MolaKule
Staff member
No sooner had the discovery of ongoing natural formation of petroleum been published in the journal Nature than The Australian Financial Review of February 2, 1982 had an article by Walter Sullivan of The New York Times under the heading ‘Natural oil refinery found under ocean’. The report indicated that:
"‘The oil is being formed from the unusually rapid breakdown of organic debris by extraordinarily extensive heat flowing through the sediments, offering scientists a singular opportunity to see how petroleum is formed....Ordinarily oil has been thought to form over millions of years whereas in this instance the process is probably occurring in thousands of years.... The activity is not only manufacturing petroleum at relatively high speed but also, by application of volcanic heat, breaking it down into the constituents of gasoline and other petroleum products as in a refinery."
What he means by, "extraordinarily extensive heat flowing through the sediments," is what we call 'Hydrothermal Vents,' which is the intrusion of very hot water (up to 300C) through the various sediments.
This ‘natural refinery under the ocean’ is found under the waters of the Gulf of California, in an area known as the Guaymas Basin. The basin consists of two rift valleys (flat-bottomed valleys bounded by steep cliffs along fault lines), which are filled with 500 meter thick layers of sediments consisting of diatomaceous ooze (made up of the opal-like ‘shells’ of diatoms, single-celled aquatic plants related to algae) and silty mud washed from the nearby land. Through this basin is a series of long deep fractures that link volcanoes of the undersea ridge known as the East Pacific Rise with the San Andreas fault system that runs northwards across California.
for references see:
Simonelt, B.R.T. and Lonsdale, P.F., 1982. hydrothermal petroleum in mineralized mounds at the seabed of Guaymas Basin. Nature, vol. 295, pp. 198–212.
Didyk, B.M. and Simoneit, B.R.T., 1989, hydrothermal oil of Guaymas Basin and implications for petroleum formation mechanisms. Nature, vol. 342, pp. 65–69.
"‘The oil is being formed from the unusually rapid breakdown of organic debris by extraordinarily extensive heat flowing through the sediments, offering scientists a singular opportunity to see how petroleum is formed....Ordinarily oil has been thought to form over millions of years whereas in this instance the process is probably occurring in thousands of years.... The activity is not only manufacturing petroleum at relatively high speed but also, by application of volcanic heat, breaking it down into the constituents of gasoline and other petroleum products as in a refinery."
What he means by, "extraordinarily extensive heat flowing through the sediments," is what we call 'Hydrothermal Vents,' which is the intrusion of very hot water (up to 300C) through the various sediments.
This ‘natural refinery under the ocean’ is found under the waters of the Gulf of California, in an area known as the Guaymas Basin. The basin consists of two rift valleys (flat-bottomed valleys bounded by steep cliffs along fault lines), which are filled with 500 meter thick layers of sediments consisting of diatomaceous ooze (made up of the opal-like ‘shells’ of diatoms, single-celled aquatic plants related to algae) and silty mud washed from the nearby land. Through this basin is a series of long deep fractures that link volcanoes of the undersea ridge known as the East Pacific Rise with the San Andreas fault system that runs northwards across California.
for references see:
Simonelt, B.R.T. and Lonsdale, P.F., 1982. hydrothermal petroleum in mineralized mounds at the seabed of Guaymas Basin. Nature, vol. 295, pp. 198–212.
Didyk, B.M. and Simoneit, B.R.T., 1989, hydrothermal oil of Guaymas Basin and implications for petroleum formation mechanisms. Nature, vol. 342, pp. 65–69.
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