Generating Oil and Deep Time – Part 1

Figure 1.  Oils are found that were generated in recent times in the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California.

Are there “incontrovertible” reasons to affirm a young Earth? What does it mean to be incontrovertible?  Some YEC seem to believe that this means that it is claimed by any YEC author that they appreciate.  It is easy to list claims that might sound impressive.  What happens if we dig into those claims?  Can they stand up to analysis?

Geologists interpret the hydrocarbon resources that the are found in the Earth to have developed over millions of years, especially if you consider the entire process from the deposition of organic material until it filled a reservoir. That doesn’t fit with an Earth that is 6,000 years old.  YEC have considered this apparent problem and propose that oil formation is actually evidence for a young Earth. Let’s look at the claims. This is another one the “incontrovertible” evidences from Paul Humber’s “Reasons to Affirm a Young Earth”.  (Humber 2013)

The reason given in this case is:

19. Oil Formation – Part 1

This reason from Humber’s booklet involves several issues, so I will use two separate discussions to cover them.  This is Part 1.  First, we can look at the observation from nature and then the assertions that Humber makes regarding them. 

Humber’s conclusion:   Oil formation demonstrates that the Earth is young.   

 Perhaps more accurately, oil formation does not prove that the Earth is ancient (more than 10,000 years old). Afterall, if oil were generated recently, that would hardly prove that the Earth is young but only the oil. The reverse, that is, if the oil was generated over long periods of time, the Earth would be at least as old as the oil generation process required.

His basic premise supporting his assertion is oil is formed in thousands of years vs. millions of years.

He offers in support of this

• A New York Times article from 1982 reports that oil has been found that was generated recently “in thousands, rather than millions of years”. (Sullivan 1982)
• Oil can be formed from virtually anything, including garbage.

I suggest that in reality, the question is: did all of the Earth’s vast oil accumulations form in the time available in the YEC interpretations of Earth’s history?

What would be needed to support such a premise?  This might be done by showing that the processes that petroleum geologists use to understand hydrocarbon generation and accumulation are wrong or perhaps by showing that an alternative explanation is at least plausible.  It would disprove the YEC timeline if any oil accumulation is demonstrated to have a history that extends significantly more than 10,000 years into the past. In such a case, the YEC interpretation of history would fail. 

Geologist and Christian, Ken Wolgemuth provided a series of posts late last year on Facebook. regarding how oil is formed.  I recommend reading through these to get a more complete picture. Contact me if you need help in so doing. I will largely disregard Humber’s discussion of oil from garbage.  This is largely a red herring. Whether or not hydrocarbons can be generated by such means has no real bearing on the issue of whether the oil and gas produced today from the subsurface were generated and accumulated relatively recently.

In this case, I will first examine the Gulf of California example cited from the NYT (Figure 1).  Humber used it to support the view that it is reasonable to conclude that oil was generated and accumulations formed quickly.  Then secondly, I will use hydrocarbon systems that I am familiar with to evaluate the premise that these systems acted over the last few thousand years.

It took a bit of detective work to figure out what exactly was referred to in the NYT article. Oil was indeed found in deep sea cores taken in the portion of the Gulf of California known as the Guaymas Basin. For the premise to be true, a couple of things need to be checked.

1. Was this oil generated in the timeframe that would fit the YEC interpretations?
2. Are there characteristics of this oil and the setting that are unusual and make it questionable that oil generation here would be appropriate to use as a generalization for other hydrocarbons?

First, regarding the generation of oil in a short time, this concept is not difficult.  Geochemists can “generate” oil from source rocks (rocks with the enough organic carbon to generate hydrocarbons) by heating it with the right equipment.  The geochemical properties of such oil often allow us to tie the source rock to oil from wells.

The Guaymas oil has been studied in a number of articles. (Didyk and Simoneit 1989; Kawka and Simoneit 1987; Koski et al. 1985; Kvenvolden and Simoneit 1990; Teske 2020).  The articles that I have found on the Guaymas do suggest that the oil was generated rapidly. Didyk and Simoneit, 1989, “Hydrothermal oil of Guaymas Basin and implications for petroleum formation mechanisms”  wrote this:

“Here we report the evaluation of such a hydrothermal oil, which we find to be similar to conventionally exploited crude oils. Its young geological age (< 5,000 yr, C14) indicates that a significant fraction of the organic carbon in the oil has completed the transformation from biomass to migrating oil in less than 5,000 years, thus limiting the oil generation, expulsion and migration processes to a geologically short timescale.” (Didyk and Simoneit 1989)

I have been unable to find the primary sources for the ¹⁴C dating and it would be interesting to understand exactly what was dated and how representative it is. That said, this result is not unreasonable.

How does this particular hydrocarbon system compare to others? The system here is a very uncommon type, known as a “hydrothermal petroleum” system.  What does that mean?  This oil was generated as geothermally hot water percolated through organic rich sediments. In many ways, this is similar to the process by which many metal ores were emplaced. In fact, the mineral assemblage in the Guayman Basin is similar to such deposits. (Koski et al. 1985)

Most hydrocarbon reservoirs developed by a multi-step process where source rock was heated, expulsed, migrated and trapped.(AAPG Wiki 2022).  Didyk and Simoneit, 1989 wrote,

“Such a slow multistep mechanism differs significantly from hydrothermal petroleum formation, which can be geologically fast (here 5,000 yr) indicating a single-step mechanism in which occurs almost concurrently with expulsion and migration. In addition, the whole hydrothermal process can take place during the early stages in the geological history of a basin.”

“As no hydrothermal oil formation has been detected, identified and documented, no evidence is available on the extent to which this alternative single-step oil generation process has contributed towards the origin of presently exploited reserves.” (Didyk and Simoneit 1989)

The attached sketch illustrates the setting in this basin (Teske 2020) (Figure 2). It is highly unusual for hydrocarbons to be recognized in this setting, but if oil were formed here, it is not shocking at all that it would be generated quickly and with the reported variable characteristics. Major igneous intrusions should be formed here, and they were, unlike in typical oil provinces. Suffice to say that it would be dangerous to make broad generalizations about oil generation based on what is found here.

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Figure 2. Schematic drawing of oil generation from Guaymas Basin from Teske (2000)

Reference Cited

 AAPG Wiki. 2022. “Hydrocarbon Expulsion, Migration, and Accumulation – AAPG Wiki.” AAPG Wiki. April 4, 2022. https://wiki.aapg.org/Hydrocarbon_expulsion,_migration,_and_accumulation

Didyk, Borys M., and Bernd R. T. Simoneit. 1989. “Hydrothermal Oil of Guaymas Basin and Implications for Petroleum Formation Mechanisms.” Nature 342 (6245): 65–69. https://doi.org/10.1038/342065a0

Humber, Paul G. 2013. Reasons to Affirm a Young Earth. Vol. e-book revision. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54235fb7e4b0dab08d8d81dd/t/57d6e6b3d482e999611d7888/1473701556828/ReasonsAffirmYE+CRS+e-book.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0J_JCi_6zH1KuNlHYrgIJjTAhCgOm4zwio8ks44k5CGnJIAiETnqThXLI_aem_BA94GfB1gm5q86tQj_pW2w

Kawka, Orest E., and Bernd R. T. Simoneit. 1987. “Survey of Hydrothermally-Generated Petroleums from the Guaymas Basin Spreading Center.” Organic Geochemistry 11 (4): 311–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/0146-6380(87)90042-8

Koski, Randolph A., P. F. Lonsdale, Wayne C. Shanks, M. E. Berndt, and S. S. Howe. 1985. “Mineralogy and Geochemistry of a Sediment‐hosted Hydrothermal Sulfide Deposit from the Southern Trough of Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California.” Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth 90 (B8): 6695–6707. https://doi.org/10.1029/JB090iB08p06695

Kvenvolden, Keith A., and Bernd R. T. Simoneit. 1990. “Hydrothermally Derived Petroleum: Examples from Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California, and Escanaba Trough, Northeast Pacific Ocean1.” AAPG Bulletin 74 (3): 223–37. https://doi.org/10.1306/0C9B22A9-1710-11D7-8645000102C1865D

Sullivan, Walter. 1982. “DIVERS FIND NATURAL ‘OIL REFINERIES.’” New York Times, January 29, 1982, sec. A.

Teske, Andreas. 2020. “Guaymas Basin, a Hydrothermal Hydrocarbon Seep Ecosystem.” In Marine Hydrocarbon Seeps: Microbiology and Biogeochemistry of a Global Marine Habitat, edited by Andreas Teske and Verena Carvalho, 43–68. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34827-4_3