Ruppert challengs skeptic to Peak Oil Debate, skeptic accepts

Dave McGowan host of the web site "Centre for Informed America http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/index.htm#news was recently challenged by Mike Ruppert of www.fromthewilderness.com in an email to a debate on the topic of Peak Oil. McGowan had expressed skepticism that oil and natural gas were really in iminent danger of running out and he questioned Ruppert's motives in promoting this theory. McGowan is no Bush apologist and was against the Iraq war and the current trends in US foreign policy but he appears to hold to the belief that "Peak Oil" is a scare tactic promoted by energy interests to justify future price hikes.

In his rebuttal to Ruppert he presents evidence to support the theory that oil and gas are formed abiotically (without plant material) deep underneath the earth's crust and then migrate upwards through the earth's crust and is an ongoing process not a one time event that occurred in the prehistoric past with the burial and breakdown of organic material as has been the convential thinking to date.

Note to Mods. I am copying in full McGowans latest newsletter which is devoted to the peak oil topic as the author gave permission for its reproduction in full as long as the content was not altered (see bottom of post).

Here is Newsletter #52 from the Centre for an Informed America http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr52.html

Greetings from the Center for an Informed America
(http://davesweb.cnchost.com/). Please forward this newsletter widely.
If this was forwarded to you and you would like to receive future
mailings, e-mail (mailto:dave@davesweb.cnchost.com) a request to be
added to this mailing list.

NEWSLETTER #52
March 13, 2004
Cop v CIA (Center for an Informed America)
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr52.html

The Most Important Center for an Informed America Story in Two Years...


On February 29, 2004, I received the following e-mail message from
Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness:
I challenge you to an open, public debate on the subject of Peak Oil;
any time, any place after March 13th 2004. I challenge you to bring
scientific material, production data and academic references and
citations for your conclusions like I have. I suggest a mutually
acceptable panel of judges and I will put up $1,000 towards a purse to
go to the winner of that debate. I expect you to do the same. And you
made a dishonest and borderline libelous statement when you suggested
that I am somehow pleased that these wars of aggression have taken place
to secure oil. My message all along has been, "Not in my name!"
Put your money where your mouth is. But first I suggest you do some
homework. Ad hominem attacks using the word "bullshit", unsupported by
scientific data are a sign of intellectual weakness (at best). I will
throw more than 500 footnoted citations at you from unimpeachable
sources. Be prepared to eat them or rebut them with something more than
you have offered.
Wow! How does high noon sound?

Before I get started here, Mike, I need to ask you just one quick
question: are you sure it was only a "borderline libelous statement"?
Because I was really going for something more unambiguously libelous.
I'll see if I can do better on this outing. Let me know how I do.

Several readers have written to me, incidentally, with a variation of
the following question: "How can you say that Peak Oil is being promoted
to sell war when all of the websites promoting the notion of Peak Oil
are stridently anti-war?"

But of course they are. That, you see, is precisely the point. What I
was trying to say is that the notion of 'Peak Oil' is being specifically
marketed to the anti-war crowd -- because, as we all know, the pro-war
crowd doesn't need to be fed any additional justifications for going to
war; any of the old lies will do just fine. And I never said that the
necessity of war was being overtly sold. What I said, if I remember
correctly, is that it is being sold with a wink and a nudge.

The point that I was trying to make is that it would be difficult to
imagine a better way to implicitly sell the necessity of war, even while
appearing to stake out a position against war, than through the
promotion of the concept of 'Peak Oil.' After September 11, 2001,
someone famously said that if Osama bin Laden didn't exist, the US would
have had to invent him. I think the same could be said for 'Peak Oil.'

I also need to mention here that those who are selling 'Peak Oil'
hysteria aren't offering much in the way of alternatives, or solutions.
Ruppert, for example, has stated flatly that "there is no effective
replacement for what hydrocarbon energy provides today."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html) The
message is quite clear: "we're running out of oil soon; there is no
alternative; we're all screwed." And this isn't, mind you, just an
energy problem; as Ruppert has correctly noted, "Almost every current
human endeavor from transportation, to manufacturing, to plastics, and
especially food production is inextricably intertwined with oil and
natural gas supplies."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html) If we
run out of oil, in other words, our entire way of life will come
crashing down. One of Ruppert's "unimpeachable sources," Colin Campbell,
describes an apocalyptic future, just around the corner, that will be
characterized by "war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the
extinction of homo sapiens."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)

My question is: if Ruppert is not selling the necessity of war, then
exactly what is the message that he is sending to readers with such
doomsday forecasts? At the end of a recent posting, Ruppert quotes
dialogue from the 1975 Sidney Pollack film, Three Days of the Condor:
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html)
Higgins: ...It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15
years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think
the people are gonna want us to do then?
Turner: Ask them.
Higgins: Not now - then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them
when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when
their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start
going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask
them. They'll just want us to get it for them.
The message there seems pretty clear: once the people understand what is
at stake, they will support whatever is deemed necessary to secure the
world's oil supplies. And what is it that Ruppert is accomplishing with
his persistent 'Peak Oil' postings? He is helping his readers to
understand what is allegedly at stake.

Elsewhere on his site, Ruppert warns that "Different regions of the
world peak in oil production at different times ... the OPEC nations of
the Middle East peak last. Within a few years, they -- or whoever
controls them -- will be in effective control of the world economy, and,
in essence, of human civilization as a whole."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)

Within a few years, the Middle East will be in control of all of human
civilization?! Try as I might, I can't imagine any claim that would more
effectively rally support for a U.S. takeover of the Middle East. The
effect of such outlandish claims is to cast the present war as a war of
necessity. Indeed, a BBC report posted on Ruppert's site explicitly
endorses that notion: "It's not greed that's driving big oil companies -
it's survival."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040403_oil_war_bbc.html)


On the very day that Ruppert's challenge arrived, I received another
e-mail, from someone I previously identified - erroneously, it would
appear - as a "prominent critic" of Michael Ruppert. In further
correspondence, the writer, Jeff Strahl, explained that he is (a) not a
critic of Ruppert in general, but rather a critic only of Ruppert's
stance on certain aspects of the 9-11 story, and (b) not all that
prominent. This is what Mr. Strahl had to say:
I'm a participant in a relatively new website,
http://911research.wtc7.net, which has done lots of work regarding the
WTC and Pentagon side of the 9/11 events, especially the physical
evidence which reveals the official story as a complete hoax. Under
"talks" you'll find a slide show I've done (and will do again) in public
on the Pentagon aspects. This is all simply to let you know I'm far from
an apologist for the status quo. Nor am I an apologist for Mike Ruppert,
with whom in fact I got into a donnybrook of a fight on public email
lists over his denial of the relevancy of physical evidence and the fact
that an article full of disinformation about the WTC collapse, written
9/13/01, was still on his website, unedited or corrected, two years
later. He finally gave in and printed a (sort of) retraction.
That said, I have to take issue with your stance re Peak Oil, something
you say you wish were true, but deny, not on the basis of any
information, but on the basis that you seem to think it's too good to be
true, and that it's all info presented by Ruppert, which you thus
suspect since you suspect Ruppert. Matter of fact, Peak Oil was
predicted by an oil geologist, King Hubbert, way back in the mid '60s,
before Ruppert was even in college. It's been pursued since then by lots
of people in the science know-how, including Dale Allen Pfeiffer,
Richard Heinberg, Colin Campbell and Kenneth Deffeyes. The information
is quite clear, global oil production has either peaked in the last
couple of years or will do so in the next couple, as Hubbert predicted
decades ago (He predicted Peak Oil in the US as happening in the early
'70s, was laughed at, but his prediction came true right on schedule).
The science here is quite hard, facts are available from lots of
sources. Perhaps Hubbert was part of a long-planned disinfo campaign
that was planned way back in the '60s, and all the others are part of
that plot. I find it hard to believe that, and I am quite a skeptic.

As for the relevancy of physical evidence, it would appear that that is
another bone that I have to pick with Mr. Ruppert. But I will save that
for another time. For now, the issue is 'Peak Oil' (which, as you can
see, I am continuing to enclose in quotation marks, which is, as regular
readers know, how I identify things that don't actually exist).

For the record, I never said that Michael Ruppert was the only one
presenting information about 'Peak Oil.' I said that he was the most
prominent of those promoting the idea. I also never implied that Ruppert
came up with the idea on his own. I am aware that the theory has a
history. The issue here, however, is the sudden prominence that 'Peak
Oil' has attained.

Lastly, let me say that, unlike you, Jeff, I am enough of a skeptic to
believe that an ambitious, well-orchestrated disinformation campaign,
possibly spanning generations, should never arbitrarily be ruled out. I
am also enough of a skeptic to suspect that when a topic I have covered
generates the volume of e-mail that my 'Peak Oil' musings have
generated, then I must have managed to step into a pretty big pile of
shit. What I did not realize, until I decided to take Mr. Ruppert's
advice and "do some homework," was that it was a much bigger pile than I
could have imagined.

I read through some, but certainly not all, of the alleged evidence that
Ruppert has brought to the table concerning 'Peak Oil.' Since I have no
interest in financially supporting his cause, I am not a paid subscriber
and can therefore not access the 'members only' postings. But I doubt
that I am missing much. The postings that I did read tended to be
extremely redundant and, therefore, a little on the boring side.

Ruppert's arguments range from the vaguely compelling to the downright
bizarre. One argument that pops up repeatedly is exemplified by this
Ruppert-penned line: "One of the biggest signs of the reality of Peak
Oil over the last two decades has been a continual pattern of
merger-acquisition-downsizing throughout the industry."

Really? And is that pattern somehow unique to the petroleum industry? Or
is it a pattern that has been followed by just about every major
industry? Is the consolidation of the supermarket industry a sign of the
reality of Peak Groceries? And with consolidation of the media industry,
should we be concerned about Peak News? Or should we, perhaps, recognize
that a pattern of monopoly control - characterized by mergers,
acquisitions, and downsizing - represents nothing more than business as
usual throughout the corporate world?

Another telling sign of 'Peak Oil,' according to Ruppert and Co., is
sudden price hikes on gas and oil. Of course, that would be a somewhat
more compelling argument if the oil cartels did not have a decades-long
history of constantly feigning shortages to foist sudden price increases
on consumers (usually just before peak travel periods). Contrary to the
argument that appears on Ruppert's site, it is not need that is driving
the oil industry, it is greed.

In what is undoubtedly the most bizarre posting that Ruppert offers in
support of his theory, he ponders whether dialogue from an obscure 1965
television series indicates that the CIA knew as far back as the 1960s
about the coming onset of 'Peak Oil.'
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/042003_secret_agent_man.html)
Even if that little factoid came from a more, uhmm, credible source,
what would the significance be? Hasn't the conventional wisdom been, for
many decades, that oil is a 'fossil fuel,' and therefore a finite,
non-renewable resource? Since when has it been an intelligence community
secret that a finite resource will someday run out?

A few readers raised that very issue in questioning my recent 'Peak Oil'
rants. "Even if we are not now in the era of Peak Oil," the argument
generally goes, "then surely we will be soon. After all, it is
inevitable." And conventional wisdom dictates that it is, indeed,
inevitable. But if this website has one overriding purpose, it is to
question conventional wisdom whenever possible.

There is no shortage of authoritatively stated figures on the From the
Wilderness website: billions of barrels of oil discovered to date;
billions of barrels of oil produced to date; billions of barrels of oil
in known reserves; billions of barrels of oil consumed annually. Yadda,
yadda, yadda. My favorite figure is the one labeled, in one posting,
"Yet-to-Find." That figure, 150 billion barrels (a relative pittance),
is supposed to represent the precise volume of conventional oil in all
the unknown number of oil fields of unknown size that haven't been
discovered yet. Ruppert himself has written, with a cocksure swagger,
that "there are no more significant quantities of oil to be discovered
anywhere ..."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html) A
rather bold statement, to say the least, considering that it would seem
to be impossible for a mere mortal to know such a thing.
Ruppert's figures certainly paint a scary picture: rapid oil consumption
+ diminishing oil reserves + no new discoveries = no more oil. And
sooner, rather than later. But is the 'Peak Oil' argument really valid?
It seems logical -- a non-renewable resource consumed with a vengeance
obviously can't last for long. The only flaw in the argument, I suppose,
would be if oil wasn't really a 'fossil fuel,' and if it wasn't really a
non-renewable resource.


"Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that
it was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process
that took millions of years." So said the Wall Street Journal in April
1999 (Christopher Cooper "Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods Oil Experts
to Seek a Deeper Meaning," Wall Street Journal, April 16, 1999). It
therefore logically follows that conventional wisdom also says that oil
will reach a production peak, and then ultimately run out.
(http://www.oralchelation.com/faq/wsj4.htm)

As I said a few paragraphs ago, the purpose of this website is to
question conventional wisdom -- by acquainting readers with stories that
the media overlook, and with viewpoints that are not allowed in the
mainstream. It was my understanding that From the Wilderness, and other
'alternative' websites, had a similar goal.

But is 'Peak Oil' really some suppressed, taboo topic? If it is, then
why, as I sit here typing this, with today's (March 7, 2004) edition of
the Los Angeles Times atop my desk, are the words "Running Out of Oil --
and Time" staring me in the face from the front page of the widely read
Sunday Opinion section? The lengthy piece, penned by Paul Roberts, is
replete with dire warnings of the coming crisis. Save for the fact that
the words 'Peak Oil' are not routinely capitalized, it could easily pass
for a From the Wilderness posting.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-roberts7mar07,1,107339.story)

The Times also informed readers that Roberts has a new book due out in
May, entitled The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Scary
stuff. Beating Robert's book to the stores will be Colin Campbell's The
Coming Oil Crisis, due in April. Both titles will have to compete for
shelf space with titles such as Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over:
Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, published April of last
year; David Goodstein's Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil, which
just hit the shelves last month; and Kenneth Deffeyes' Hubbert's Peak:
The Impending World Oil Shortage, published October 2001. The field is
getting a bit crowded, but sales over at Amazon.com remain strong for
most of the contenders.

The wholesale promotion of 'Peak Oil' seems to have taken off
immediately after the September 11, 2001 'terrorist' attacks, and it is
now really starting to pick up some steam. The BBC covered the big story
last April
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040403_oil_war_bbc.html). CNN
covered it in October
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100203_cnn_peak_oil.html).
The Guardian covered it in December
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/120303_bottom_barrel.html).
Now the Los Angeles Times has joined the chorus.

I guess the cat is pretty much out of the bag on this one. Everyone can
cancel their subscriptions to From the Wilderness and pocket the $35 a
year, since you can read the very same bullshit for free in the pages of
the Los Angeles Times.

Interestingly enough, there is another story about oil that, unlike the
'Peak Oil' story, actually has been suppressed. It is a story that very
few, if any, of my readers, or of Michael Ruppert's readers, are likely
aware of. But before we get to that story, let's first briefly review
what we all 'know' about oil.

As anyone who stayed awake during elementary school science class knows,
oil comes from dinosaurs. I remember as a kid (calm down, folks; there
will be no Brady Bunch references this week) seeing some kind of 'public
service' spot explaining how dinosaurs "gave their all" so that we could
one day have oil. It seemed a reasonable enough idea at the time -- from
the perspective of an eight-year-old. But if, as an adult, you really
stop to give it some thought, doesn't the idea seem a little, uhmm ...
what's the word I'm looking for here? ... oh yeah, I remember now ...
preposterous?

How could dinosaurs have possibly created the planet's vast oil fields?
Did millions, or even billions, of them die at the very same time and at
the very same place? Were there dinosaur Jonestowns on a grand scale
occurring at locations all across the planet? And how did they all get
buried so quickly? Because if they weren't buried right away, wouldn't
they have just decomposed and/or been consumed by scavengers? And how
much oil can you really squeeze from a pile of parched dinosaur
skeletons?

Maybe there was some type of cataclysmic event that caused the sudden
extinction of the dinosaurs and also buried them -- like the impact of
an asteroid or a comet. But even so, you wouldn't think that all the
dinosaurs would have been huddled together waiting to become oil fields.
And besides, scientists are now backing away from the mass extinction
theory.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-extinction6mar06,1,3634810.story)

The Wall Street Journal article previously cited noted that it "would
take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs to account for the estimated
660 billion barrels of oil in the ." I don't know what the
precise dinosaur-carcass-to-barrel-of-oil conversion rate is, but it
does seem like it would take a hell of a lot of dead dinosaurs. Even if
we generously allow that a single dinosaur could yield 50 barrels of oil
(an absurd notion, but let's play along for now), more than 130 billion
dinosaurs would have had to be simultaneously entombed in just one small
region of the world. But were there really hundreds of billions of
dinosaurs roaming the earth? If so, then one wonders why there is all
this talk now of overpopulation and scarce resources, when all we are
currently dealing with is a few billion humans populating the same
earth.

And why the Middle East? Was that region some kind of Mecca for
dinosaurs? Was it the climate, or the lack of water and vegetation, that
drew them there? Of course, the region could have been much different in
prehistoric times. Maybe it was like the Great Valley in the Land Before
Time movies. Or maybe the dinosaurs had to cross the Middle East to get
to the Great Valley, but they never made it, because they got bogged
down in the desert and ultimately became (through, I'm guessing here,
some alchemical process) cans of 10W-40 motor oil.

Another version of the 'fossil fuel' story holds that microscopic animal
carcasses and other biological matter gathered on the world's sea
floors, with that organic matter then being covered over with sediment
over the course of millions of years. You would think, however, that any
biological matter would decompose long before being covered over by
sediment. But I guess not. And I guess there were no bottom-feeders in
those days to clear the ocean floors of organic debris. Fair enough. But
I still don't understand how those massive piles of biological debris,
some consisting of hundreds of billions of tons of matter, could have
just suddenly appeared, so that they could then sit, undisturbed, for
millions of years as they were covered over with sediment. I can
understand how biological detritus could accumulate over time, mixed in
with the sediment, but that wouldn't really create the conditions for
the generation of vast reservoirs of crude oil. So I guess I must be
missing something here.

The notion that oil is a 'fossil fuel' was first proposed by Russian
scholar Mikhailo Lomonosov in 1757. Lomonosov's rudimentary hypothesis,
based on the limited base of scientific knowledge that existed at the
time, and on his own simple observations, was that "Rock oil originates
as tiny bodies of animals buried in the sediments which, under the
influence of increased temperature and pressure acting during an
unimaginably long period of time, transform into rock oil."

Two and a half centuries later, Lomonosov's theory remains as it was in
1757 -- an unproved, and almost entirely speculative, hypothesis.
Returning once again to the Wall Street Journal, we find that, "Although
the world has been drilling for oil for generations, little is known
about the nature of the resource or the underground activities that led
to its creation." A paragraph in the Encyclopedia Britannica concerning
the origins of oil ends thusly: "In spite of the great amount of
scientific research ... there remain many unresolved questions regarding
its origins."

Does that not seem a little odd? We are talking here, after all, about a
resource that, by all accounts, plays a crucial role in a vast array of
human endeavors (by one published account, petroleum is a raw ingredient
in some 70,000 manufactured products, including medicines, synthetic
fabrics, fertilizers, paints and varnishes, acrylics, plastics, and
cosmetics). By many accounts, the very survival of the human race is
entirely dependent on the availability of petroleum. And yet we know
almost nothing about this most life-sustaining of the earth's resources.
And even though, by some shrill accounts, the well is about to run dry,
no one seems to be overly concerned with understanding the nature and
origins of so-called 'fossil fuels.' We are, rather, content with
continuing to embrace an unproved 18th century theory that, if subjected
to any sort of logical analysis, seems ludicrous.

On September 26, 1995, the New York Times ran an article headlined
"Geochemist Says Oil Fields May Be Refilled Naturally." Penned by
Malcolm W. Browne, the piece appeared on page C1.
Could it be that many of the world's oil fields are refilling themselves
at nearly the same rate they are being drained by an energy hungry
world? A geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts ... Dr. Jean K. Whelan ... infers that oil is moving in
quite rapid spurts from great depths to reservoirs closer to the
surface. Skeptics of Dr. Whelan's hypothesis ... say her explanation
remains to be proved ...
Discovered in 1972, an oil reservoir some 6,000 feet beneath Eugene
Island 330 of Mexico] is one of the world's most productive oil sources ... Eugene
Island 330 is remarkable for another reason: it's estimated reserves
have declined much less than experts had predicted on the basis of its
production rate.
"It could be," Dr. Whelan said, "that at some sites, particularly where
there is a lot of faulting in the rock, a reservoir from which oil is
being pumped might be a steady-state system -- one that is replenished
by deeper reserves as fast as oil is pumped out" ...
The discovery that oil seepage is continuous and extensive from many
ocean vents lying above fault zones has convinced many scientists that
oil is making its way up through the faults from much deeper deposits
...
A recent report from the Department of Energy Task Force on Strategic
Energy Research and Development concluded from the Woods Hole project
that "there new data and interpretations strongly suggest that the oil
and gas in the Eugene Island field could be treated as a steady-state
rather than a fixed resource."
The report added, "Preliminary analysis also suggest that similar
phenomena may be taking place in other producing areas, including the
deep-water Gulf of Mexico and the Alaskan North Slope" ...
There is much evidence that deep reserves of hydrocarbon fuels remain to
be tapped.
This compelling article raised a number of questions, including: how did
all those piles of dinosaur carcasses end up thousands of feet beneath
the earth's surface? How do finite reservoirs of dinosaur goo become
"steady-state" resources? And how does the fossil fuel theory explain
the continuous, spontaneous venting of gas and oil?

The Eugene Island story was revisited by the media three-and-a-half
years later, by the Wall Street Journal (Christopher Cooper "Odd
Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning,"
Wall Street Journal, April 16, 1999).
(http://www.oralchelation.com/faq/wsj4.htm)
Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.
Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of
Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while. it
behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene
Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989,
production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's
fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now
producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to
more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still,
scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of
a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island
is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles
below the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing
possibility that oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to
be.
... Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior researcher from the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts ... says, "I believe there is
a huge system of oil just migrating" deep underground.
... About 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, the underwater landscape
surrounding Eugene Island is otherworldly, cut with deep fissures and
faults that spontaneously belch gas and oil.
So now we are talking about a huge system of migrating dinosaur goo that
is miles beneath the Earth's surface! Those dinosaurs were rather
crafty, weren't they? Exactly three years later (to the day), the media
once again paid a visit to the Gulf of Mexico. This time, it was Newsday
that filed the report (Robert Cooke "Oil Field's Free Refill," Newsday,
April 19, 2002).
(http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pkt/2002II/msg00071.html)
Deep underwater, and deeper underground, scientists see surprising hints
that gas and oil deposits can be replenished, filling up again,
sometimes rapidly.
Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the
Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by
petroleum surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean
that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low.
... chemical oceanographer Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt "They are
refilling as we speak. But whether this is a worldwide phenomenon, we
don't know" ...
Kennicutt, a faculty member at Texas A&M University, said it is now
clear that gas and oil are coming into the known reservoirs very rapidly
in terms of geologic time. The inflow of new gas, and some oil, has been
detectable in as little as three to 10 years. In the past, it was not
suspected that oil fields can refill because it was assumed that oil was
formed in place, or nearby, rather than far below.
According to marine geologist Harry Roberts, at Louisiana State
University ... "You have a very leaky fault system that does allow it
(petroleum) to migrate in. It's directly connected to an oil and gas
generating system at great depth."
... "There already appears to be a large body of evidence consistent
with ... oil and gas generation and migration on very short time scales
in many areas globally" wrote in the journal Sea
Technology ...
Analysis of the ancient oil that seems to be coming up from deep below
in the Gulf of Mexico suggests that the flow of new oil "is coming from
deeper, hotter formations" and is not simply a lateral inflow
from the old deposits that surround existing oil fields, said.
Now I'm really starting to get confused. Can someone please walk me
through this? What exactly is an "oil and gas generating system"? And
how does such a system generate oil "on very short time scales"? Is
someone down there right now, even as I type these words, forklifting
dinosaur carcasses into some gigantic cauldron to cook up a fresh batch
of oil?

Desperate for answers to such perplexing questions, I turned for advice
to Mr. Peak Oil himself, Michael Ruppert, and this is what I found: "oil
... is the result of climactic conditions that have existed at only one
time in the earth's 4.5 billion year history." I'm guessing that that
"one time" - that one golden window of opportunity to get just the right
mix of dinosaur stew - isn't the present time, so it doesn't seem quite
right, to me at least, that oil is being generated right now.

In June 2003, Geotimes paid a visit to the Gulf of Mexico ("Raining
Hydrocarbons in the Gulf"), and the story grew yet more compelling.
(http://www.geotimes.org/june03/NN_gulf.html)
Below the Gulf of Mexico, hydrocarbons flow upward through an intricate
network of conduits and reservoirs ... and this is all happening now,
not millions and millions of years ago, says Larry Cathles, a chemical
geologist at Cornell University.
"We're dealing with this giant flow-through system where the
hydrocarbons are generating now, moving through the overlying strata
now, building the reservoirs now and spilling out into the ocean now,"
Cathles says.
... Cathles and his team estimate that in a study area of about 9,600
square miles off the coast of Louisiana ,
source rocks a dozen kilometers down have
generated as much as 184 billion tons of oil and gas -- about 1,000
billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent. "That's 30 percent more than
we humans have consumed over the entire petroleum era," Cathles say.
"And that's just this one little postage stamp area; if this is going on
worldwide, then there's a lot of hydrocarbons venting out."
Dry oil wells spontaneously refilling? Oil generation and migration
systems? Massive oil reserves miles beneath the earth's surface?
Spontaneous venting of enormous volumes of gas and oil? (Roberts noted
that - and this isn't really going to please the environmentalists, but
I'm just reporting the facts, ma'am - "natural seepage" in areas like
the Gulf of Mexico "far exceeds anything that gets spilled" by the oil
industry. And those natural emissions have been pumped into our oceans
since long before there was an oil industry.)

The all too obvious question here is: how is any of that explained by a
theory that holds that oil and gas are 'fossil fuels' created in finite
quantities through a unique geological process that occurred millions of
years ago?

Why do we insist on retaining an antiquated theory that is so obviously
contradicted by readily observable phenomena? Is the advancement of the
sciences not based on formulating a hypothesis, and then testing that
hypothesis? And if the hypothesis fails to account for the available
data, is it not customary to either modify that hypothesis or formulate
a new hypothesis -- rather than, say, clinging to the same discredited
hypothesis for 250 years?

In August 2002, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences published a study authored by J.F. Kenney, V.A. Kutchenov, N.A.
Bendeliani and V.A. Alekseev. The authors argued, quite compellingly,
that oil is not created from organic compounds at the temperatures and
pressures found close to the surface of the earth, but rather is created
from inorganic compounds at the extreme temperatures and pressures
present only near the core of the earth.
(http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm)

As Geotimes noted ("Inorganic Origin of Oil: Much Ado About Nothing?,"
Geotimes, November 2002), the journal "published the paper at the
request of Academy member Howard Reiss, a chemical physicist at the
University of California at Los Angeles. As per the PNAS guidelines for
members communicating papers, Reiss obtained reviews of the paper from
at least two referees from different institutions (not affiliated with
the authors) and shepherded the report through revisions."
(http://www.geotimes.org/nov02/NN_oil.html)

I mention that because I happened to read something that Michael Ruppert
wrote recently that seems pertinent: "In real life, it is called 'the
proof is in the pudding.' In scientific circles, it is called peer
review, and it usually involves having your research published in a
peer-reviewed journal. It is an often-frustrating process, but
peer-reviewed articles ensure the validity of science."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html)

It would seem then that we can safely conclude that what Kenney, et. al.
have presented is valid science, since it definitely was published in a
peer-reviewed journal. And what that valid science says, quite clearly,
is that petroleum is not by any stretch of the imagination a finite
resource, or a 'fossil fuel,' but is in fact a resource that is
continuously generated by natural processes deep within the planet.

Geotimes also noted that the research paper "examined thermodynamic
arguments that say methane is the only organic hydrocarbon to exist
within Earth's crust." Indeed, utilizing the laws of modern
thermodynamics, the authors constructed a mathematical model that proves
that oil can not form under the conditions dictated by the 'fossil fuel'
theory.

I mention that because of something else I read on Ruppert's site.
Listed as #5 of "Nine Critical Questions to Ask About Alternative
Energy" is: "Most of the other questions in this list can be tied up
into this one question: does the invention defy the Laws of
Thermodynamics? If the answer is yes, then something is wrong."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions.html)

Well then, Mr. Ruppert, I have some very bad news for you, because
something definitely is wrong -- with your 'Peak Oil' theory. Because
here we have a published study, subjected to peer review (thus assuring
the "validity" of the study), that demonstrates, with mathematical
certainty, that it is actually the 'fossil fuel' theory that defies the
laws of thermodynamics. It appears then that if we follow Ruppert's
Laws, we have to rule out fossil fuels as a viable alternative to
petroleum.

Reaction to the publication of the Kenney study was swift. First to
weigh in was Nature (Tom Clarke "Fossil Fuels Without the Fossils:
Petroleum: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?," Nature News Service, August
14, 2002).
Petroleum - the archetypal fossil fuel - couldn't have formed from the
remains of dead animals and plants, claim US and Russian researchers.
They argue that petroleum originated from minerals at extreme
temperatures and pressures.
Other geochemists say that the work resurrects a scientific debate that
is almost a fossil itself, and criticize the team's conclusions.
The team, led by J.F. Kenney of the Gas Resources Corporation in
Houston, Texas, mimicked conditions more than 100 kilometres below the
earth's surface by heating marble, iron oxide and water to around 1500°
C and 50,000 times atmospheric pressure.
They produced traces of methane, the main constituent of natural gas,
and octane, the hydrocarbon molecule that makes petrol. A mathematical
model of the process suggests that, apart from methane, none of the
ingredients of petroleum could form at depths less than 100 kilometres.
The geochemist community, and the petroleum industry, were both suitably
outraged by the publication of the study. The usual parade of experts
was trotted out, of course, but a funny thing happened: as much as they
obviously wanted to, those experts were unable to deny the validity of
the research. So they resorted to a very unusual tactic: they
reluctantly acknowledged that oil can indeed be created from minerals,
but they insisted that that inconvenient fact really has nothing to do
with the oil that we use.
Showing that oil can also form without a biological origin does not
disprove hypothesis. "It doesn't discredit
anything," said a geochemist who asked not to be named.
... "No one disputes that hydrocarbons can form this way," says Mark
McCaffrey, a geochemist with Oil Tracers LLC, a petroleum-prospecting
consultancy in Dallas, Texas. A tiny percentage of natural oil deposits
are known to be non-biological, but this doesn't mean that petrol isn't
a fossil fuel, he says.
"I don't know anyone in the petroleum community who really takes this
prospect seriously," says Walter Michaelis, a geochemist at the
University of Hamburg in Germany.
So I guess the geochemist community is a petulant lot. They did
"concede," however, that oil "that forms inorganically at the high
temperatures and massive pressures close to the Earth's mantle layer
could be forced upwards towards the surface by water, which is denser
than oil. It can then be trapped by sedimentary rocks that are
impermeable to oil."

What they were acknowledging, lest anyone misunderstand, is that the oil
that we pump out of reservoirs near the surface of the earth, and the
oil that is spontaneously and continuously generated deep within the
earth, could very well be the same oil. But even so, they insist, that
is certainly no reason to abandon, or even question, our perfectly
ridiculous 'fossil fuel' theory.

Coverage by New Scientist of the 'controversial' journal publication
largely mirrored the coverage by Nature (Jeff Hecht "You Can Squeeze Oil
Out of a Stone," New Scientist, August 17, 2002).
Oil doesn't come from dead plants and animals, but from plain old rock,
a controversial new study claims.
The heat and pressure a hundred kilometres underground produces
hydrocarbons from inorganic carbon and water, says J.F. Kenney, who runs
the Gas Resources Corporation, an oil exploration firm in Houston. He
and three Russian colleagues believe all our oil is made this way, and
untapped supplies are there for the taking.
Petroleum geologists already accept that some oil forms like this.
"Nobody ever argued that there are no inorganic sources," says Mike
Lewan of the US Geological Survey. But they take strong issue with
Kenney's claim that petroleum can't form from organic matter in shallow
rocks.
Geotimes chimed in as well, quoting Scott Imbus, an organic geochemist
for Chevron Texaco Corp., who explained that the Kenney research is "an
excellent and rigorous treatment of the theoretical and experimental
aspects for abiotic hydrocarbon formation deep in the Earth.
Unfortunately, it has little or nothing to do with the origins of
commercial fossil fuel deposits."

What we have here, quite clearly, is a situation wherein the West's
leading geochemists (read: shills for the petroleum industry) cannot
impugn the validity of Kenney's unassailable mathematical model, and so
they have, remarkably enough, adopted the unusual strategy of claiming
that there is actually more than one way to produce oil. It can be
created under extremely high temperatures and pressures, or it can be
created under relatively low temperatures and pressures. It can be
created organically, or it can be created inorganically. It can be
created deep within the Earth, or it can be created near the surface of
the Earth. You can make it with some rocks. Or you can make it in a box.
You can make it here or there. You can make it anywhere.

While obviously an absurdly desperate attempt to salvage the 'fossil
fuel' theory, the arguments being offered by the geochemist community
actually serve to further undermine the notion that oil is an
irreplaceable 'fossil fuel.' For if we are now to believe that petroleum
can be created under a wide range of conditions (a temperature range,
for example, of 75° C to 1500° C), does that not cast serious doubt on
the claim that conditions favored the creation of oil just "one time in
the earth's 4.5 billion year history"?

A more accurate review of Kenney's work appeared in The Economist ("The
Argument Needs Oiling," The Economist, August 15, 2002).
Millions of years ago, tiny animals and plants died. They settled at the
bottom of the oceans. Over time, they were crushed beneath layers of
sediment that built up above them and eventually turned into rock. The
organic matter, now trapped hundreds of metres below the surface,
started to change. Under the action of gentle heat and pressure, and in
the absence of air, the biological debris turned into oil and gas. Or so
the story goes.
In 1951, however, a group of Soviet scientists led by Nikolai
Kudryavtsev claimed that this theory of oil production was fiction. They
suggested that hydrocarbons, the principal molecular constituents of
oil, are generated deep within the earth from inorganic materials. Few
people outside Russia listened. But one who did was J. F. Kenney, an
American who today works for the Russian Academy of Sciences and is also
chief executive of Gas Resources Corporation in Houston, Texas. He says
it is nonsense to believe that oil derives from "squashed fish and
putrefied cabbages." This is a brave claim to make when the overwhelming
majority of petroleum geologists subscribe to the biological theory of
origin. But Dr Kenney has evidence to support his argument.
In this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he
claims to establish that it is energetically impossible for alkanes, one
of the main types of hydrocarbon molecule in crude oil, to evolve from
biological precursors at the depths where reservoirs have typically been
found and plundered. He has developed a mathematical model incorporating
quantum mechanics, statistics and thermodynamics which predicts the
behaviour of a hydrocarbon system. The complex mixture of straight-chain
and branched alkane molecules found in crude oil could, according to his
calculations, have come into existence only at extremely high
temperatures and pressures-far higher than those found in the earth's
crust, where the orthodox theory claims they are formed.
To back up this idea, he has shown that a cocktail of alkanes (methane,
hexane, octane and so on) similar to that in natural oil is produced
when a mixture of calcium carbonate, water and iron oxide is heated to
1,500° C and crushed with the weight of 50,000 atmospheres. This
experiment reproduces the conditions in the earth's upper mantle, 100 km
below the surface, and so suggests that oil could be produced there from
completely inorganic sources.
Kenney's theories, when discussed at all, are universally described as
"new," "radical," and "controversial." In truth, however, Kenney's ideas
are not new, nor original, nor radical. Though no one other than Kenney
himself seems to want to talk about it, the arguments that he presented
in the PNAS study are really just the tip of a very large iceberg of
suppressed scientific research.

This story really begins in 1946, just after the close of World War II,
which had illustrated quite effectively that oil was integral to waging
modern, mechanized warfare. Stalin, recognizing the importance of oil,
and recognizing also that the Soviet Union would have to be self
sufficient, launched a massive scientific undertaking that has been
compared, in its scale, to the Manhattan Project. The goal of the Soviet
project was to study every aspect of petroleum, including how it is
created, how reserves are generated, and how to best pursue petroleum
exploration and extraction.

The challenge was taken up by a wide range of scientific disciplines,
with hundreds of the top professionals in their fields contributing to
the body of scientific research. By 1951, what has been called the
Modern Russian-Ukrainian Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was
born. A healthy amount of scientific debate followed for the next couple
of decades, during which time the theory, initially formulated by
geologists, based on observational data, was validated through the
rigorous quantitative work of chemists, physicists and
thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory has been
accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific
community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally
thousands of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific
journals.

For over fifty years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have added to
this body of research and refined the Russian-Ukrainian theories. And
for over fifty years, not a word of it has been published in the English
language (except for a fairly recent, bastardized version published by
astronomer Thomas Gold, who somehow forgot to credit the hundreds of
scientists whose research he stole and then misrepresented).

This is not, by the way, just a theoretical model that the Russians and
Ukrainians have established; the theories were put to practical use,
resulting in the transformation of the Soviet Union - once regarded as
having limited prospects, at best, for successful petroleum exploration
- into a world-class petroleum producing, and exporting, nation.

J.F. Kenney spent some 15 years studying under some of the Russian and
Ukrainian scientists who were key contributors to the modern petroleum
theory. When Kenney speaks about petroleum origins, he is not speaking
as some renegade scientist with a radical new theory; he is speaking to
give voice to an entire community of scientists whose work has never
been acknowledged in the West. Kenney writes passionately about that
neglected body of research:
The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins
is not new or recent. This theory was first enunciated by Professor
Nikolai Kudryavtsev in 1951, almost a half century ago, (Kudryavtsev
1951) and has undergone extensive development, refinement, and
application since its introduction. There have been more than four
thousand articles published in the Soviet scientific journals, and many
books, dealing with the modern theory. This writer is presently
co-authoring a book upon the subject of the development and applications
of the modern theory of petroleum for which the bibliography requires
more than thirty pages.
The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins
is not the work of any one single man -- nor of a few men. The modern
theory was developed by hundreds of scientists in the (now former)
U.S.S.R., including many of the finest geologists, geochemists,
geophysicists, and thermodynamicists of that country. There have now
been more than two generations of geologists, geophysicists, chemists,
and other scientists in the U.S.S.R. who have worked upon and
contributed to the development of the modern theory. (Kropotkin 1956;
Anisimov, Vasilyev et al. 1959; Kudryavtsev 1959; Porfir'yev 1959;
Kudryavtsev 1963; Raznitsyn 1963; Krayushkin 1965; Markevich 1966;
Dolenko 1968; Dolenko 1971; Linetskii 1974; Letnikov, Karpov et al.
1977; Porfir'yev and Klochko 1981; Krayushkin 1984)
The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins
is not untested or speculative. On the contrary, the modern theory was
severely challenged by many traditionally-minded geologists at the time
of its introduction; and during the first decade thenafter, the modern
theory was thoroughly examined, extensively reviewed, powerfully
debated, and rigorously tested. Every year following 1951, there were
important scientific conferences organized in the U.S.S.R. to debate and
evaluate the modern theory, its development, and its predictions. The
All-Union conferences in petroleum and petroleum geology in the years
1952-1964/5 dealt particularly with this subject. (During the period
when the modern theory was being subjected to extensive critical
challenge and testing, a number of the men pointed out that there had
never been any similar critical review or testing of the traditional
hypothesis that petroleum might somehow have evolved spontaneously from
biological detritus.)
The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins
is not a vague, qualitative hypothesis, but stands as a rigorous
analytic theory within the mainstream of the modern physical sciences.
In this respect, the modern theory differs fundamentally not only from
the previous hypothesis of a biological origin of petroleum but also
from all traditional geological hypotheses. Since the nineteenth
century, knowledgeable physicists, chemists, thermodynamicists, and
chemical engineers have regarded with grave reservations (if not
outright disdain) the suggestion that highly reduced hydrocarbon
molecules of high free enthalpy (the constituents of crude oil) might
somehow evolve spontaneously from highly oxidized biogenic molecules of
low free enthalpy. Beginning in 1964, Soviet scientists carried out
extensive theoretical statistical thermodynamic analysis which
established explicitly that the hypothesis of evolution of hydrocarbon
molecules (except methane) from biogenic ones in the temperature and
pressure regime of the Earth's near-surface crust was glaringly in
violation of the second law of thermodynamics. They also determined that
the evolution of reduced hydrocarbon molecules requires pressures of
magnitudes encountered at depths equal to such of the mantle of the
Earth. During the second phase of its development, the modern theory of
petroleum was entirely recast from a qualitative argument based upon a
synthesis of many qualitative facts into a quantitative argument based
upon the analytical arguments of quantum statistical mechanics and
thermodynamic stability theory. (Chekaliuk 1967; Boiko 1968; Chekaliuk
1971; Chekaliuk and Kenney 1991; Kenney 1995) With the transformation of
the modern theory from a synthetic geology theory arguing by persuasion
into an analytical physical theory arguing by compulsion, petroleum
geology entered the mainstream of modern science.
The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins
is not controversial nor presently a matter of academic debate. The
period of debate about this extensive body of knowledge has been over
for approximately two decades (Simakov 1986). The modern theory is
presently applied extensively throughout the former U.S.S.R. as the
guiding perspective for petroleum exploration and development projects.
There are presently more than 80 oil and gas fields in the Caspian
district alone which were explored and developed by applying the
perspective of the modern theory and which produce from the crystalline
basement rock. (Krayushkin, Chebanenko et al. 1994) Similarly, such
exploration in the western Siberia cratonic-rift sedimentary basin has
developed 90 petroleum fields of which 80 produce either partly or
entirely from the crystalline basement. The exploration and discoveries
of the 11 major and 1 giant fields on the northern flank of the
Dneiper-Donets basin have already been noted. There are presently deep
drilling exploration projects under way in Azerbaijan, Tatarstan, and
Asian Siberia directed to testing potential oil and gas reservoirs in
the crystalline basement.
(http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm)
It appears that, unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been,
for quite some time now, two competing theories concerning the origins
of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is an organic 'fossil fuel'
deposited in finite quantities near the planet's surface. The other
theory claims that oil is continuously generated by natural processes in
the Earth's magma. One theory is backed by a massive body of research
representing fifty years of intense scientific inquiry. The other theory
is an unproven relic of the eighteenth century. One theory anticipates
deep oil reserves, refillable oil fields, migratory oil systems, deep
sources of generation, and the spontaneous venting of gas and oil. The
other theory has a difficult time explaining any such documented
phenomena.

So which theory have we in the West, in our infinite wisdom, chosen to
embrace? Why, the fundamentally absurd 'Fossil Fuel' theory, of course
-- the same theory that the 'Peak Oil' doomsday warnings are based on.

I am sorry to report here, by the way, that in doing my homework, I
never did come across any of that "hard science" documenting 'Peak Oil'
that Mr. Strahl referred to. All the 'Peak Oil' literature that I found,
on Ruppert's site and elsewhere, took for granted that petroleum is a
non-renewable 'fossil fuel.' That theory is never questioned, nor is any
effort made to validate it. It is simply taken to be an established
scientific fact, which it quite obviously is not.

So what do Ruppert and his resident experts have to say about all of
this? Dale Allen Pfeiffer, identified as the "FTW Contributing Editor
for Energy," has written: "There is some speculation that oil is abiotic
in origin -- generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead
of an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_oil_recession.html)

Here is a question that I have for both Mr. Ruppert and Mr. Pfeiffer: Do
you consider it honest, responsible journalism to dismiss a fifty year
body of multi-disciplinary scientific research, conducted by hundreds of
the world's most gifted scientists, as "some speculation"?

Another of FTW's prognosticators, Colin Campbell, is described by
Ruppert as "perhaps the world's foremost expert on oil." He was asked by
Ruppert, in an interview, "what would you say to the people who insist
that oil is created from magma ...?" Before we get to Campbell's answer,
we should first take note of the tone of Ruppert's question. It is not
really meant as a question at all, but rather as a statement, as in
"there is really nothing you can say that will satisfy these nutcases
who insist on bringing up these loony theories."
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html)

Campbell's response to the question was an interesting one: "No one in
the industry gives the slightest credence to these theories." Why, one
wonders, did Mr. Campbell choose to answer the question on behalf of the
petroleum industry? And does it come as a surprise to anyone that the
petroleum industry doesn't want to acknowledge abiotic theories of
petroleum origins? Should we have instead expected something along these
lines?:

"Hey, everybody ... uhhh ... you know how we always talked about oil
being a fossil fuel? And ... uhmm ... you know how the entire profit
structure of our little industry here is built upon the presumption that
oil is a non-renewable, and therefore very valuable, resource*? And
remember all those times we talked about shortages so that we could
gouge you at the pumps? Well ... guess what, America? You've been
Punk'd!"

For the sake of accuracy, I think we need to modify Mr. Campbell's
response, because it should probably read: no one in the petroleum
industry will publicly admit giving any credence to abiotic theories.
But is there really any doubt that those who own and control the oil
industry are well aware of the true origins of oil? How could they not
be?

Surely there must be a reason why there appears to be so little interest
in understanding the nature and origins of such a valuable, and
allegedly vanishing, resource. And that reason can only be that the
answers are already known. The objective, of course, is to ensure that
the rest of us don't find those answers. Why else would we be
encouraged, for decades, to cling tenaciously to a scientific theory
that can't begin to explain the available scientific evidence? And why
else would a half-century of research never see the light of day in
Western scientific and academic circles?

Maintaining the myth of scarcity, you see, is all important. Without it,
the house of cards comes tumbling down. And yet, even while striving to
preserve that myth, the petroleum industry will continue to provide the
oil and gas needed to maintain a modern industrial infrastructure, long
past the time when we should have run out of oil. And needless to say,
the petroleum industry will also continue to reap the enormous profits
that come with the myth of scarcity.

How will that difficult balancing act be performed? That is where, it
appears, the 'limited hangout' concerning abiotic oil will come into
play.

Perhaps the most telling quote to emerge from all of this came from
Roger Sassen, identified as the deputy director of Resource Geosciences,
a research group out of Texas A&M University: "The potential that
inorganic hydrocarbons, especially methane and a few other gasses, might
exist at enormous depth in the crust is an idea that could use a little
more discussion. However, not from people who take theories to the point
of absurdity. This is an idea that needs to be looked into at some point
as we start running out of energy. But no one who is objective discusses
the issue at this time."

The key point there (aside from Sassen's malicious characterization of
Kenney) is his assertion that no one is discussing abiotic oil at this
time. And why is that? Because, you see, we first have to go through the
charade of pretending that the world has just about run out of
'conventional' oil reserves, thus justifying massive price hikes, which
will further pad the already obscenely high profits of the oil industry.
Only then will it be fully acknowledged that there is, you know, that
'other' oil.

"We seem to have plum run out of that fossil fuel that y'all liked so
much, but if you want us to, we could probably find you some mighty fine
inorganic stuff. You probably won't even notice the difference. The only
reason that we didn't mention it before is that - and may God strike me
dead if I'm lying - it is a lot more work for us to get to it. So after
we charged you up the wazoo for the 'last' of the 'conventional' oil,
we're now gonna have to charge you even more for this really 'special'
oil. And with any luck at all, none of you will catch on that it's
really the same oil."

And that, dear readers, is how I see this little game playing out. Will
you be playing along?


A few final comments are in order here about 'Peak Oil' and the attacks
of September 11, 2001, which Ruppert has repeatedly claimed are closely
linked. In a recent posting, he bemoaned the fact that activists are
willing to "Do anything but accept the obvious reality that for the US
government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attacks of 9/11,
something really, really bad must be going on." That something really,
really bad, of course, is 'Peak Oil.'
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/013004_in_your_face.html)

To demonstrate the dubious nature of that statement, all one need do is
make a couple of quick substitutions, so that it reads: "for the German
government to have facilitated and orchestrated the attack on the
Reichstag, something really, really bad must have been going on." Or, if
you are the type that bristles at comparisons of Bush to Hitler, try
this one: "for the US government to have facilitated and orchestrated
the attack on the USS Maine, something really, really bad must have been
going on."

The reality is that the attacks of September 11, and the post-September
11 military ventures, cannot possibly be manifestations of 'Peak Oil'
because the entire concept of "Peak Oil' is meaningless if oil is not a
finite resource. I am not saying, however, that oil and gas were not key
factors behind the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The
distinction that I am making is that it is not about need (case in
point: there is certainly nothing in Haiti that we need). It is, as
always, about greed. Greed and control -- control of the output of oil
fields that will continue to yield oil long after reserves should have
run dry.

One final note, this one directed at Michael Ruppert: I of course accept
your challenge to participate in a public debate. However, I fail to see
any benefit in limiting the audience of that debate to a "mutually
acceptable panel of judges." I suggest we make this a truly public
debate, available to anyone who wants to follow along. The debate, in
other words, has already begun. Consider this my opening argument.

By the way, this isn't about 'winning,' and it isn't about a 'purse.'
It's about the free and open exchange of ideas and information. It's
about the pursuit of the truth, wherever that path may lead. And it's
about presenting all the available information to readers, so that each
of them can determine, for themselves, where that truth lies. To
demonstrate my commitment to those goals, I will gladly post, exactly as
it is received, any response/rebuttal to this missive that you should
feel inclined to send my way. I will leave it to my readers to decide
who 'wins' this debate. Will you be extending the same courtesy to your
readers?



* There is a close parallel here with the diamond industry. It is a
relatively open secret that the diamond market is an artificial one,
created by an illusion of scarcity actively cultivated by DeBeers, which
has monopolized the diamond industry for generations. As Ernest
Oppenheimer of DeBeers said, nearly a century ago, "Common sense tells
us that the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them
scarce -- that is, reduce production." An

If the planet could create oil as quickly as the author implies, wouldn't it have been oozing oil for the past 100 billion years? After all, we didn't start taking it out of the ground until about 150 years ago.

If the planet could create oil as quickly as the author implies, how could US oil production have peaked in the early 1970s? Wouldn't the American wells be refilled by now?

McGowan slumbers in the Consensus Trance.

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

and, we would not see oil fields "peak" at all in extraction numbers.
There hasn't been a SINGLE and confirmed case where an oil field
"refilled" itself from deeper wells.

This is the classic, pro-oil company arguement believe it or not...

Even if we assumed his theory is correct that oil is currently being made deep within the earth and oil fields replenished in an ongoing process, just how long are we supposed to wait before the US oil fields (or any other fields that are now depleted and past peak) are producing at their peak rates again? Considering the forecasted increase in demand from the West and Asia they better get refilled pretty darn quickly if it's going to do us any good, especially considering that the rates of discovery of new oil (whether it is from organic sources or not) is nowhere enough to keep pace with consumption.

Most "skeptics" are blithering idiots. This one, Dave McGowan, looks like he knows his ass from a ... from an oil well. And Mike Ruppert is given to theatrics, exaggeration, and imprecise rhetoric.

Still, I think the evidence is on the side of the doomcriers.

McGowan's argument against "Peak Oil" is based on the theory that petroleum is not a non-renewable resource, but is continually produced by an inorganic process that converts carbon into petroleum at high pressure and temperature. Even here McGowan skirts a very unpleasant issue: If oil is renewable, is its rate of renewal high enough to support our oil-dependent civilization? One of the major problems I forsee comes from the fact that economic growth and oil demand growth are coupled. Currently the rate is around 2.5%-3.0% per year.

I completely agree that it isn't need, but greed, that runs the engines of industry -- but in an economy that requires growth as the solution to every problem, we are going to soon start hitting natural limits of consumption anyway. I wish McGowan had spent more time on this issue than on his smug mockery of the "dinosaur juice" theory of oil.

And Ruppert has never yet presented an argument without couching it in the most dramatic, sinister, conspiracy-themed terms imaginable. It seems, as McGowan states, that Ruppert's main focus is on scaring people, then charging them $35 for elite access to his top-secret reports. But the dangers of the race between energy and economic growth is far from bullshit, as McGowan calls it.

Need may be ignored by business, but greed is irrelevant to the resource being exploited. Inorganic processes don't care about human attitudes and no matter how it happens, an energy crisis is an energy crisis.

--bkl

will check both sites for further delevopment.

dp

McGowan makes some interesting suggestions. He only cites one statistical example of an oilfield that has increased production.

Having traded my Tahoe for a VW, I am not convinced by his point. I could see however his position that oil interests could be exploiting Peak Oil to justify price increases, but then strangely enough, exploration costs have increased too.

While there is certainly an argument to be made that oil and gas is being generated by the earth even now, why then do we have to keep drilling ever deeper to find it?

This sounds like the same argument that fewer dry holes are being drilled than before ergo, there is more oil! This ignores improvements in predicting the location of oil prior to drilling.

If indeed the oil field off Louisiana is so huge, why are we involved at all with the Middle East?

Still, it's good to get an opposing view of the issue. It would be even better if McGowan turns out to be right.

But until it is so, I would suggest turning out the lights when you leave the room.

what dog does McGowan have in this race?

I'd much rather read the debate between Ruppert and McGowan or was the above the debate?

aren't debates back and forth conversation? this seemed like a position paper.

with a pannel of judges to decide the winner. McGowan's attitude appears to be, why do we need to wait while we go through the formal procedure of setting up a live debate? It appears he would prefer to conduct a debate by having Ruppert and himself email each other with their arguments and rebuttals and post them on their respective web sites. In fact he stated that this newsletter of his should be considered his opening argument and it's now up to Ruppert to rebutt.

Here's what McGowan wrote in the closing paragraphs of his newsletter (see first post in thread).

One final note, this one directed at Michael Ruppert: I of course accept your challenge to participate in a public debate. However, I fail to see any benefit in limiting the audience of that debate to a "mutually acceptable panel of judges." I suggest we make this a truly public debate, available to anyone who wants to follow along. The debate, in other words, has already begun. Consider this my opening argument.

By the way, this isn't about 'winning,' and it isn't about a 'purse.' It's about the free and open exchange of ideas and information. It's about the pursuit of the truth, wherever that path may lead. And it's
about presenting all the available information to readers, so that each of them can determine, for themselves, where that truth lies. To demonstrate my commitment to those goals, I will gladly post, exactly as it is received, any response/rebuttal to this missive that you should feel inclined to send my way. I will leave it to my readers to decide who 'wins' this debate. Will you be extending the same courtesy to your readers?

a fucking loon. the debate is a pointless exercise that has nothing to do with whether this "peak oil" business has any merit. i'll admit i'm not very familiar with the "peak oil" thing. i'm just assuming it's to do with maximum rates of extraction, though i think that might be a bit naive.

anyway, this is like trying to argue ocean currents with a flat-earther. it's not a real debate, it's a joke.

nt