OT "Secrets of Oil"

[cjm135]

FYI

It is a rerun but for those that haven't seen it before.

Modern Marvels "Secrets of Oil" at 7:00 pm tonight on the History Channel.

[Lefty Dude]

Got my TIVO set to record.

[piller]

I have a strange question. Since Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen are extremely plentiful in the Earth, and since they combine into long chain molecules under heat and pressure, why isn't the earth producing more oil? Any Chem. E's or Pet. E's here have any answers?

[adirondakjack]

The earth IS producing oil all the time. We've used up a good protion of what the earth produced in oh, a million years in the last century (mostly the last 60 years), so we may have to wait a while for levels to come back up.

The earth not only produces oil all the time, but in ways we scarcely unerstand, from things like decaying microscopic worms deep in the earth that may account for half the world's biomass, etc.

[jeepnik]

Well, I was gonna give you the benifit of my couple of decades experience in the oil industry, but jack pretty much summed it up. We are just using it a heck of a lot faster than ole mother nature can make it. Interestingly enough, oil refining went from simple distillation (boiling the crude and allowing it to cool and taking off the desired fractions) to processes that break heavier hydrocarbons into lighter ones so we could produce more of a desired product, and combining lighter hydrocarbons into heavier ones so as to get even more desired products from a barrel of oil. There was a time that flare stacks burned 24/7, and the resid was just a waste product. Not any more.