Confessions of an "ex" Peak Oil Believer

[Editor's Note: Jan. 22, 2008. If you've been following the Peak Oil scam since CIA family man Michael Ruppert helped launched this Tavistock disinformation campaign about four yeas ago in league with Ford Foundation-funded Amy Goodman , most Pacifica radio stations, NPR radio, and sundry mainstream outlets, you can realize just how satisfying it is to read an article titled "Confessions of an "ex" Peak Oil Believer." Thankfully, bulldog investigative journalist Dave McGowan jumped on this story early and hasn't released his iron jaw grip on Ruppert's thigh or that of any other downstream disinformation cohorts who have attempted to buttress the Peak Oil caper since Ruppert's ignominious flight from this country a couple of years ago. Of course, the Peak Oil hoax, along with its cousin Global Warming, is still in its ascendancy and we don't expect to soon hear mea culpas echoing from Nightline, Jim Leher, Charlie Rose, Frontline, or the growing ranks of Peak Oil promoting authors filling the talk show circuit on the radio or the internet, but it is a step in the right direction and should serve to remind readers that steadfastly holding to the facts, will eventually pierce the mind wash of propaganda, no matter how well funded or widely distributed it may be. If you realize that Peak Oil and Global Warming are orchestrated propaganda hoaxes, then you need to do your part to break the cycle of this brain infection. At the very least, whenever your friends express alarm or anxiety over some aspect of the Peak OIl/Global Warming 'threat', tell them it's an orchestrated scare campaign, and no, you aren't a Bush supporter or oil company cheer leader. You can determine just how badly they are infected with the propaganda virus by gauging the vehemence of their retort to your statements. If they jump up and down and go berserk about how 'naive' you are and how the polar bears are slipping into extinction from lack of ice flows to stand on, etc., etc., then you know they got it pretty bad and will need massive doses of Tavistock propaganda Reality antibiotics which can be found in plentiful supply at www.edcuate-yourself.org, Prison Planet, Dave McGowan, rense.com and similar web sites. The consequences to your wallet, freedom, and privacy are much larger than you may suspect if you remain silent and allow this infection to spread to every schoolchild, school teacher, and environmentally-conscious, but undiscerning individual throughout the land. Of course, we want to curb oil-related pollution and get out from under the unnecessary dependence on oil fuels. Of course, we want to end oil spills and the abuse of oil companies against native people in their own countries. Of course, we want to prevent oil companies from ripping us off at the gas pump with wholly contrived excuses, which include the War on Terror, Peak Oil, refinery 'shutdowns' from engineered hurricanes, the Iraq War, etc, etc. We don't NEED to depend on what is called "fossil" fuels (petroleum does NOT come from decaying dinosaurs or vegetation), as there are plenty of 'fuel' technologies based on water. That's right, plentiful, and abundant, you-can-find-it- anywhere WATER. What! Water! "Are you crazy?" ..."I've never heard of using water as a 'fuel'?' "What are you talking about?" Of course you haven't heard anything about water as a fuel, but you've heard a great deal about the looming Peak Oil/Global Warming "crisis", haven't you? Now, who do you suppose arranged that? ...Ken Adachi]

By F. William Engdahl http://educate-yourself.org/cn/confessionsexpeakoilbeliever14sep07.shtml September 14, 2007 Confessions of an "ex" Peak Oil Believer by F. Willaim Engdahl (Jan. 22, 2008) http://www.rense.com/general78/expeak.htm The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil anytime soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist. On a personal note, Ive researched questions of petroleum, since the first oil shocks of the 1970s. I was intrigued in 2003 with something called Peak Oil theory. It seemed to explain the otherwise inexplicable decision by Washington to risk all in a military move on Iraq. Peak Oil advocates, led by former BP geologist Colin Campbell, and Texas banker Matt Simmons, argued that the world faced a new crisis, an end to cheap oil, or Absolute Peak Oil, perhaps by 2012, perhaps by 2007. Oil was supposedly on its last drops. They pointed to our soaring gasoline and oil prices, to the declines in output of North Sea and Alaska and other fields as proof they were right. According to Campbell, the fact that no new North Sea-size fields had been discovered since the North Sea in the late 1960s was proof. He reportedly managed to convince the International Energy Agency and the Swedish government. That, however, does not prove him correct.

Intellectual fossils?
The Peak Oil school rests its theory on conventional Western geology textbooks, most by American or British geologists, which claim oil is a fossil fuel, a biological residue or detritus of either fossilized dinosaur remains or perhaps algae, hence a product in finite supply. Biological origin is central to Peak Oil theory, used to explain why oil is only found in certain parts of the world where it was geologically trapped millions of years ago. That would mean that, say, dead dinosaur remains became compressed and over tens of millions of years fossilized and trapped in underground reservoirs perhaps 4-6,000 feet below the surface of the earth. In rare cases, so goes the theory, huge amounts of biological matter should have been trapped in rock formations in the shallower ocean offshore as in the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea or Gulf of Guinea. Geology should be only about figuring out where these pockets in the layers of the earth , called reservoirs, lie within certain sedimentary basins. An entirely alternative theory of oil formation has existed since the early 1950s in Russia, almost unknown to the West. It claims conventional American biological origins theory is an unscientific absurdity that is un-provable. They point to the fact that western geologists have repeatedly predicted finite oil over the past century, only to then find more, lots more. Not only has this alternative explanation of the origins of oil and gas existed in theory. The emergence of Russia and prior of the USSR as the worlds largest oil producer and natural gas producer has been based on the application of the theory in practice. This has geopolitical consequences of staggering magnitude.

Necessity: the mother of invention In the 1950s the Soviet Union faced Iron Curtain isolation from the West. The Cold War was in high gear. Russia had little oil to fuel its economy. Finding sufficient oil indigenously was a national security priority of the highest order. Scientists at the Institute of the Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Ukraine Academy of Sciences began a fundamental inquiry in the late 1940s: where does oil come from? In 1956, Prof. Vladimir Porfiryev announced their conclusions: Crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths. The Soviet geologists had turned Western orthodox geology on its head. They called their theory of oil origin the a-biotic theory non-biological to distinguish from the Western biological theory of origins. If they were right, oil supply on earth would be limited only by the amount of hydrocarbon constituents present deep in the earth at the time of the earths formation. Availability of oil would depend only on technology to drill ultra-deep wells and explore into the earths inner regions. They also realized old fields could be revived to continue producing, so called selfreplenishing fields. They argued that oil is formed deep in the earth, formed in conditions of very high temperature and very high pressure, like that required for diamonds to form. Oil is a primordial material of deep origin which is transported at high pressure via cold eruptive processes into the crust of the earth, Porfiryev stated. His team dismissed the idea that oil is biological residue of plant and animal fossil remains as a hoax designed to perpetuate the myth of limited supply.

Defying conventional geology

That radically different Russian and Ukrainian scientific approach to the discovery of oil allowed the USSR to develop huge gas and oil discoveries in regions previously judged unsuitable, according to Western geological exploration theories, for presence of oil. The new petroleum theory was used in the early 1990s, well after the dissolution of the USSR, to drill for oil and gas in a region believed for more than forty-five years, to be geologically barren the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the region between Russia and Ukraine. Following their a-biotic or non-fossil theory of the deep origins of petroleum, the Russian and Ukrainian petroleum geophysicists and chemists began with a detailed analysis of the tectonic history and geological structure of the crystalline basement of the Dnieper-Donets Basin. After a tectonic and deep structural analysis of the area, they made geophysical and geochemical investigations. A total of sixty one wells were drilled, of which thirty seven were commercially productive, an extremely impressive exploration success rate of almost sixty percent. The size of the field discovered compared with the North Slope of Alaska. By contrast, US wildcat drilling was considered successful with a ten percent success rate. Nine of ten wells are typically dry holes. That Russian geophysics experience in finding oil and gas was tightly wrapped in the usual Soviet veil of state security during the Cold War era, and went largely unknown to Western geophysicists, who continued to teach fossil origins and, hence, the severe physical limits of petroleum. Slowly it began to dawn on some strategists in and around the Pentagon well after 3

the 2003 Iraq war that the Russian geophysicists might be on to something of profound strategic importance. If Russia had the scientific know-how and Western geology not, Russia possessed a strategic trump card of staggering geopolitical import. It was not surprising that Washington would go about erecting a wall of steel a network of military bases and ballistic anti-missile shields around Russia, to cut her pipeline and port links to Western Europe, China and the rest of Eurasia. Halford Mackinders worst nightmare a cooperative convergence of mutual interests of the major states of Eurasia, born of necessity and need for oil to fuel economic growth was emerging. Ironically, it was the blatant US grab for the vast oil riches of Iraq and, potentially, of Iran, that catalyzed closer cooperation between traditional Eurasian foes, China and Russia, and a growing realization in Western Europe that their options too were narrowing.

The Peak King

Peak Oil theory is based on a 1956 paper done by the late Marion King Hubbert, a Texas geologist working for Shell Oil. He argued that oil wells produced in a bell curve manner, and once their peak was hit, inevitable decline followed. He predicted the United States oil production would peak in 1970. A modest man, he named the production curve he invented, Hubberts Curve, and the peak as Hubberts Peak. When US oil output began to decline in around 1970 Hubbert gained a certain fame. The only problem was, it peaked not because of resource depletion in the US fields. It peaked because Shell, Mobil, Texaco and the other partners of Saudi Aramco were flooding the US market with dirt cheap Middle East imports, tariff free, at prices so low California and many Texas domestic producers could not compete and were forced to shut their wells. While the American oil multinationals were busy controlling the easily accessible large fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and other areas of cheap, abundant oil during the 1960s, the Russians were busy testing their alternative theory. They began drilling in a supposedly barren region of Siberia. There they developed eleven major oil fields and one Giant field based on their deep a-biotic geological estimates. They drilled into crystalline basement rock and hit black gold of a scale comparable to the Alaska North Slope.

Viet Nam Success

They then went to Vietnam in the 1980s and offered to finance drilling costs to show their new geological theory worked. The Russian company Petrosov drilled in Vietnams White Tiger oilfield offshore into basalt rock some 17,000 feet down and extracted 6,000 barrels a day of oil to feed the energy-starved Vietnam economy. In the USSR, a-biotic-trained Russian geologists perfected their knowledge and the USSR emerged as the worlds largest oil producer by the mid-1980s. Few in the West understood why, or bothered to ask. Dr. J. F. Kenney is one of the only few Western geophysicists who has taught and worked in Russia, studying under Vladilen Krayushkin, who developed the huge Dnieper-Donets Basin. Kenney told me in a recent interview that alone to have produced the amount of oil to date that (Saudi Arabias) Ghawar field has produced would have required a cube of fossilized dinosaur detritus, assuming 100% conversion efficiency, measuring 19 miles deep, wide and high. In short, an absurdity.

Western geologists do not bother to offer hard scientific proof of fossil origins. They merely assert as a holy truth. The Russians have produced volumes of scientific papers, most in Russian. The dominant Western journals have no interest in publishing such a revolutionary view. Careers, entire academic professions are at stake after all.

Closing the door

The 2003 arrest of Russian Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of Yukos Oil, took place just before he could sell a dominant stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil after a private meeting with Dick Cheney. Had Exxon got the stake they would have control of the worlds largest resource of geologists and engineers trained in the a-biotic techniques of deep drilling. Since 2003 Russian scientific sharing of their knowledge has markedly lessened. Offers in the early 1990s to share their knowledge with US and other oil geophysicists were met with cold rejection according to American geophysicists involved. Why then the high-risk war to control Iraq? For a century US and allied Western oil giants have controlled world oil via control of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Nigeria. Today, as many giant fields are declining, the companies see the state-controlled oilfields of Iraq and Iran as the largest remaining base of cheap, easy oil. With the huge demand for oil from China and now India, it becomes a geopolitical imperative for the United States to take direct, military control of those Middle East reserves as fast as possible. Vice President Dick Cheney, came to the job from Halliburton Corp., the worlds largest oil geophysical services company. The only potential threat to that US control of oil just happens to lie inside Russia and with the now-state-controlled Russian energy giants. Hmmmm. According to Kenney the Russian geophysicists used the theories of the brilliant German scientist Alfred Wegener fully 30 years before the Western geologists discovered Wegener in the 1960s. In 1915 Wegener published the seminal text, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, which suggested an original unified landmass or pangaea more than 200 million years ago which separated into present Continents by what he called Continental Drift. Up to the 1960s supposed US scientists such as Dr Frank Press, White House science advisor referred to Wegener as lunatic. Geologists at the end of the 1960s were forced to eat their words as Wegener offered the only interpretation that allowed them to discover the vast oil resources of the North Sea. Perhaps in some decades Western geologists will rethink their mythology of fossil origins and realize what the Russians have known since the 1950s. In the meantime Moscow holds a massive energy trump card.

Scientific Evidence Debunks Peak Oil Hoax

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/index.cfm
Dismissal of the Claims of a Biological Connection for Natural Petroleum (Scientific Paper Published In 'Energia')

1. Introduction
With recognition that the laws of thermodynamics prohibit spontaneous evolution of liquid hydrocarbons in the regime of temperature and pressure characteristic of the crust of the 5

Earth, one should not expect there to exist legitimate scientific evidence that might suggest that such could occur. Indeed, and correctly, there exists no such evidence. Nonetheless, and surprisingly, there continue to be often promulgated diverse claims purporting to constitute "evidence" that natural petroleum somehow evolves (miraculously) from biological matter. In this short article, such claims are briefly subjected to scientific scrutiny, demonstrated to be without merit, and dismissed. The claims which purport to argue for some connection between natural petroleum and biological matter fall into roughly two classes: the "look-like/come-from" claims; and the "similar(recondite)-properties/come-from" claims. The "look-like/come-from" claims apply a line of unreason exactly as designated: Such argue that, because certain molecules found in natural petroleum "look like" certain other molecules found in biological systems, then the former must "come-from" the latter. Such notion is, of course, equivalent to asserting that elephant tusks evolve because those animals must eat piano keys. In some instances, the "look-like/come-from" claims assert that certain molecules found in natural petroleum actually are biological molecules, and evolve only in biological systems. These molecules have often been given the spurious name "biomarkers." The scientific correction must be stated unequivocally: There have never been observed any specifically biological molecules in natural petroleum, except as contaminants. Petroleum is an excellent solvent for carbon compounds; and, in the sedimentary strata from which petroleum is often produced, natural petroleum takes into solution much carbon material, including biological detritus. However, such contaminants are unrelated to the petroleum solvent. The claims about "biomarkers" have been thoroughly discredited by observations of those molecules in the interiors of ancient, abiotic meteorites, and also in many cases by laboratory synthesis under imposed conditions mimicking the natural environment. In the discussion below, the claims put forth about porphyrin and isoprenoid molecules are addressed particularly, because many "look-like/come-from" claims have been put forth for those compounds. The "similar (recondite)-properties/come-from" claims involve diverse, odd phenomena with which persons not working directly in a scientific profession would be unfamiliar. These include the "odd-even abundance imbalance" claims, the "carbon isotope" claims, and the "optical-activity" claims. The first, the "odd-even abundance imbalance" claims, are demonstrated to be utterly unrelated to any biological property. The second, "carbon isotope" claims, are shown to depend upon measurement of an obscure property of carbon fluids which cannot reliably be considered a measure of origin. The third, the "optical-activity" claims, deserve particular note; for the observations of optical activity in natural petroleum have been trumpeted loudly for years as a "proof" of some "biological origin" of petroleum. Those claims have been thoroughly discredited decades ago by observation of optical activity in the petroleum material extracted from the interiors of carbonaceous meteorites. 6

More significantly, recent analysis, which has resolved the previously-outstanding problem of the genesis of optical activity in abiotic fluids, has established that the phenomenon of optical activity is an inevitable thermodynamic consequence of the phase stability of multicomponent fluids at high pressures. Thereby, the observation of optical activity in natural petroleum is entirely consistent with the results of the thermodynamic analysis of the stability of the hydrogen-carbon [H-C] system, which establish that hydrocarbon molecules heavier than methane, and particularly liquid hydrocarbons, evolve spontaneously only at high pressures, comparable to those necessary for diamond formation. There are two subjects which are particularly relevant for destroying the diverse, spurious claims concerning a putative connection of petroleum and biological matter: the investigations of the carbon material from carbonaceous meteorites; and the reaction products of the Fischer-Tropsch process. Because of their importance, a brief discussion of both is in order.

1.1 The carbonaceous meteorites.

The carbonaceous meteorites, including particularly the carbonaceous chondrites, are meteorites whose chemical composition includes carbon in quantities ranging from a few tenths of a percent to approximately six percent, by mass.1-5 The age of the carbonaceous meteorites is typically 3-4.5 billion years; and their origins clearly abiotic. The mineral structures in these rocks establish that the carbonaceous meteorites have existed at very low temperatures, much below the freezing point of water, effectively since the time of their original formation. Such thermal history of the carbonaceous meteorites eliminates any probability that there ever existed on them life, or biological matter.6 The evidence obtained from scientific investigations of the carbon material in carbonaceous meteorites has destroyed many claims which assert a biological connection between natural petroleum and biological matter. Significantly, much of the carbon material of the carbonaceous meteorites consists of hydrocarbons, as both solids and in liquid form.1, 5, 7, 8 However, the petroleum material contained in carbonaceous meteorites cannot be considered to be the origin of the natural petroleum found in the near-surface crust of the Earth. The heating which inevitably accompanied the impact process during the accretion of meteorites into the Earth at the time of its formation would almost certainly have caused decomposition of most of their contained hydrocarbon molecules. The carbonaceous meteorites provided the Earth with its carbon (albeit much of it delivered in the form of hydrocarbons) but not its hydrocarbons or natural petroleum. (The processes by which hydrocarbons evolve from the native materials of the Earth are described, and demonstrated, in the following article.)

1.2 The Fischer-Tropsch process.

The Fischer-Tropsch process is the best-known industrial technique for the synthesis of hydrocarbons, and has been used for more than seventy-five years. The Fischer-Tropsch process reacts carbon monoxide and hydrogen at synthesis conditions of approximately 150 bar and 700 K, in the presence of ThO2, MgO, Al2O3, MnO, clays, and the catalysts Ni, Co, and Fe. 7

The reactions are as follow: When a Ni-Co catalyst is used, the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis proceeds according to the reaction When a Fe catalyst is used, the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis proceeds according to the reaction

The yield of the Fischer-Tropsch process is approximately 200 g of hydrocarbons from 1 m3 of CO and H2 mixture. During World War II, the production of liquid fuels by the FischerTropsch process was used extensively in Germany; approximately 600,000 t of synthetic gasoline were synthesized in 1943. The reaction products of the Fischer-Tropsch process are only metastable in the thermodynamic conditions of their synthesis; at pressures of approximately only 150 bar and 700 K, the destruction of liquid hydrocarbons is inevitable. During the industrial FischerTropsch process, the reaction products are promptly cooled and moved to conditions of lower pressure. The natural environment does not mimic the highly-controlled, and highly-regulated, industrial, Fischer-Tropsch process. The Fischer-Tropsch process cannot be considered for the generation of natural petroleum. 2. The specious "biomarker" claims: The irrelevancy of the presence in petroleum of porphyrins, - and similarly of isoprenoids, pristane, phytane, clorins, terpines, cholestane, etc. One may read, in almost every textbook published in the English language purporting to deal with the subject of petroleum geology, diverse claims made that the presence of certain molecules found in natural petroleum constitute "evidence," or even "proof," that the petroleum evolved from biological matter. Such molecules, claimed as evidence of a biological connection, include such as porphyrins, isoprenoids, pristane, phytane, cholestane, terpines, and clorins. Closer investigations have proven such claims to be groundless. Pristane and phytane are simply branched alkanes of the isoprenoid class. Cholestane, C27H48, is a true, highly-reduced hydrocarbon, but is not to be confused with the oxidized, biotic, molecule cholesterol. Cholestane and cholesterol have similar geometric structures, and share similar carbon skeletons; there the similarity ends. Cholestane is a constituent of natural petroleum; cholesterol is not. Significantly, the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis produces isoprenoids, including phytane and pristine. Material of truly biogenic origin, such as fossil spores or pollen, is indeed often observed in petroleum, - and too often mislabeled as "biomarkers," supposedly indicating a connection between the natural petroleum and biological material. Careful investigation has established that such material has been leached into solution by the crude oil from buried organic matter in the (typically sedimentary) reservoir rocks from which the oil has been taken.9, 10 Contrarily, the indisputably biological material, such as spores and pollen, found in petroleum can be considered as "abiomarkers" of petroleum origin. For examples, crude oil found in reservoir rocks of the Permian age always contain not only spores and pollen of the Permian age but also spores and pollen of older ages, such as, for example, the Carboniferous, Devonian and Precambrian in petroleum investigated in Tatarstan, Russia. In the same region and in other portions of the Volga-Urals geological province, crude oils in the Carbonaceous sediments are characterized with concentrations of spores of Carbonaceous-throughPrecambrian ages, and crudes in the Devonian sandstones with spores of Devonian-throughPrecambrian ages.9, 11 8

The types of porphyrins, isoprenoids, terpines, and clorins found in natural petroleum have been observed in material extracted from the interiors of no fewer than fifty-four meteorites, including amphoteric meteorites (Chainpur, Ngavi, Semarkona), bronze chondrites (Charis, Ghubara, Kulp, Tieschitz), carbonaceous chondrites of all four petrological classes (Alais, Bali, Bells, Cold Bockeveld, Eracot, Felix, Groznaia, Haripura, Ivuna, Kaba, Kainsaz, Karoonda, Lance, Mighei, Mokoia, Murchison, Murrey, Orgueil, Ornans, Pseudo, Renazzo, Santa Cruz, St.Capraix, Staroye Boriskino, Tonk, Vigarano, Warrenton), enstatite meteorites (Abee, Hvittis, Indarkh), hypersthene chondrites (Bishunpur, Bruderheim, Gallingebirge, Holbrook, Homestead, Krymka), iron meteorites (Arus (Yardymli), Burgavli, Canyon Diabolo, Odessa, Toluca), aubrite meteorites (Norton County), and ureilite meteorites (Dyalpur, Goalpara, Novo Urei).9, 12, 13 The observations of such molecules in meteorites thoroughly discredited the claims that their presence in natural petroleum might somehow constitute evidence of a biological connection. Because especially strenuous (and especially erroneous) claims are often made particularly about the porphyrins observed in natural petroleum, those molecules will be discussed in modest detail. Porphyrins comprise a class of molecules designated cyclic ionopheres, a special class of polydentate ligands for metals. Porphyrins are heavy, approximately planar, chelating molecules, found in both biotic and abiotic systems. Several porphyrin molecules are of special biological significance: vitamin B12; chlorophyll, the porphyrin which is the agent of the photosynthesis process in plants; and the heme molecule, the porphyrin component of the protein hemoglobin which is responsible for the transport of oxygen in mammalian blood. As an example of the high molecular weight of porphyrins, hemoglobin has the empirical chemical formula, [C738H1166O208N203S2Fe] 4. Neither vitamin B12, nor chlorophyll, nor heme (nor hemoglobin), nor any biotic porphyrin has ever been observed as a component of natural petroleum. The porphyrin molecules found in natural petroleum possess different side-groups than do those of chlorophyll or heme. The central chelated metal element in chlorophyll is always magnesium; in heme, it is iron. In porphyrin molecules found in natural petroleum, the central chelated metal element is typically vanadium or nickel. As stated, porphyrin molecules evolve both biologically and abiologically. During the 1960's and 1970's, porphyrin molecules, which are the same as those found in terrestrial natural petroleum, were observed in the hydrocarbon fluids extracted from the interiors of carbonaceous meteorites. The observations of petroleum-type porphyrins in the hydrocarbon fluids extracted from the interiors of carbonaceous meteorites destroyed, a fortiori, the claims that such molecules constitute "evidence" for a connection of petroleum with biological matter. Additionally, after the observations of porphyrins in carbonaceous meteorites, those petroleum-type porphyrins were synthesized abiologically in the laboratory under chemical and thermodynamic conditions specially set to mimic the abiotic conditions in meteorites.8, 14 The "porphyrin evidence" claims were destroyed by the investigations of carbonaceous meteorites approximately thirty years ago, and are well known throughout the community of scientists working in the field of petroleum. Every compound designated as a "biomarker," and not otherwise identified as a contaminant, has been either observed in the fluids extracted from the interiors of meteorites, or synthesized in laboratories under conditions comparable to the crust of the Earth, or both. 9

Such scientific facts, and the general knowledge of same, not withstanding, every textbook published in the English language purportedly dealing with the subject of petroleum geology, including the ones cited above, continues to repeat the old discredited claims that the presence of (abiotic) porphyrins in natural petroleum provide evidence for its origin from biological matter.15-17 Such assertions, thirty years after having been demonstrated scientifically insupportable, must be acknowledged to be intellectual fraud, pure and simple. 3. The "odd-even" abundance claims, - involving the small imbalance of the relative abundances of linear hydrocarbon molecules containing an odd number of carbon atoms, compared to homologous ones containing an even number. The claims concerning the imbalance of linear molecules containing odd and even numbers, respectively, of carbon atoms is another of the genre of "the constituents of natural petroleum 'have the same properties as' the constituents of biological systems, in such-or-so a way, and therefore petroleum must have evolved from biological matter." No intelligent teenage student at, for examples, a Russian, German, Dutch, or Swiss gymnasium, would accept such reasoning. Nonetheless, such claims are commonly put forth in English-language textbooks purporting to deal with petroleum geology. Such claims are herewith shown to be without merit and insupportable. Fig. 1 Symbolic representation of a molecule of normal octane, n-C8H18. See http://www.gasresources.net/DisposalBioClaims.htm Natural petroleum is a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules of several classes. The most common class of molecules in petroleum is that of the normal alkanes, or n-alkanes, which have the chemical formula CnH2n+2 and a chain-like structure (as noted in the first article). For example, n-octane, C8H18, has the structure shown schematically in Fig. 1. Correctly, the carbon atoms do not lie exactly along a straight line; a picture of n-octane which more accurately represents its geometric properties is shown in Fig. 2, where n-C8H18 is drawn as a "stick-&-ball" model. Nonetheless, in both figures, the linear chain-like aspect of the n-alkane molecule is shown clearly. Similarly as for cyclohexane as described in the first article, the hydrocarbon n-C8H18 is geometrically related to one or more biological molecules by substitution of some of the hydrogen atoms by OH radicals. Specifically, if one of the hydrogen atoms on each carbon atom in n-C8H18 were replaced by an OH radical, the resulting molecule, n-C8H18O8, would be a carbohydrate, as shown in Fig. 3, a simple sugar related to fructose (and whose chemical potential is approximately 2,500 cal lower than that of n-octane). Fig. 2 Stick & ball representation of a molecule of normal octane, n-C8H18. See http://www.gasresources.net/DisposalBioClaims.htm In a distribution of linear hydrocarbon molecules which comprise natural petroleum, the chain-like n-alkanes manifest a slight imbalance of abundances which favors molecules possessing an odd number of carbon atoms, as compared to those with an even number. Similarly, a distribution of linear biological molecules, such as the chain-like carbohydrates, manifests also a similar slight imbalance of molecules possessing an odd number of carbon atoms, again as compared to those with an even number. From this modest, and somewhat arcane, similarity of odd-to-even abundances, assertions have been made that hydrocarbons evolve from biological matter. Of course, the second law of thermodynamics prohibits such, which fact should obviate any such assertion. 10

Simple investigation of hydrocarbons generated from abiotic matter manifest also such oddto-even imbalance of molecular abundances for the linear molecules. The reaction products of the Fischer-Tropsch process manifest the same odd-to-even abundance imbalances of linear molecules as do both natural petroleum, as well as biological molecules. A specific example of the inevitable genesis of hydrocarbon molecules which manifest such odd-to-even abundance imbalances of linear molecules was demonstrated by Zemanian, Streett, and Zollweg more than fifteen years ago. Zemanian et al. demonstrated the genesis of heavy and liquid hydrocarbons at high pressures and temperatures from a mixture of methane and propane. Particularly, Zemanian et al. measured the relative abundances of the linear chain hydrocarbon molecules. Their observations, of the imbalance of abundances, and slight excess, of chain molecules with odd numbers of carbon atoms are quoted here (pp. 63-64):18 Fig. 3 The simple carbohydrate, n-C8H18O8. See http://www.gasresources.net/DisposalBioClaims.htm "These results are also notable when one considers the even-to-odd carbon number ratio of petroleum. One of the arguments for a biological origin of petroleum has been that these fluids generally show a small marked prevalence of odd numbered hydrocarbons. It is also well known that living organisms produce primarily odd numbered carbon [or carbohydrate] chains. Abiological processes have been presumed to produce even and odd numbered hydrocarbons in roughly equal concentrations. The results of this work demonstrate that presumption to be false. Both biological and abiological hydrocarbon chemistries favor reactions involving two carbons over single carbon reactions [leading to preferred reactants of odd-numbered chain molecules]." It deserves note that the "odd-even abundance-imbalance" claim, as "evidence" of a biological origin of hydrocarbon molecules, was rejected by competent physicists and statistical mechanicians, almost immediately when it was introduced. The odd-even abundance imbalance is simply a result of the directional property of the covalent bond together with the geometry of linear molecules. 4. The phenomenon of optical activity in natural petroleum: Evidence of an abiotic, highpressure genesis. Perhaps for reason of its historical provenance in fermented wine, the phenomenon of optical activity in fluids was for some time believed to have some intrinsic connection with biological processes or materials.20, 21 Such error persisted until the phenomenon of optical activity was observed in material extracted from the interiors of meteorites; some of which material had been believed previously to be uniquely of biotic origin. From the interiors of carbonaceous meteorites have been extracted the common amino-acid molecules alanine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, glycine, leusine, proline, serine, threonine, as well as the unusual ones a-aminoisobutyric acid, isovaline, pseudoleucine.22-24 At one time, all had been considered to be solely of biotic origin. The ages of the carbonaceous meteorites were determined to be 3-4.5 billion years, and their origins clearly abiotic. Therefore, those amino acids had to be recognized as compounds of both biological and abiological genesis. Furthermore, solutions of amino acid molecules from carbonaceous meteorites were observed to manifest optical activity. Thus was thoroughly discredited the notion that the phenomenon of optical activity in fluids (particularly those of carbon compounds) might have 11

any intrinsic connection with biotic matter. Significantly, the optical activity observed in the amino acids extracted from carbonaceous meteorites has not the characteristics of such of common biotic origin, with only one enantiomer present; instead, it manifests the characteristics observed in natural petroleum, with unbalanced, so-called scalemic, abundances of chiral molecules.25 The optical activity commonly observed in natural petroleum has been for years speciously claimed as "proof" of some connection with biological detritus, - albeit one requiring both a willing disregard of the considerable differences between the optical activity observed in natural petroleum and that in materials of truly biotic origin, such as wine, as well as desuetude of the dictates of the laws of thermodynamics. Optical activity is observed in minerals such as quartz or Iceland spar, as well as in oil, and among biological molecules. The optical activity observed in petroleum is more characteristic of the same in abiotic minerals, such as naturally occurring quartz, which are polycrystalline minerals, with a scalemic distribution of domains of left- and right-rotational properties. The chiral molecules in petroleum manifest scalemic distributions, and significantly lack the homochiral distribution which characterize biotic optically active matter. The optical activity in natural petroleum is characterized by either a right (positive, or dextrorotary) or left (negative, or levorotary) rotation of the plane of polarization. By contrast, in biological material left (levorotary) rotation dominates. The observation of optical activity in hydrocarbon material extracted from the interiors of carbonaceous meteorites, and typical of such in natural petroleum, discredited those claims.2, 26 Nonetheless, the scientific conundrum as to why the hydrocarbons manifest optical activity, in both carbonaceous meteorites and terrestrial crude oil remained unresolved until recently. The chiral molecules in natural petroleum originate from three distinct sources: contamination by biological detritus in the near-surface strata from which the oil has been taken; the biological alteration and degradation of the original oil by microbes which consume and metabolize oil; and the chiral hydrocarbon molecules which are intrinsic to the petroleum and generated with it. Only the last concerns the origin of petroleum. The genesis of the scalemic distribution of chiral molecules of natural petroleum has recently been shown to be a direct consequence of the chiral geometry of the system particles acting according to the laws of classical thermodynamics. The resolution of the problem of the origin of the scalemic distributions of chiral molecules in natural petroleum has been shown to be an inevitable consequence of their high-pressure genesis.19 Thus, the phenomenon of optical activity in natural petroleum, contrary to supporting any assertion of a biological connection, strongly confirms the high-pressure genesis of natural petroleum, and thereby the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. 5. The carbon isotope ratios, and their inadequacy as indicators of origin. The claims made concerning the carbon isotope ratios, and specifically such as purport to identify the origin of the material, particularly the hydrocarbons, are especially recondite and outside the experience of most persons not knowledgeable in the physics of hydrogen-carbon [H-C] systems. Furthermore, the claims concerning the carbon isotope ratios most often involve methane, the only hydrocarbon which is thermodynamically stable in the regime of temperatures and pressures of the Earth's crust, and the only one which spontaneously evolves there. 12

The carbon nucleus has two stable isotopes, 12C and 13C. The overwhelmingly most abundance stable isotope of carbon is 12C, which possesses six protons and six neutrons; 13C possesses an extra neutron. (There is another, unstable isotope, 14C, which possesses two extra neutrons; 14C results from a high-energy reaction of the nitrogen nucleus, 14N, with a high-energy cosmic ray particle. The isotope 14C is not involved in the claims about the isotope ratios of carbon.) The carbon isotope ratio, designated d13C, is simply the ratio of the abundance of carbon isotopes 13C/12C, normalized to the standard of the marine carbonate named Pee Dee Belemnite. The values of the measured d13C ratio is expressed as a percentage (compared to the standard). During the 1950's, increasingly numerous measurements of the carbon isotope ratios of hydrocarbon gases were taken, particularly of methane; and too often assertions were made that such ratios could unambiguously determine the origin of the hydrocarbons. The validity of such assertions were tested, independently by Colombo, Gazzarini, and Gonfiantini in Italy and by Galimov in Russia. Both sets of workers established that the carbon isotope ratios cannot be used reliably to determine the origin of the carbon compound tested. Colombo, Gazzarini, and Gonfiantini demonstrated conclusively, by a simple experiment the results of which admitted no ambiguity, that the carbon isotope ratios of methane change continuously along its transport path, becoming progressively lighter with distance traveled. Colombo et al. took a sample of natural gas and passed it through a column of crushed rock, chosen to resemble as closely as possible the terrestrial environment.27 Their results were definitive: The greater the distance of rock through which the sample of methane passes, the lighter becomes its carbon isotope ratio. The reason for the result observed by Colombo et al. is straightforward: there is a slight preference for the heavier isotope of carbon to react chemically with the rock through which the gas passes. Therefore, the greater the transit distance through the rock, the lighter becomes the carbon isotope ratio, as the heavier is preferentially removed by chemical reaction along the transport path. This result is not surprising; contrarily, such is entirely consistent with the fundamental requirements of quantum mechanics and kinetic theory. Pertinent to the matter of any claim that a light carbon isotope ratio might be indicative of a biological origin, the results demonstrated by Colombo et al. establish that such a claim is insupportable. Methane which might have originated from carbon material from the remains of a carbonaceous meteorite in the mantle of the Earth, and possessing initially a heavy carbon isotope ratio, could easily have that ratio diminished, along the path of its transit into the crust of the Earth, to a value comparable to common biological material. Galimov demonstrated that the carbon isotope ratio of methane can become progressively heavier while at rest in a reservoir in the crust of the Earth, through the action of methaneconsuming microbes.28 The city of Moscow stores methane in water-wet reservoirs on the outskirts of that city, into which natural gas is injected throughout the year. During summers, the quantity of methane in the reservoirs increases because of less use (primarily by heating), and during winters the quantity is drawn down. By calibrating the reservoir volumes and the distance from the injection facilities, the residency time of the methane in the reservoir is determined. Galimov established that the longer the methane remains in the reservoir, the heavier becomes its carbon isotope ratio.

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The reason for the result observed by Galimov is also straightforward: In the water of the reservoir, there live microbes of the common, methane-metabolizing type. There is a slight preference for the lighter isotope of carbon to enter the microbe cell and to be metabolized. The longer the methane remains in the reservoir, the more of it is consumed by the methanemetabolizing microbes, with the molecules possessing lighter isotope being consumed more. Therefore, the longer its residency time in the reservoir, the heavier becomes the carbon isotope ratio, as the lighter is preferentially removed by methane-metabolizing microbes. This result is entirely consistent with the fundamental requirements of kinetic theory. Furthermore, the carbon isotope ratios in hydrocarbon systems are also strongly influenced by the temperature of reaction. For hydrocarbons produced by the Fischer-Tropsch process, the d13C varies from -65% at 127 C to -20% at 177 C.29, 30 No material parameter, the measurement of which varies by almost 70% with a variation of temperature of only approximately 10%, can be used as a reliable determinant of any property of that material. The d13C carbon isotope ratio cannot be considered to determine reliably the origin of a sample of methane, - or any other compound.

6. Conclusion
The claims which have traditionally been put forward to argue a connection between natural petroleum and biological matter have been subjected to scientific scrutiny and have been established to be baseless. The outcome of such scrutiny comes hardly as a surprise, given recognition of the constraints of thermodynamics upon the genesis of hydrocarbons. If liquid hydrocarbons might evolve from biological detritus in the thermodynamic regime of the crust of the Earth, we could all expect to go to bed at night in our dotage, with white hair (or, at least, whatever might remain of same), a spreading waistline, and all the undesirable decrepitude of age, and to awake in the morning, clear eyed, with our hair returned of the color of our youth, with a slim waistline, a strong, flexible body, and with our sexual vigor restored. Alas, such is not to be. The merciless laws of thermodynamics do not accommodate folklore fables. Natural petroleum has no connection with biological matter. However, recognition of such fact leaves unanswered the conundrums which eluded the scientific community for more than a century: How does natural petroleum evolve? And from where does natural petroleum come? The theoretical resolution of these questions had to await development of the most modern techniques of quantum statistical mechanics. The experimental demonstration of the required equipment has been only recently available. The following article substantially answers these questions. Additional Information on The Peak Oil Hoax: http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm http://www.infowars.com/articles/economy/peak_oil_index.htm

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Notes:
1 M. H. Studier, R. Hayatsu and E. Anders, "Organic compounds in carbonaceous chondrites", Science, 1965, 149, 1455-1459. 2 B. Nagy, Carbonaceous Meteorites, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1975. 3 G. P. Vdovykin, Carbonaceous Matter of Meteorites (Organic Compounds, Diamonds, Graphite), Nauka Press, Moscow, 1976. 4 B. Mason, "The carbonaceous chondrites", Space Science Review, 1963, 1, 621-640. 5 C. A. Ponnamperuma, "The carbonaceous meteorites", in Carbonaceous Meteorites, ed. B. Nagy, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1975, 747. 6 J. D. Bernal, "Significance of carbonaceous meteorites in theories on the origin of life", Nature, 1961, 190, 129-131. 7 E. Gelphi and J. Oro, "Organic compounds in meteorites - IV. Gas chromatographic - mass spectrometric studies of isoprenoids and other isomeric alkanes in carbonaceous chordrites", Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 1970, 34, 981-994. 8 G. W. Hodgson and B. L. Baker, "Evidence for porphyrins in the Orgueil meteorite", Nature, 1964, 202, 125-131. 9 V. A. Krayushkin, The Abiotic, Mantle Origin of Petroleum, Naukova Dumka, Kiev, 1984. 10 V. B. Porfir'yev, "Inorganic origin of petroleum", American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, 1974, 58, 3-33. 11 P. N. Kropotkin, Y. I. Pikovskii, B. M. Valyaev, K. B. Serebrovskaya, A. P. Rudenko, A. L. Lapidus, E. B. Chekaliuk and G. N. Dolenko, Journal of D. I. Mendeleev, All-Union Chem. Soc., Moscow, 1986. 12 M. H. Studier, R. Hayatsu and E. Anders, "Origin of organic matter in the early solar system: I. Hydrocarbons", Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 1968, 32, 151-173. 13 G. P. Vdovykin, Meteorites, Nauka, Moscow, 1968. 14 G. W. Hodgson and B. L. Baker, "Porphyrin abiogenesis from pyrole and formaldehyde under simulated geochemical conditions", Nature, 1967, 216, 29-32. 15 F. K. North, Petroleum Geology, Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1985. 16 B. Tissot and D. H. Welte, Petroleum Formation and Occurrence, Springer, Berlin, 1981. 17 R. C. Selley, Elements of Petroleum Geology, W. H. Freeman, New York, 1995. 18 T. S. Zemanian, Chemical Kinetics and Equilibria of Hydrocarbon Mixtures at Advanced Temperatures and Pressures, Cornell, Ithaca, 1985. 19 J. F. Kenney and U. K. Deiters, "The evolution of multicomponent systems at high pressures: IV. The genesis of optical activity in high-density, abiotic fluids", Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2000, 2, 3163-3174. 20 L. Pasteur, "Sur la dissymtrie moleculaire", C.R. Hebd. Sanc, 1848, 26, 535. 21 L. Pasteur, "Sur la dissymtrie moleculaire", in Leons de chimie professes en 1860 par M. M. Pasteur, Cahours, Wurtz, Berthelot, Sante-claire Deville, Barral, et Dumas, Paris 1861, Hachette, Paris, 1886. 22 M. H. Engel and B. Nagy, "Distribution and enantiomeric composition of amino acids in the Murchison meteorite", Nature, 1982, 296, 837-840. 23 M. H. Engel, S. A. Macko and J. A. Silfer, "Carbon isotope composition of individual amino acids in the Murchison meteorite", Nature, 1990, 348, 47-49. 24 M. H. Engel and S. A. Macko, "Isotopic evidence for extraterrestrial non-racemic amino acids in the Murchison meteorite", Nature, 1997, 389, 265-268. 25 S. Pizzarello and J. R. Cronin, "Non-racemic amino acids in the Murray and Murchison meteorites", Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 2000, 64, 329-338.

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26 B. Nagy, "Optical Activity in the Orgueil meteorite", Science, 1965, 150, 1846. 27 U. Colombo, F. Gazzarini and R. Gonfiantini, "Die Variationen in der chemischen und isotopen Zusammensetzung von Erdgas aus Suditalien", Leipzig, 1967, vol. Vortrag ASTI-67. 28 E. M. Galimov, Isotope Zusammensetzung des Kohlenstoffe aus Gassen der Erdrinde, Leipzig, 1967. 29 V. A. Krayushkin, "Origins, patterns, dimensions, and distributions of the world petroleum potential", Georesursy, 2000, 3, 14-18. 30 P. Szatmari, "Petroleum formation by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in plate tectonics", Bull. A.A.P.G., 1989, 73, 989-996.

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