Houston Chronicle - Most petroleum engineers spurn abiotic oil, as a crackpot idea, but the notion has percolated along and been popularized by books such as Thomas Gold's Deep Hot Biosphere....but a new paper (see .pdf) published in Energy & Fuels, a peer-reviewed publication, supports the theory of abiotic oil.
For their study geochemists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington combined the key ingredients for the abiotic synthesis of methane in a device and then simulated the high pressures and temperatures near the interface between the Earth's crust and mantle...
"strongly suggests that it is likely that, in deep earth geologic systems, some methane generation is inevitable."
The theory of abiotic oil holds that rapidly rising streams of compressed methane gas reach the crust from the mantle, and when they strike pockets of high temperature they condense into heavier hydrocarbons like crude oil.
Read full at The Houston Chronicle
