RE: Declining water and oil

From: Steven M Smith (smsmith@usgs.gov)
Date: Thu Nov 13 2003 - 18:58:50 EST

  • Next message: Roger G. Olson: "RE: Declining water and oil"

    Glenn Morton wrote in reply to Roger Olson:
    >> A quick technical question --- doesn't most petroleum originate from the
    > burial and thermal maturation of marine protists (zoo- and
    > phytoplankton) rather than "plant material"? Or is this article simply
    > giving a plant analogy of the sheer volume of equlivalent organic
    > material needed to produce a gallon of petrol?
    >
    > Thanks for clearing this up. I'm not a geologist, but take some
    > interest in the subject.<<

    >>Oil is formed by the decay of marine organisms, plants and animals, with
    some minor input from land plants which get washed to sea and buried. As I
    read the article he is drawing an analogy.<<

    Thanks Glenn, I was hoping that you would jump in on this one. My personal
    knowledge of petroleum geochemistry and source materials is way out of date
    ... by at least 25 years!

    The original study in the Climatic Change journal can be found at
    <<http://reo.nii.ac.jp/journal/HtmlIndicate/html/vol_issues/SUP0000001000/JOU0001000096/ISS0000020282/article_list_en.html>>

    You can read the abstract here but I think you need a $1,976.00
    subscription to actually download the article.

    Steve
    _____________
     Steven M. Smith, Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
     Box 25046, M.S. 973, DFC, Denver, CO 80225
     Office: (303)236-1192, Fax: (303)236-3200
     Email: smsmith@usgs.gov
     -USGS Nat'l Geochem. Database NURE HSSR Web Site-
      http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr-97-0492/

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Nov 13 2003 - 18:59:43 EST