What made oil so necessary? Chemical disequilibrium with the atmosphere, the ability to react with oxygen from the air. Combustion animates countless machines. But we only exploit the once-emerging “contradiction” of reducing hydrocarbons and an oxidizing atmosphere.
The ball rolls down. The fallen cup shatters to pieces. Inanimate is extremely stubborn in its craving for simplification: it tends to move to the state closest to the elementary, the most probable of all possible. Even crystals, so complex and perfect, appear to lose excess energy.
The primary distinction between life and non-life is not simplification, but rather the ability to sustain a particular state. This process, known as metabolism, requires energy. As Alice learns in Looking Glass, “To stay where you are, you have to run as hard as you can.” In other words, life is fueled by the constant effort to maintain itself.
One theory is that it originated in underwater smokers, hot springs at the bottom of the ocean, which emit moisture heated by the heat of the Earth’s interior. Ancient organisms tried to live farther and farther away from their usual habitats – and learned to use sunlight. Photosynthesis allowed primitive microbes to populate the ocean.
“The earliest evidence of life has been found in rocks around 4 billion years old (based on their composition), while the first signs of photosynthesis appear in younger layers, about 500 million years younger. However, these figures in the competition of “Who found the earliest?” may change – for the greater.”
Oxygen, the gas that makes the Earth’s atmosphere unstable, is simply a byproduct of photosynthesis. While it did not exist, there were even anomalies such as pyritized shale – a water-worn fragment of a compound of iron and sulfur. Nowadays you won’t find such a thing by day and by fire: throw a piece of pyrite into a stream and it will simply become a pile of rust due to the dissolved oxygen in the water.
But you never know what you might find in the depths of the earth! Such discoveries were made in the thicknesses of the African province of Vitiaterstrand (although their origin raises some questions).
It turns out that there was no oxygen on Earth at one time, and it is apparently life that is “guilty” of its appearance. Other organisms did not know how to use this gas at that time and it was consumed in inorganic chemical processes. Dissolved divalent iron was present in the water – a restored form that was able to react with oxygen, during which it was oxidized, changed to a trivalent state (like ordinary rust), and deposited as insoluble compounds on the bottom. Microorganisms, on the other hand, multiplied and reproduced: there were no predators at that time, so no one interfered.
Uncontrolled population growth led to an ecological disaster: iron ran out, and bacteria were killed by their own toxic oxygen.
The remains settled on the bottom, while iron from magmatic rocks began to accumulate in the water again, while the population of bacteria and algae recovered from surviving “oases”. In this way, striped deposits formed rich and poor iron layers. As a result of this ancient process, the largest deposits currently used by humans were formed.
At some point, the iron in the ocean waters ran out. One of the most global ecological disasters began – the oxygen catastrophe. In addition to the fact that this gas was toxic to most organisms living at that time, it was also transparent to sunlight. The opposite problem arose from the present one: if the planet is now suffering from greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, then there was a sudden cooling. The Earth stopped retaining heat and was covered with ice for millions of years.
The most interesting thing is that life almost managed to prevent this catastrophe: quite recently, scientists working under the supervision of Kurt Konhauser analyzed the composition of the rock and suggested that 2.5 billion years ago (about the same time that the glaciation began), bacteria that were able to use oxygen may have already appeared. But it was too late.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Where does CO2 come from? School textbooks talk about the carbon cycle – but where did it all begin? Was there a chicken, or was there an egg?
To answer the question, the Universe has a lot of hydrogen, and less helium, and generally, ignoring some details about the formation of atoms in the depths of stars, the amounts of chemical elements decrease proportionally to their weights. If a star ends its life in a new or supernova explosion, then these atoms are “ejected” into space and planets can be formed from them. Accordingly, there should be a lot of light carbon in them – and this is indeed the case, it is enough to look at the gas giants. One problem: its compounds are extremely volatile, that is, they disperse at a slight increase in temperature. That is why the gas giants are beyond the so-called snow line of the Solar System.
But the Earth captured the carbon that was dispersed in meteor material. During the global melting of our planet (at the “magma ocean” stage), carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and other compounds was released from the magma, forming the primary atmosphere. And to this day, carbon dioxide is one of the main components of volcanic gases.
Plants, algae, and bacteria absorb atmospheric carbon, binding it to their biomass. After death, they become either food for other creatures or kerogen – a special substance in the composition of sedimentary rocks.
There is organic carbon in them thousands of times more than in all living biomass. Since sediments accumulate continuously, the lower layers are under increasing pressure, and therefore the temperature in these layers increases. At depths of several kilometers, at 100°C, kerogen is transformed into oil, and at 200°C – into gas: the hotter it is, the simpler the chemical composition (and therefore, the lower the boiling temperature – compare “complex” mazut and “light” gas).
The resulting product is greatly influenced by the composition of kerogen – the ratio of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Three types are usually distinguished. The first two are marine and coastal marine, but there is no clear boundary between them, as everything depends on specific climatic and other conditions. The third type is terrestrial vegetation. Coal. Gas is obtained from it but in relatively small quantities.
The idea of the formation of oil and gas from coal was proposed by Lomonosov. However, another Russian scientist, Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, supported the inorganic hypothesis. He processed iron carbide (more precisely pig iron) with hydrochloric acid and obtained a substance similar to mazut, and he assumed that iron and coal in the depths of the Earth would give carbide together. There was no data on the structure of the planet at that time: even the presence of a metallic core and the distance to it was confirmed by geophysics only a year before the scientist’s death, so Mendeleev did not answer in his hypothesis where these substances would come from. However, no deposits of natural pig iron were found, nor were underground acid streams.
The main problem with most “bold” and “groundbreaking” geological theories is that they can give a simple, quick, and clear answer to a specific question, but where to get all the raw materials remains a mystery.
Approximately the same thing happens when you open the book “100 recipes for delicious dishes from what was found in the fridge” – and the first of them begins like this: “Take dragon fillet, paprock flower extract and fry on a mithril griddle.” Any theory must first and foremost be consistent with data, including the latest ones.
Therefore, the hypothesis of the organic origin of oil quickly became the main one in science. In a very close to modern form, it was formulated by the German paleobotanist Potoni and intensively developed by Gubkin – the largest scientist, whose name now bears the University of Oil and Gas in Moscow. It was they who suggested that oil comes from sapropels – shallow water deposits with a large amount of organic matter. Now, this hypothesis is confirmed by the results of fine chemical measurements: data from isotope analyses, as well as the presence of purely biogenic substances, such as chlorophyll – the main participant in photosynthesis.
In the second half of the 20th century, new assumptions related to the study of space appeared – for example, that all hydrocarbons originated from the primary substance of the Earth. This is what the American astrophysicist Thomas Gold believed. Without denying that this hypothesis is applicable to the planet’s prot atmosphere, we must remember what happened to iron. It oxidized and sank. Something similar will happen with the oldest hydrocarbons: they will react with oxygen. The composition of volcanic gases, which mainly consist of carbon dioxide and water (not hydrogen and its simplest compound with carbon – methane), only proves that hydrocarbons could not have been preserved since ancient times.
At that time, experimenters did not yet know how to study the properties of substances under the conditions of the depths of the planet. Nowadays, in laboratories, it is possible to create pressure several times greater than in the Earth’s core (see, for example, the pilot article by Dubrovsky and their colleagues). These data appeared literally fifteen to twenty years ago, and unfortunately or fortunately, they do not confirm such hypotheses.
But let’s return from people and their guesses to nature and coal, which is also related to another recent, already biological discovery. There is a period of carbon in the history of the Earth – the carboniferous era, named so because it was then that enormous layers of this useful mineral were deposited. Before that, there was little coal: higher plants had just settled on the land. And after that, there are no comparable layers, because fungi (more specifically, a particular species – white rot) learned to break down lignin – the main “building material” of which wood is composed. This was shown by fine biochemical research conducted by the Floyd team in 2012. This a great example of how distant from real-life protein and enzyme sequence studies of mold can be practically beneficial and help clarify a pressing issue – forecasting coal deposits.
There were a lot of oxygen-aerobic animals that appeared, there were many higher plants – they also learned to recycle. Nature does not miss any opportunity to use something in a second circle. Recycling waste is natural.
What happens to gas and oil? They are light and fluid, so they strive upwards, leaving their “native” thicknesses, and can only be preserved for geological epochs if they are held by something. These types of rocks, called “caps,” are the most important. Porous layers – “collectors” – should be under them, where oil and gas accumulate.
Recently, new, unconventional sources have become available to the industry – for example, hard-to-extract shale oil (a rock from which “black gold” cannot flow “by itself”).
The shale revolution is a special technology for oil production, when the rock – the collector – is broken by the enormous pressure of water injected into the well (so-called hydraulic fracturing), and through the newly formed cracks, the future fuel begins to flow.
By the way, these technologies are among those prohibited for supplies to Russia. The policy protects the market. The cost of shale oil is higher than that of traditional, “self-flowing” oil. This is how the economy works: expensive technologies become cheaper, while the product itself becomes more expensive.
In addition, there are ways to accelerate the natural process of converting kerogen into fuel by heating or using chemical reactions. Instead of waiting for the rocks to mature under the influence of the heat of the earth’s depths to form oil, people “roast” it – roughly like ancient followers of pagan beliefs roasted children. Hydraulic fracturing of the shale formation is also an attempt, in a sense, to hurry nature: instead of waiting for earthquakes and mountain formation, when all the rocks slide and crack, people do it right now. We have learned to accelerate geological processes in our own interests.
There are a few exceptions to this picture of oil deposits in crystalline bedrock rocks. There are such deposits in China, Venezuela, and other countries. Deep, deep down, there are fractured granites and similar composition rocks – gneisses, saturated with oil. However, if we look at the geological structure of the area, it turns out that such formations are associated with specific uplifts. Organic matter, like any sediment, accumulated between these protuberances, and mountains. For example, due to the particularly dense cap, it was easier for hydrocarbons to leak out and gather in fractured crystalline rocks.
There are hypotheses about the abiogenic (non-organic) origin of oil, which gained new life with the discovery of these deposits, but they do not have predictive power. For example, in Tatarstan, they were unable to find commercially significant oil deposits in crystalline foundation rocks. And when search wells were drilled in Sweden near Lake Siljan (based on the forecast of the aforementioned astrophysicist Gold), no deposits were discovered, and the discovered fossil fuel, with a total volume of about 100 liters, was no different from other oils.
And yet, are there any working hypotheses alternative to the biogenic theory of the origin of oil and gas? Yes, there are.
Small amounts of methane and more complex hydrocarbons can be formed by the oxidation of water in rock formations on the sea floor – a process called the Fischer-Tropsch process. This reaction requires high temperatures and therefore primarily occurs in areas of high magmatism – near mid-ocean ridges, which can be easily found on a map of the sea floor relief – as well as other areas with active geological processes where the oceanic crust sinks to a depth sufficient for warming.
In Turkey, for example, individual gas occurrences with a proportion of about 50% of inorganic methane have been recorded. However, the total mass of this gas flow does not exceed a few tens to hundreds of tons per year, while millions of tons are extracted at deposits.
Abiogenic gases and possibly more complex hydrocarbons exist on Earth, but their quantity is infinitesimally small compared to biogenic ones. The case is within the limits of statistical error, merely confirming and supplementing modern views, no more than that.
It is much more interesting to use this data to study other objects in space, where there is at least no such obvious biological trace. The atmosphere of any planet existing for millions and billions of years must become chemically equilibrated and homogeneous unless there are processes disrupting this state. And the chemical imbalance is the main characteristic of life.
Methane has also been detected on Mars, another planet in the terrestrial group, albeit in very small quantities, and, moreover, it is unevenly distributed in the atmosphere – that is, it is either absorbed by something or released by something. Maybe bacteria. Or, more likely, this happens as a result of oxidation by underground waters of all the same rocks.
Even more interesting in this regard is Titan, a satellite of Saturn. Its methane atmosphere does not contain impurities of inert gases that were supposed to remain from the time of the formation of the planets of the Solar System (and which are present in the gas envelope of the same Saturn). There are several hypotheses that can explain the origin of such an atmosphere, and life (to the delight of supporters of the theory of abiogenic hydrocarbons) is not on the list of the most likely “culprits”. Although more complex substances were recently discovered in the “air” of Titan, this is not yet evidence of the presence of living organisms there. Astronomers are now closely approaching the determination of the composition of the atmospheres of planets outside the Solar System. And who knows, maybe in these remote corners of space, signs of life will be discovered.
“However, living organisms not only generate hydrocarbons, buried in the thickness of rocks but also return them to the biosphere. We judge oxygen from the perspective of breathing being, when, for example, we talk about the hydrogen sulfide pollution of the Black Sea, and man, by the way, also contributed to it. We have managed to go very far from our ancient ancestors, for whom oxygen was deadly, but their descendants and followers are now living on the bottom of this water body. We, humans, say (though usually too quietly) that we have the right to a comfortable living environment for us, calling it a “healthy ecology.”
Solar light as an external source of energy allows for the separation of substances (more precisely, the initial inorganic carbon dioxide gas and water) into restorative organic matter and oxidizing oxygen. Creatures that use them – consumers – need to have enough of both resources. The number of such organisms is directly limited by the volumes of food – a situation known in mathematics as the “predator-prey” problem. The more food there is – the more predators, the less nutrition – the fewer feeders. A feedback system. The predator gets food, and producers – bacteria, algae, higher plants – get protection from overpopulation.
Humanity is now moving in the opposite direction: from the behavior of a consumer, burning wood, oil, and gas – to the behavior of a producer, to the production of energy from sunlight, heat from geothermal flows, and wind.
By the way, interestingly, we have not found any effective method for storing energy, except for chemical oxidation-reduction processes. Reactions of this type are not only a necessary condition for the formation of oil and gas but also make the operation of all accumulators and batteries possible. Our life is a constant approach to chemical equilibrium, a state in which all substances that could react with each other and give energy have run out. But we try in every way to evade it because the absence of movement for us means death.
People want a climate in which the scattering of solar heat by them will be most beneficial for humanity. The question arises: if oil, gas, and coal were formed from millions of living beings, what is wrong with us returning carbon to the biological cycle? Plants will have more food, the ecology will only improve. And yes, indeed, satellite and other data for the past thirty years confirm: the industrial revolution and mass CO2 emissions have led to an increase in the green mass of plants. But the problem is that the climate is also changing. And now it’s getting too hot. It is quite possible that at higher temperatures, the earth’s flora will no longer be able to process so much carbon dioxide – although quantitative assessments here are extremely complex.
So the problem remains.
Although many say that this is part of the natural cycle of nature and the planet is simply entering an interglacial period, we humans are already too far removed from the animal world, and our numbers do not allow us to easily and quickly provide housing and food for all. And now we must do whatever it takes to preserve our living environment, even if it means going against the “natural course of things.
The plain is flooded with the evening sun. Warm yellow tones of fields and forests, a pink-blue ribbon of railway tracks crossing this panorama. White cisterns, numbers, markings, and a strip of black-brown streams divide the barrel in half. Oil. The freight train, hissing with consumed electricity, moves off – slowly, with massive repeated blows, the first sound is loud, and the rest fade away in the distance. Even when the country’s industrial life almost stopped, these trains of a hundred or more cars continued to crawl day after day in long bands – past cities, villages, and people, from an unknown distance to inaccessible limits.
We still need oil and gas. Flammable minerals. Life, an imbalance is maintained by movement. We are mobile. We need energy. We extract these once-depleted hydrocarbons and then greedily and insatiably consume them. We animate machines with creatures that once inhabited the earth. We emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We change the planet. Let the reader listen to the railway, the port noise or the motorway. That’s where the sharply smelling blood of society is transported in huge barrels with “Dangerous to the environment” stickers.
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