Sorry folks, oil does not come from dinosaurs
Image: warpaintcobra/Adobe Stock
Petroleum is made from aquatic phytoplankton and zooplankton, and because petroleum is created by biomass, plastic also is a form of biomass.
Well, darn it! I just learned something that will force me to stop using one of my favorite sayings coined by Jon Huntsman, Sr.: “Use old dinosaurs, not new trees.” It indicates his preference for plastic over paper.
Oil and natural gas do not come from fossilized dinosaurs! Thus, they are not fossil fuels. That’s a myth. According to Wikipedia, the term “fossil fuel” was first used by German chemist Caspar Neumann in 1759. It was subsequently used more ubiquitously in the early 1900s to give people the idea that petroleum, coal and natural gas come from ancient living things, making them a natural substance.
An article by Bob Strauss on ThoughtCo.com notes that Sinclair Oil Corp. sponsored a dinosaur at the Chicago World’s Fair “on the premise that the world’s oil reserves were formed during the Mesozoic era, when the dinosaurs lived. The exhibit was so popular that Sinclair promptly adopted a big, green brontosaurus . . . as its official mascot,” writes Strauss.
Petroleum, natural gas and coal come from biomass, primarily from plankton and decaying marine organisms, and “single-celled bacteria” that “evolved in the Earth’s oceans about three billion years ago.” Over millions of years, layers of sediment built up, along with plants (plankton and algae) and bacteria. Heat and pressure began to rise. The degree of heat and the amount of pressure, along with the type of biomass, determine if the material becomes petroleum or natural gas.
Over the course of millions of years, “members of these massive colonies died off” and “sank to the bottom of the sea and were gradually covered by accumulating sediment,” writes Strauss. “Over millions of years, these layers of sediment grew heavier and heavier until the dead bacteria trapped below were ‘cooked’ by the pressure and temperature into a stew of liquid hydrocarbons.”
As for coal, Strauss notes that the world’s coal deposits “were laid down during the Carboniferous period, about 300 million years ago—which was still a good 75 million or so years before the evolution of the first dinosaurs.” Coal was formed when the dense forests and jungles were “buried beneath layers of sediment, and their unique fibrous chemical structure caused them to be ‘cooked’ into solid coal rather than liquid oil,” explains Strauss.
So, scientifically, when we talk about plastics being made from “biomass” as a means of becoming “green,” we’re not really talking about anything new. Petroleum is made from aquatic phytoplankton and zooplankton, and because petroleum is created by biomass, plastic is a form of biomass. It makes sense, then, that we can create plastic from corn, sugar cane, switch-grass and other plants. Plastics are plants in another form.
The term “fossil fuel” is really a misnomer that caught on and is still being used. For example, I received a notice for the Global Plastics Summit (June 4 to 6 in Houston, TX) sponsored by IHS Markit and the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS). One of the featured speakers is Steve Winberg, Assistant Secretary, Fossil Energy for the U.S. Department of Energy. The title of his presentation is, Fossil Energy Innovation and Opportunities. Winberg might be surprised that fossils have nothing to do with energy!
All polymers are bio-based. They are also organic and contain no fertilizers, as Salvatore Monte, P.E., B.C.E., M.S.—Polymeric Materials, Fellow (SPE), of Kenrich Petrochemicals Inc. reminded me.
Oil and gas are organic and contain no fossils.
While they may not be as exciting as gigantic dinosaurs, tiny bacteria, plankton and algae really are the originators of oil and gas, which are natural, organic substances. When we talk about bio-plastics, we’re really talking about all plastics. When a company comes up with the idea of making plastics out of algae or other various plant materials, they’re really just replicating the same natural process to manufacture plastic as Mother Nature did, only we can do it more quickly today through industrial processes.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing new under this old sun. I suppose if Jon Huntsman Sr. were still with us, he might have to change his saying to something like, “use old bacteria, not new trees.”
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Conor Duggan
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NASA reports that there are lakes of hydrocarbons on Titan where said hydrocarbons fall as rain. They reckon that hydrocarbon deposits on that moon far exceed those on earth.
I think we can rule out dinosaurs on Titan, can we also rule out any biological origin? So NASA has either discovered evidence of past life on other astral bodies in our solar system or they have disproved the organic origins of so called fossil fuels. Are the Russian scientists who researched the non organic and “renewable” origins of hydrocarbons correct. Have we been teaching an erroneous hypothesis as irrefutable scientific fact? The sheer quantity of hydrocarbon deposits on this planet and the depths at which they are found should cast doubt on conventional thinking, but proof of vast quantities of hydrocarbons on an extra terrestrial body should signal a complete reexamination of current orthodoxy. That would happen if politics, vested interests and pseudo religious dogmas weren’t the driving factors and not the honest and logical pursuit of knowledge.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
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Zoe Phin
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Yes, they have inverted causation. Hydrocarbons -> life, not vice versa.
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Dev
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Exactly, the geological record shows that carbonates have accumulated over time.
Upwelling of hydrocarbons from deep inside the earth is the only possible explanation.
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Guido FORRIER
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[email protected]
just read also : “Oil Is NOT A Fossil Fuel And AGW Is Non-Science” .
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Squidly
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So, Saturn’s moon Titan (and other moons) have butt loads of plankton and biomass. Who knew? .. better question, who was the idiot that wrote this article? .. petroleum and natural gas are manufactured in the mantel of this planet every second of every day. There is nothing “biomass” about it.
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Mark Tapley
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There are many areas of the world that have continued to produce large quantities of oil oil and or gas for over a hundred years such as the caucasus region around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea.
That would be a lot of dead dinosaurs. Some oil field locations that were abandoned for long periods have been re drilled later. The oil appears to have flowed back into the sands.
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Charles Higley
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I have a tiny chunk of an oil well in Texas that has been producing steadily for over 70 years. Once the original pressure was released, the well was closed, but a few years later, they found that these wells recharge to a new lower production level, that is rather steady as well.
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Chris
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Hasn’t been shown that hydrocarbons can be produced abiotically by fusion in the Earth’s core?
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Chris
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Oops!. Hasn’t IT been shown that hydrocarbons can be produced abiotically by fusion in the Earth’s core.
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Binra
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You can show that something is so, but you cannot make anyone accept it and when peak oil was a weaponised narrative, then abiotic oil was assigned for techno-insiders and not for mainstream consumption.
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Monty
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What about the Abiogenic Petroleum Origin is a body of hypotheses which propose that petroleum and natural gas deposits are mostly formed by inorganic means, rather than by the decomposition of organisms.
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LLOYD
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Hey, Superman can make Diamonds from Coal!
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Ogmios
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There are oil and gas reserves in locations that support biotic formation but some reserves are located in rock formations for which biotic formation makes no sense supporting the abiotic theory. Each theory is always presented as the only explanation for all oil deposits which seems an incorrect conclusion. There are many different chemical processes within industry that can be used to produce the same result. The fact that one is used over another is simply down to which is most commercial.
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