Oil Doesn't Come From Dead Dinosaurs

July 31, 2008 – Vol.13 No.19

OIL DOESN’T COME FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.

Now that NASA has discovered liquid hydrocarbons – black gold – on Titan, a moon orbiting Saturn, scientists may have to rethink how hydrocarbons, like oil and natural gas, came to be on planet Earth.

Some people still think that oil came from dead dinosaurs. (I know some of these people.) This is a myth probably perpetuated by the dinosaur logo used by the Sinclair Oil Corporation. The logo is cute and attractively friendly but has little to do with the origins of oil.

Common thinking is that crude oil (and natural gas) were formed by the compression and heating of ancient organic materials over many millennia. Dead prehistoric zooplankton and algae that settled to the sea bottom were eventually covered up by sand or muck that turned to stone. High temperatures and pressures eventually turned the dead organisms into oil. The natural conversion of algae to crude oil gives considerable credence to the those now developing and promoting purposely grown algae as feedstock for biofuels. If Mother Nature can make oil from algae why can’t we?

But finding a lake of hydrocarbons on a cold celestial body, far from the Sun, is a game changer. If hydrocarbons are a spin-off of dead organisms does this mean that Titan, frighteningly cold at minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit, has life? Possibly, if there’s a source of heat under Titan’s skin. Does it mean that hydrocarbons, crude oil for instance, can be formed in ways other than decomposing life? NASA thinks that the nitrogen rich, smoggy atmosphere of Titan actually rains hydrocarbons. Ethane and several other simple hydrocarbons have also been identified in the atmosphere. It rains enough hydrocarbons to create rivers, NASA thinks.

Could Earth have once had a similar atmosphere with oily rains? Earth has a hydrological cycle based on water and Titan has a cycle based on methane. Our atmosphere is now about 78 percent nitrogen (with about 21 percent oxygen and far smaller amounts of other components such as carbon dioxide and methane) but at one time it could have been different, more like Titan’s. Lakes of hydrocarbons, like that found on Titan, may simply have evaporated or even burned away, giving us the greenhouse blanket that we have today and are now making denser by our own emissions.

Somehow it’s hard to imagine, even over geologic time, that rotting algae and zooplankton found their way more than a mile under water then another mile under the seabed where some oil is now being found. But it’s easy to imagine pools of liquid hydrocarbons falling through cracks in the Earth made by earthquakes, volcanic eruption or meteor impact.

There’s a lot we don’t know about our planet. We don’t have the ability to scour the entire ocean bottom that makes up 2/3 of our planet’s surface. Nor do we have the ability to travel through the Earth’s crust to view with the naked eye what’s going on.

Hydrocarbons on Saturn’s largest moon should be an eye-opener for scientists and may eventually turn the petroleum world upside down. There may be more oil on our planet than we think, which would be unfortunate.

NASA Scientists made the discovery using data from an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft now exploring Saturn and Titan from space.

Links:

Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm