Unlimited Oil Reserves, Part Two

Dr. Thomas Gold, who died in 2004, was the author of The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, and the leading proponent of the theory that oil is not a "fossil fuel," but a material that is continuously being produced deep within the earth. Gold was an astronomy professor at Cornell and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, so he's not some uneducated rube spouting a far-fetched theory.

Imagine for a moment what would happen to international policy if suddenly we found the Saudis were sitting on a small portion of a vast, replenishable resource? Imagine what would happen to the economy. Interesting little thought-bunny-trails, huh?

Here are some excerpts from an interview with Gold from Radio Free America, hosted by Tom Valentine, whose questions are in bold:

What first prompted you to suggest that oil and natural gas is generated from a chemical substance in the crust of the Earth?

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 it in the kind of gas clouds that made systems like our solar system. You find large quantities of hydrocarbons in them. 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?

That question makes a lot of sense. After all, they didn’t have dinosaurs and ferns on Jupiter to produce oil and gas?

That’s right. Yet, for some reason my theory was not heard. The old theory that it was all made from fossils had 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.

Gold's test wells in Sweden yieled oil in an area that geologists would have avoided, but the amounts were not enough for commercial exploitation. Still, some took note:

Is the oil and gas industry reconsidering things in light of your work?

In many other countries they are listening to me: in Russia on a very large scale, and in China also. It is just Western Europe and the United States that are so stuck in the mud that they can’t look at anything else.

See also:
What If Oil Reserves Were Unlimited?