Understanding how oil is formed and migrated is really important in oil exploration. Organic material in source rock is heated deep in the earth by radioactive heat sources deep in the Earth.
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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:
Oil Formation – Part 2.
In Part 1, I looked at the oil found in the Guayman Basin where Humber proposes that oil here demonstrates that oil is formed in thousands of years vs. millions of years. In that part, I showed that the Guayman Basin is highly unusual and should not be used to make generalization about when oil was generated in other areas. In this part, I want to describe some of the other areas where I have worked and how the petroleum system worked in them.
Examples:
When I worked in the North Sea and around Great Britain, we recognized that the most important sources there were Jurassic shales. During the Jurassic period, shales formed in a series of relatively shallow water areas that were oxygen poor and this permitted the preservation of organic matter. The Kimmeridge Clay is the most important source rock. This was named for the outcrop in Kimmeridge Bay on the southern coast of England. The rock is so rich in organic matter that it has self-ignited at the surface. Where this unit has been buried deeply enough to be in the oil window (the temperature range over which oil is generated from a source rock), it is the major source rock for the oil and gas reservoirs in the North Sea. I have seen examples where the geochemical analysis of the source rock and the produced oil were almost identical. We are confident that most of the oil there originated from heating the Jurassic units and that such oil migrated into oil reservoirs.
When I worked in development drilling in the deepwater offshore Angola region, we recognized that the oil was sourced from the Cretaceous Iabe Formation. This unit is in the oil window below the major oil discoveries there. Thick salt units are below the Iabe Formation and these make it very difficult for hydrocarbons to migrate from potential source rocks below this.
I worked for several years exploring in the offshore Nigeria region. Source rocks here were from Cenozoic rocks. We learned that the source rocks came from river supplied organic material from the ancient equivalent of today’s Niger River. Eventually out in the very deep water, the source material gets dilute and eventually not buried deeply enough to mature the beds to generate oil.
These Cretaceous and Cenozoic source rocks are interesting in considering YEC models. Andrew Snelling (AIG) would consider the Cretaceous units to have been deposited near the end of the flood and considered the Niger Delta rocks, including the source rocks, to have been deposited in the few years between Noah’s flood and the time of Abraham.(Snelling 2009) It is hard to imagine how such a scenario can be entertained.
One more example to consider is the Woodford Shale in the Permian Basin in West Texas. The Permian Basin is considered a “superbasin” with multiple source rocks and multiple traps for oil and gas. Oil from many of the reservoirs began in the Woodford Shale. Could this be comparable to the Guaymas Basin example?
None of the examples that I have listed have igneous intrusions or evidence of hydrothermal systems like we saw in the Guaymas Basin. We recognize several stages in the petroleum system for each of these.
First, we had the deposition of the source rocks themselves. That took millions of years. I recognize that YEC authors such as Andrew Snelling interpret marine shales to have been deposited very quickly as muds joined together in flocculates. No doubt such processes did occur and allow some shales to form more quickly than they would have otherwise. A published study shows that the shales within the Woodford Shale are not all alike. Some did include mostly particles from terrigenous or land sources (Ochoa, Wolak, and Gardner 2013). Some of these were deposited quickly with flocculated shale recognizable under the microscope. However most of the formation is made up of a type of sediments describe as “pelagic.” Pelagic units are fine-grained sediments that are almost entirely composed of microscopic biogenic material. This material was deposited by settling slowly in quiet water. It happens that these units also are more permeable, meaning that fluids move more easily through them and making them important for producing oil and gas. Deposition of each of the pelagic units took place over thousands of years.
The deposition of source rocks does not support flood geology interpretations. No one studying the Guaymas Basin claims that the organic-rich sediments there were deposited in a few years. The short timeframe referred to in the New York Times only applies to oil generation, expulsion and migration in this region.
The second step is that the source rocks were buried deeper and they slowly heated up. Once buried deeply enough, the organic matter, known as kerogen, generated oil in the shales. The oil saturation would have slowly built up as the kerogen was converted. Some of that oil just stayed in the source rock and today we frac those source rocks to produce unconventional oil. Eventually over time, this oil became concentrated enough that it began to be expelled into adjacent formations. This expulsion process was likely to have moved through slowly.
The next step is what happened as the expelled oil hit a permeable bed or other permeable pathway such as some faults.… migration. This process probably normally moved relatively quickly. Migration might have been possible in timeframes allowed by flood geology, but longer range and slower migrations are also recognized.
Next in the case of conventional oil and gas comes the stage of trapping. As you know, oil and gas are lighter than water. Oil and gas moved upward along carrier beds and pathways until they encountered an impermeable container. The impermeable rock above the container is the seal. Not all seals are created equal. Some will allow gas to leak, but not oil. Some seals are really effective but the fluids put pressure on the seal and over time the seal can fracture and leak off the oil and gas. Often, we can find evidence that tells that this has happened in the past and approximately when it occurred. Again this would be difficult to reconcile with flood geology. If the sealing rock is salt, then such a seal can hold large columns of oil and gas for long times even in geologic timescales.
Does oil formation demonstrate that the Earth is young, as Humber proposed? I conclude not only does oil formation not demonstrate that the Earth is young, but taken over the full hydrocarbon system, it demonstrates that deep time occurred. Who would expected that the death of all of these microscopic plants and animals would provide an energy source that makes it possible for 8 billion people to live on the planet in increasingly technological societies. This is just another way that God provided prepared the Earth for us.
References Cited
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
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
Ochoa, Jesús, Jeannette Wolak, and Michael H. Gardner. 2013. “Recognition Criteria for Distinguishing between Hemipelagic and Pelagic Mudrocks in the Characterization of Deep-Water Reservoir Heterogeneity.” Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 97 (October):1785–1803. https://doi.org/10.1306/04221312086
Snelling, Andrew A. 2009. Earth’s Catastrophic Past. Institute for Creation Research. http://isgenesishistory.s3.amazonaws.com/digital%20downloads/earth-catastrophic-past-1-preview.pdf
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