to be more possible now."
In practical terms, Gold's theory
seems more plausible than crackpot to oilman Robert Hefner.
Hefner, head of GHK Cos., has tapped some of the deepest wells known,
at 7,620 to 8,534 metres. He believes Gold's theory holds some truth.
Gold says petroleum is manufactured on a continuing basis in Earth's
crust. It's made from methane -- the simplest of all the hydrocarbon fuels
-- as it rises up to the surface. As the methane bubbles up, it is gobbled
up by microbes. Gold argues that the biological material in all petroleum
comes from this form of life, not ancient organic matter at the Earth's
surface.
It also means dry oil wells can refill themselves as the substance
works its way through the Earth, Gold figures.
That seems to be what Hefner has seen while drilling in the Anadarko
basin in Oklahoma.
Estimates engineers originally made for the reserves in these deep gas
wells turned out to be about 25 per cent of what was actually produced,
Hefner said over a speaker phone from his office in Oklahoma City.
"I think that they probably weren't off that far [in their estimates],
that there is refilling, but it's impossible to prove."
Hefner said Gold's theory fits better than anything he ever learned
while studying geology at the University of Oklahoma. Still, he admits to
being in the minority on Gold's thesis. But that shouldn't be surprising,
he said.
"I just think that most people like to believe what they've learned in
school. It makes things easier. You've got a habit. It's part of what
you've always believed in. How are you going to change?"
But he has found that the scientific community is more accepting of new
approaches to long-held truths. Take a conference held by IBM in Brussels
that he attended about a decade ago that featured Gold as a keynote
speaker.
"After his speech. I heard all the scientists saying, 'Well, you know,
he's probably right. That certainly makes a lot of sense.' " Hefner
recalled. "Then I went to the oil and gas breakout room and they were all
saying, 'My God, why did they let that nut Gold in here to speak?' "
During an interview from his office in Calgary, Brad Hayes, president
of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, clearly falls into the
second camp. He said the fossil-fuel theory is "pretty ironclad" and
nobody has ever analyzed the hydrocarbons to find proof that petroleum
comes from anywhere else.
"Nobody, I think, in the credible or the conventional scientific
community accepts the [Gold] theories," Hayes said.
Meanwhile, Michael Halbouty, who at the age of 92 is now chalking up
his 72nd year in the industry, is one oil-and-gas guy who is seated firmly
on the fence.
He said the traditional fossil-fuel theory does have some holes in it.
For instance, he has seen fields that were supposed to have run dry enjoy
an inexplicable resurgence. On the other hand, while Gold's idea sounds
reasonable, there's no proof.
"I still believe that petroleum [is a fossil fuel that] originates from
organic sources, but I have an open mind as a scientist," said the Houston
oilman, who was once president of the American Association of Petroleum
Geologists.
Halbouty has been trying to set up a symposium of geologists and other
scientists to help to clear up the debate, but to date he has not been
able to drum up much industry backing.
But you would think the energy types would have a vested interest in
proving or disproving Gold's hypothesis.
"If it's true, it means that oil and gas can be found as long as nature
produces it," Halbouty said.
Does that mean there really isn't the impending energy crisis that U.S.
President George W. Bush and environmentalists have been warning us
about?
"You might say that."
But even if there is an almost unlimited
supply of petroleum waiting to be tapped deep within the Earth, is it even
feasible to bring it up?
The deepest well drilled in Canada, off the Newfoundland coast as part
of the Hibernia project, is about 8,534 metres down, according to the
Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists. Russian geologists drilled a
well to a depth of 12,192 metres -- the deepest in the world -- in the
1970s, but it never produced.
Hefner got down to almost 9,550 metres in western Oklahoma in the early
1980s. "There was gas at the bottom of the hole, but it was so
high-pressured the equipment couldn't contain it very well at that time so
it was produced from a shallower level," he said.
At the end of the day, deep drilling depends solely on favourable
economics, not the merits of a theory. "If you can make a profit, someone
will do it," Hefner said.
Hayes is skeptical that a profit could ever be made off Gold's
hypothesis. He argues that the deeper the drilling, no matter the
location, the hotter it gets. Any oil has been cooked away.
Then there are the additional risks. The rocks, in the Precambrian
crust for instance, are extremely hard, which makes it difficult to drill
deeply.
Prospectors would be left hoping there are reservoir rocks, fractures
or pores that would hold the hydrocarbons and flow them out at a rate to
make the drilling worthwhile, Hayes said.
It could cost up to $100-million to drill a 10,000-metre well to test
the theory with a slim chance of return, he said. That amount of money
could be used to drill 1,000 conventional wells in western Canada, where
the chances of flowing some oil and gas are virtually assured.
"Well," Hayes said, "I think I know where I'd put my money."
