When asked what first prompted him to think that oil and natural gas are generated from hydrocarbons present at Earth’s formation, Gold replied, “The astronomers have been able to find that hydrocarbons, as oil, gas and coal are called, occur on many other planetary bodies. They are a common substance in the universe. You find [large quantities of hydrocarbons] in the kind of gas clouds that made systems like our solar system…Is it reasonable to think that our little Earth, one of the planets, contains oil and gas for reasons that are all its own and that these other bodies have it because it was built into them when they were born?” (7)

When the interviewer replied, “That question makes a lot of sense. After all, they didn’t have dinosaurs and ferns on Jupiter to produce oil and gas,” Gold said, “That’s right. Yet, for some reason my theory was not heard. The theory that it was all made from fossils ha[s] become so firmly established that when the astronomers had perfectly definitive evidence on most of the other planets, it was just ignored, especially by the petroleum geologists who had, by then, called these things, ‘fossil fuels.’ So once they had a name, then every body believed it.”(8-9)

Gold’s theory is that microorganisms are converting existing carbon in to oil:

In the abiogenic theory, by contrast, hydrocarbons form perpetually at greater depths from carbon that was present from Earth’s formation, and are then utilized by micro-organisms that convert the short-chain hydrocarbons into longer chains as they move through what Gold called the “deep hot biosphere.” Depending on formation rates, the abiogenic theory might allow for self-renewing petroleum reservoirs, all over the globe, taking petroleum out of the category of “fossil fuel.”

An article in Science today seems to suggest that the abiotic theory is correct. In a fairly dense article entitled “Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at Lost City Hydrothermal Field,” researchers Proskurowski et al., find evidence of the abiogenic formation of short-hydrocarbon chains in an area where hydrocarbons would not otherwise be able to form by the biogenic theory. What Proskurowski et al. identified was the formation of carbon chains 1 to 4 carbon atoms in length, with shorter chains forming deeper, and with isotopic signatures ruling out biogenic origins. The conclusion of the article is as follows: “Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water, and moderate amounts of heat.”

If this sound far fetched, keep in mind that oil seeps from the ocean floor naturally and there are organisms that literally ‘eat’ the seepage:

“It takes a special organism to live half a mile deep in the Earth and eat oil for a living,” said Valentine, an associate professor of earth science at UCSB. “There’s this incredibly complex diet for organisms down there eating the oil. It’s like a buffet.”

And, the researchers found, there may be one other byproduct being produced by all of this munching on oil – natural gas. “They’re eating the oil, and probably making natural gas out of it,” Valentine said. “It’s actually a whole consortium of organisms – some that are eating the oil and producing intermediate products, and then those intermediate products are converted by another group to natural gas.”

Reddy, a marine chemist at Woods Hole, said the research provides important new clues in the study of petroleum. “The biggest surprise was that microbes living without oxygen could eat so many compounds that compose crude oil,” Reddy said. “Prior to this study, only a handful of compounds were shown, mostly in laboratory studies, to be degraded anaerobically. This is a major leap forward in understanding petroleum geochemistry and microbiology.”

The next time you hear someone talking about “fossil fuels” ask your self  “how did dinosaurs (or if you want to be more accurate, prehistoric sea life) get five miles underground?”