The Fraudulence of Claims of Spontaneous, Low-Pressure

Generation of Petroleum

Of the lies told to try to defend the childish notion of a “Biological-Origin-of-Petroleum” [BOOP], none are more egregious or more blatant than the claims that “the (spontaneous) generation of oil from organic matter at low pressures has been demonstrated in the laboratory.” All such claims are entirely fraudulent, without a single exception. There has never been observed a spontaneous generation of natural petroleum (crude oil) from biological matter at low pressures in any laboratory, anywhere, ever.

Typically, these lies are pronounced without even a pretense of offering any demonstration, or legitimate evidence, of such extraordinary assertions. Indeed, anyone hearing or reading such claims should immediately demand evidence of such.

There have been published from time to time articles claiming to report demonstration of a “creation” of oil from biological detritus in a laboratory. None such articles have ever been published in the Journal of Chemical Physics or the Physical Review, or any refereed journal of the American Physical Society; nor have any ever been published in the journal Physical Chemistry, or any journal of the American Chemical Society. This absence of publication in serious scientific journals is relevant and important, for the spontaneous generation of oil is a chemical process that involves fundamentally the physical discipline of chemical thermodynamic stability theory. Such process does not involve the texture of rocks, or the color of rocks, or any quality of rocks; it is not a geology problem.

The few articles claiming to report a spontaneous generation of oil in a laboratory at low pressure have been printed in second- or third-rate journals of very modest scientific standing, which typically include in their titles Geo-this, or Geo-that. The personnel of Gas Resources Corporation have examined every such article that has been brought to their attention during the past two decades. Not one such article has withstood scientific scrutiny. All have been determined to be fraudulent.

Such articles claiming to report a spontaneous generation of oil at low pressures from biological matter have all fallen into one of three general categories. These fraudulent claims of these three categories can be described as follows:

(1) “We heated up a rock in the laboratory and saw oil come out of it. Therefore, we have demonstrated the spontaneous generation of petroleum from organic matter.

(2) “We simmered and bubbled some organic slop over a low heat for so and so many hours (or months), and afterwards we had some goop; and, Gee! it really looked like (or felt like, or smelled like) oil.”

(3) “We vaporized this-or-that biological material, and forced it through a heated reaction vessel in the presence of such-and-so rocks, and then removed it quickly from the reaction vessel, and, Lo! and Behold! we detected petroleum compounds!”

One ought to note at once that none of these reported laboratory “experiments” would be accepted as a Junior High School “science project” in any self-respecting school district anywhere. Each of these categories of fraudulent claims is discussed below.

1. The assertions that “we heated up a rock and oil came out of it”

These should be recognized from the outset as spurious because no specification is given of the reagents involved. The claimants assert that they somehow induce a chemical reaction (or set of reactions) that produce hydrocarbon compounds heavier than methane, e.g., propane, octane, diesel oil, etc. - via reactions of the form

u_xX+u_yY+u_z Z→u₃C₃H₈+u₈C₈H₁₈+u₁₄C₁₄H₃₀+….

However, the proclaimers of such reactions never tell anyone what their reagents X, Y and Z might be. And, of course, whatever reactions they might claim to occur proceed inside their rocks, where such conveniently cannot be observed.

Truly, no chemical reactions that might produce petroleum compounds heavier than methane occur inside the rock when heated. Whenever petroleum compounds heavier than methane emanate from a rock after heating, the phenomenon observed is simply that of a fluid being driven out of a rock matrix by the pressure induced by the difference in the isobaric coefficients of thermal expansion of the rock and the fluid. When the rock and the fluid are heated, the increased pressure developed in the fluid drives it toward any region of lower pressure, - i.e., out of the rock. This process is exactly that used by petroleum engineers to extract petroleum from the rocks called “oil-shale,” often called “retorting.”

In short, whatever petroleum might be observed emanating from a rock upon heating has been inside the pore spaces and fissures of the rock all along. The effect of heating is simply to cause the fluid to move out of the rock, a phenomenon called often thermally-induced outgassing.

In none of the reports claiming to have observed petroleum hydrocarbons coming out of rocks after heating have the compounds that were initially inside those rocks been specified. Quite simply, they were the same ones observed coming out of it.

2. The assertions that “we simmered some slop for weeks, and afterwards Gee!, it really looked (or felt, or smelled) like oil.”

These assertions hardly deserve even momentary consideration. As with those of Category 1, the persons who make this type of claim never specify the identity of their reagents with which they start. Furthermore, they don’t even try to identify the product compounds of whatever chemical reactions they might fantasize had occurred. “ Gee! This looks like, or feels like, oil,” suffices for these fellows.

Such was the 18^th-century “look-and-feel” science, and was the best one could do in that century. Indeed, the great Russian scientist Mikhailo Lomonosov first hypothesized in 1751 that natural petroleum (crude oil, or “rock oil”) originated from biological detritus because it felt and smelled similar to whale or seal oil, and was similarly combustible. However, although such hypothetical reasoning could be accepted in the 18^th century, in absence of knowledge of atomic physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics, such is utterly unacceptable in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Any proper scientific investigation that involves any chemical transformation must specify both the reagents and the products, and their relative stoichiometric abundances. The report of such investigation should give also the stereographic structures and chemical potentials (molar Gibbs free enthalpies of formation) of both the reagents and products, unless such data are previously known. Also must be specified the energy balance for the entire experimental process, - i.e., the total amount of energy put into the experiment, and the total amount extracted from or rejected by it. That articles are occasionally published in ostensibly scientific journals promulgating such assertions as discussed here is a sad commentary on the dysfunctional nature of scientific reviewing and editorial policy.

3. The assertions, “we vaporized this-or-that biological material, and forced it through a heated reaction vessel in the presence of such-and-so rocks, and then removed it quickly from the reaction vessel, and Lo! and Behold!, we detected petroleum compounds!”

These assertions differ from those of the first two categories to the extent that they often do specify the reagents and hydrocarbon products involved! Nonetheless, these assertions and the processes that such involve are as fraudulent as any of the first two categories for what they are claimed to report: a spontaneous generation of petroleum compounds from biological detritus in conditions of the environment of the near-surface crust of the Earth. What this category of assertions reports is factually nothing but sloppily performed, inefficient variants of the Fischer-Tropsch process.

The Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is a driven process, not a spontaneous one. The Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is a well-known industrial process which produces hydrocarbon compounds from (typically) CO and water vapor, in the presence of certain common elements or minerals, such as Fe, Mo, Si0₂, which serve as catalysts and which determine the specific hydrocarbon compounds produced. The hydrocarbon compounds produced in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis are only intermediate products that must be removed quickly from the high-temperature reaction chamber and quenched to a much lower temperature in order to prevent the hydrocarbon compounds from decomposing.

The Fischer-Tropsch process is a highly-regulated, industrial process. Such process is not mimicked in the natural world, no more than are the processes to produce, say, nylon or polyurethane. Furthermore, to synthesize hydrocarbon compounds from CO and water vapor, the Fischer-Tropsch process requires the input of energy considerably greater than the energy recoverable from the hydrocarbons produced. The Fischer-Tropsch process cannot be considered to demonstrate a spontaneous generation of hydrocarbon compounds by any measure.

Diamonds are recognized as the high-pressure phase of elemental carbon. Diamonds are generated spontaneously at pressures greater than approximately 30 kbar, which are found in the lower crust and upper mantle of the Earth, - similarly as the petroleum compounds heavier than the lightest, methane, ethane, etc. However, diamonds can be produced at low pressure in a laboratory by use of an acetylene plasma. Nonetheless, by no stretch of logic can the laboratory production of diamonds using the acetylene plasma process be claimed to demonstrate a spontaneous generation of diamonds in the low pressure regime of the near-surface crust of the Earth. Likewise, by no distortion of logic can the synthesis of heavy hydrocarbon compounds by the laboratory (or industrial) Fischer-Tropsch process be considered a demonstration of a spontaneous generation of petroleum compounds in the low pressure regime.

The Fisher-Tropsch process is no more relevant to the origin of natural petroleum than is the acetylene plasma process to the origin of natural diamonds. The hydrocarbon compounds in natural petroleum (with their characteristic Boltzmann-Planck type distribution) are the high-pressure equilibrium polymorphs of the hydrogen-carbon system, as methane is its low-pressure equilibrium polymorph, similarly as diamond is the high-pressure equilibrium polymorph of the elemental carbon system, and graphite its low-pressure polymorph.

A final note to the reader: Should any reader hear (or see written) an assertion that a spontaneous generation of natural petroleum has been observed at low pressure in a laboratory, the reader should promptly demand proof of such assertion: a citation to an article in a referred scientific journal; or, better, a copy of such article; or a laboratory report. Please send a copy of such article, or citation, or laboratory report to info@GasResources.net.