Technology Highlights
Theory of Abyssal Abiotic Petroleum Origin:
Challenge for Petroleum Industry
Vladimir G. Kutcherov Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
“Every ten or fifteen years since the late 1800’s, ‘experts’ have predicted that oil reserves would last only ten more years. These experts have predicted nine out of the last zero oil-reserve exhaustions.”
C. Maurice and C. Smithson, Doomsday Mythology: 10,000 Years of Economic Crisis, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 1984.
Introduction
The oil and gas industry has become a global branch of the world economy, an important political and economic factor in our civilization. At this time, there is no alternative source of energy which could be able to compete with hydrocarbons for availability, abundance, efficiency and safety. Thus currently, one may hear apocalyptic prophecies wailing about a supposedlyimminent approach to the end of the petroleum era; such prophecies are universally accompanied by appeals to repent our sin of using oil and gas, and to operate our industrial societies by energy from windmills, photovoltaic power, etc. Contrarily, scientific consideration about the origin of hydrocarbons and practical results of geological investigations provide an understanding of the presence of enormous, inexhaustible resources of hydrocarbons (Krayushkin 1986).