The Mythology of Scarcity

From the Lesson

THE MYTHOLOGY OF SCARCITY — HOW "FOSSIL FUEL" BECAME DOCTRINE

Every civilisation has its founding myths — stories told so often and so authoritatively that they become invisible, mistaken for facts of nature rather than artefacts of culture. In the modern industrial world, one of the most consequential myths is this: that petroleum is a finite, non-renewable resource derived from ancient biological organisms, and that humanity is perpetually on the verge of running out.

This lesson traces the history of that myth, examines the suppressed counter-evidence, and considers why a particular theory of oil's origin became unchallengeable orthodoxy while an equally rigorous alternative was marginalised.

THE BIOGENIC THEORY: AN 18TH-CENTURY ASSUMPTION

The idea that oil comes from ancient organisms has a surprisingly recent origin. In 1757, the Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov proposed that "rock oil originates as tiny bodies of animals buried in the sediments which, under the influence of increased temperature and pressure acting during an unimaginably long period of time, transform into rock oil." This was a reasonable hypothesis for the 18th century, when the chemistry of the deep Earth was entirely unknown.

The theory was refined over the next two centuries:

• Carl Engler (1911) demonstrated experimentally that animal fats could be converted to hydrocarbons under laboratory conditions at elevated temperatures and pressures — his "destructive distillation" experiments at the University of Karlsruhe produced light hydrocarbons from fish oils.

• Alfred Treibs (1936, Angewandte Chemie 49:682–686) discovered porphyrins (chlorophyll-derived molecules) in crude oil — the first "biomarkers" — which appeared to confirm a biological origin. Treibs's discovery remains the strongest single piece of evidence for the biogenic position.

• The Tissot-Welte model (1978, "Petroleum Formation and Occurrence," Springer-Verlag) formalised the "kerogen maturation" pathway: biological organic matter → kerogen (via diagenesis at <60°C) → oil (via catagenesis at 60–160°C, the "oil window") → gas (via metagenesis at >160°C). This became the standard textbook model taught in every Western petroleum geology programme.

By the mid-20th century, the biogenic theory was considered settled science in the West. But "settled" is a political word, not a scientific one.

THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN ABIOTIC SCHOOL

While Western geochemists were building consensus around the biogenic model, Soviet scientists were developing a radically different theory. Beginning in the 1950s, Nikolai Kudryavtsev (1959, Trudy Vsesoyuznogo Neftyanogo Nauchno-Issledovatelskogo Geologorazvedochnogo Instituta) articulated what became known as the abiogenic theory of petroleum origin:

• Hydrocarbons are primordial — present in the Earth since its accretion from the solar nebula, augmented by ongoing deep chemical synthesis. • They migrate upward from the deep mantle through fractures, faults, and deep-penetrating tectonic structures. • Commercial oil deposits form where these deep hydrocarbons are trapped by geological structures (anticlines, salt domes, basement highs).

Kudryavtsev's Rule states that any hydrocarbon found at one level of the crust will also be found in deeper formations below it — a prediction that is consistently confirmed by deep drilling and is inexplicable under biogenic theory, which requires specific "source rock" formations at specific stratigraphic levels.

The abiotic school was not marginal in Soviet science. It was mainstream. Major contributors included:

• Pyotr Nikolaevich Kropotkin (1985, Earth Science Reviews 21:1–14) — demonstrated that thermodynamic calculations favor methane stability at mantle pressures and temperatures, making deep methane a thermodynamic necessity. • V.B. Porfiryev — developed the concept of "deep faults" as conduits for mantle-derived hydrocarbons, explaining the consistent association of major oil provinces with deep crustal structures. • E.B. Chekaliuk — conducted high-pressure experiments demonstrating the stability and synthesis of heavy hydrocarbons at mantle conditions (>3 GPa, 1000°C+). • Emmanuil Chekaliuk and Vladimir Kutcherov — demonstrated experimentally (Kutcherov et al. 2002, PNAS 99:10976–10981) that methane exposed to pressures of 30,000 atmospheres and temperatures of 1,500°C spontaneously polymerises into ethane, propane, butane, and heavier hydrocarbons. This reversed the conventional assumption that high temperatures and pressures destroy hydrocarbons — showing instead that they create them.

The Soviet deep drilling programme — which produced the Kola Superdeep Borehole (12,262 m depth, 1970–1992) and numerous ultra-deep oil wells — was partly motivated by abiotic theory. The Kola borehole discovered hydrocarbons (methane and hydrogen) at depths far exceeding any possible biogenic source — in Precambrian crystalline basement rock 2.7 billion years old, where no sedimentary organic matter has ever existed.