Massive oil field found under Gulf
Pastor Dale Morgan
Massive oil field found under Gulf
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Reserves south of New Orleans could rival North Slope, boosting U.S.
supplies by 50%
Posted: September 6, 2006
11:57 a.m. Eastern
Chevron and two oil exploration companies announced the discovery of a
giant oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico that could boost the nation's
supplies by as much as 50 percent and provide compelling evidence oil is
a plentiful deep-earth product made naturally on a continuous basis.
Known as the Jack Field, the reserve – some 270 miles southwest of New
Orleans – is estimated to hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil.
Authors Jerome R. Corsi and Craig R. Smith say the giant find validates
the key thesis of their book, "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of
Scarcity and the Politics of Oil," that oil did not come from the
remains of ancient plant and animal life but is made naturally by the Earth.
"We have always rejected the theories that oil and natural gas are
biological products," Corsi said. "Chevron's find in the Gulf of Mexico
validates our argument that the Gulf is a huge resource for finding oil
and natural gas."
The Wall Street Journal reports today the find could boost the nation's
current reserves of 29.3 billion barrels by as much as 50 percent.
Chevron discovered the field by drilling the deepest to date in the Gulf
of Mexico, down 28,175 feet in waters nearly 7,000 feet deep, some seven
miles below the surface of the Earth.
The second biggest source of oil in the world is Mexico's giant
Cantarell field in the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula. It was
discovered in 1976, supposedly after a fisherman named Cantarell
reported an oil seep in Campeche Bay.
In March, Mexico announced the discovery of a field that could be larger
than Cantarell, the Noxal field in the Gulf of Mexico off Veracruz.
In "Black Gold Stranglehold," Corsi and Smith argued the theory
developed in the Soviet Union in the 1950s by Prof. Nikolai Kudryavtsev
that oil is a deep-earth, abiotic product. The theory, the authors
wrote, "rejected the contention that oil was formed from the remains of
ancient plant and animal life that died millions of years ago. According
to Kudryavtsev, oil had nothing to do with the unproved concept of a
boggy primeval forest rotting into petroleum. The Soviet scientist
ridiculed the idea that an ancient primeval morass of plant and animal
remains was covered by sedimentary deposits over millions of years,
compressed by millions of more years of heat and pressure."
Instead, the abiotic theory argued "oil should be seen as a primordial
material that the earth forms and exudes on a continual basis."
Corsi and Smith directly challenge the "peak oil" theory advanced in
1956 by Shell Oil's M. King Hubbert.
Smith posed the following question: "If U.S. proven oil reserves can be
increased by 50 percent with one deep-earth oil find in the Gulf of
Mexico, who knows how much oil might be found as the technology of
deep-water drilling advances and becomes even more economically feasible?"
In "Black Gold Stranglehold," Corsi and Smith note the importance of the
abiotic theory:
The thought that oil might be naturally produced on a regular basis,
that oil itself might be a renewable resource, is very threatening to
those who have invested their minds into believing that oil is fossil
fuel. The logical consequence of the fossil fuel theory of oil has
always been that we will run out of oil. After all, there could only be
a finite number of ancient forests available to rot into oil. Ancient
forests, even if once plentiful, are a finite resource that by
definition will become exhausted after they are fully explored and their
oil harvested. The logic of the fossil fuel theory is that inevitably we
will run out of oil.
Corsi and Smith note the power of the abiotic theory: "Could it be that
oil is abundant, nearly an inexhaustible resource, if only we drill deep
enough?"
Prior to the Jack Field discovery, the largest U.S. oil find in the Gulf
of Mexico has been the Thunder Horse, about 125 miles southeast of New
Orleans. British Petroleum holds a 75-percent interest with ExxonMobil
to develop the Thunder Horse. This field, too, is deep-earth oil, with
BP and ExxonMobil finding oil under one mile of water and five miles
below the seabed.
Scientists believe Mexico's richest oil field complex was created when
the prehistoric, massive Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth.
"Could it be that the Chicxulub meteor deeply fractured the entire
bedrock under the Gulf of Mexico?" Corsi asked "If so, we might find
abundant oil wherever we look as we begin to explore the deeper waters
of the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Cuba announced plans to hire the communist Chinese to
drill for oil some 45 miles off the shores of Florida. This move was
made possible by the 1977 agreement under President Jimmy Carter that
created for Cuba an "Exclusive Economic Zone" extending from the
country's western tip to the north, virtually to Key West, Fla.
"If Cuba and communist China believe they too can find oil in the Gulf,
we should pull out all stops," argues Smith. "We may be able to bring
the price of gasoline down under two dollars a gallon if oil can be
found in these huge quantities within our territorial waters. It's crazy
to think we should be dependent on foreign oil when we've made Mexico
our number two supplier of oil with the reserves Mexico has found in the
Gulf."
"Thomas Gold should feel vindicated today," Corsi added, referring to
the Cornell University astronomer who in 1998 published "The Deep Hot
Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels," a book that also challenged the
conventional wisdom on the origin of oil.
"As an astronomer reading spectrographs," Corsi noted, "Gold knew that
hydrocarbon products such as methane are abundant in our solar system.
Gold knew that the abundant methane on Titan, the giant moon of Saturn,
did not get formed by little dinosaurs up on Titan, or by any other kind
of biological material. So far as we know, nothing living has ever been
found on Titan."