by C. Warren Hunt

The theory presented in this paper is a synthesis of the observable geology of petroleum occurrences and new information on the ability of microfauna to generate petroleum from methane. The paradigms of petroleum generation, anhydride theory, conventional diagenesis, and cosmic or inner earth abiogenesis, are compared as to their relevant geology.

A theory to explain the occurrence of methane and petroleum in these situations can be evolved from the fact that peat and kerogen comprise molecules in which carbon is partially oxidized. If there is any slight ionization of these molecules, the carbon form must carry a slight positive charge. By contrast, the carbon in methane effusing from the highly reduced environment of inner earth is by definition reduced, and any slight ionization leaves the gas with a slight negative charge. The negative charges of effusing methane are attracted to the positive charges on peat and kerogen, and methane is drawn into the molecular fabric. Such methane when found in coal seams and organic shales is seen to be captured, imported by magnetic attraction, and not generated from indigenous carbon.

Methane effuses from earth's interior and to varying degrees pervades all crustal terranes, crystalline, volcanic, and sedimentary. He points out that the energy from this methane can be utilized by hyperthermophyllic bacteria and archaea, which obtain it by stripping away its hydrogen. Dehydrogenated methane molecules can be defined as anhydrides, and their recombinations as petroleum. Anhydrides of this origin are biologically-derived through dehydrogenation of methane, and thus, are products of biogenesis by living, microbial organisms rather than biogenesis of fossil biomass (kerogen). Treating coal as the "terminal anhydride" classifies coalification also as a process of biogenesis by living organisms.

Microorganisms pervade fossil biomass. If it can be shown that they obtain their metabolic energy from oxidizing hydrogen that they obtain by stripping it from methane, we could view the stripped products, alkane hydrocarbons as organic in origin but not fossil. The terminal product of stripped methane, pure carbon, is the main component of the purest coals and asphaltites. 1 . Bacterially produced alkanes can thus be viewed as products not of the catagenesis of fossil carbon but of contemporary biogenesis of the carbon that effuses as methane from the interior of the Earth. The legacies of biodegradation in bacterially produced petroleum and coal would comprise complex molecular residues such as proteins (porphyrins and others). Such molecules are found in all petroleum and are frequently advanced as proof for an organic vs. an inorganic (abiogenic) origin.

Petroleum in anhydride theory may thus be generated either in association with source rocks or in their absence. Coal may result from the coalification of peat by addition of externally-derived carbon, or it may be deposited in veins as asphaltite absent any peat. Oil in igneous host rocks and asphaltite in non-sedimentary terranes attest to the validity of anhydride theory.

Anhydride theory is a paradigm shift that portends serious implications for petroleum discovery and recoverability from terranes thought heretofore to be barren. It also implies the possibility for

Anhydride Theory

rejuvenation of producing or depleted resources, and thus challenges industry to note reservoir conditions suggesting rejuvenation, which may be occurring in a producing oil field or may be in progress in a previously depleted reserve.

ANHYDRIDE THEORY by C. Warren Hunt

Methane Effusion from Earth's Interior

Methane effusion from the Earth's interior is a worldwide phenomenon. Hardrock miners and geologists cope with it; petroleum and coal geologists exploit it. Nevertheless, finding it in previously unsuspected places still evokes expressions that verge on wonder. For example, in a recent article on drilling of Indian Ocean crust, Evans (1996) describes "a 0.5 km core of oceanic crustal layer 3, consisting of gabbroic rocks that underlie mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB) and extend down several kilometres to the upper mantle. Surprisingly, CH4 is an abundant volatile species in fluid inclusions throughout the length of the core, and in some cases the only major volatile."

Methane is also abundant in many terranes. The conventional sources in sedimentary rocks need no elaboration. Methane encapsulated by seawater, as "hydrates" in the sediments on and immediately below the ocean floors in many places worldwide in volumes comparing with or exceeding the proven gas reserves in conventional fields. Methane influx into hardrock mines in continental shields is widespread and a problem for the miners. Quebec and Ontario mines as well as the Bushveld and Witwatersrand mines are typical in this respect.

Worldwide occurrences of petroleum in basement reservoirs

The Conventional View of Petroleum Generation

Fossil biomass leaves kerogen, an insoluble residue from decayed life forms. Burial then with optimum temperature and pressure conditions known as an causes of the organic molecules in the kerogen to into petroleum. The hydrogen/carbon ratio in peat and kerogen and the heat liberated on combustion of those partially oxidized carbon forms are less than in methane and other high gravity hydrocarbons. A source of additional hydrogen and energy are necessary, and this must come from an outside source if peat or kerogen is to be completely reduced to methane or high gravity oil. Catagenesis does not comprise such addition. Neither can it explain the source of methane or petroleum found in crystalline and volcanic terranes deep under sedimentary cover or where no sedimentary cover exists and hence neither peat nor fossil kerogen.

oil window catagenesismature

Microorganisms and Methane

Stetter et al (1993, 1996) in research on the role of suphur in microbiological processes discovered that hyperthermophyllic microorganisms occur pervasively in petroleum. Their work led them to an unexpected result, that hyperthermophillic bacteria and archaea are able to

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and to produce at temperatures less than 110°C."dehydrogenate alkane hydrocarbons up to [carbon number] C20 anaerobically"

"molecular hydrogen ... in situ ... microbiologically"

It is interesting that microbiological transformation of methane to petroleum has not been previously advanced as a feasible alternative to biogenesis of biomass, because it has been widely reported that petroleum has been made from methane in South Africa over the last half century. The Sasol process is said to be a modification of the Fischer Tropsch process in which metal catalysts effect partial dissociation of the methane at temperatures of >600°C. The biological production reported by Stetter et al. Is merely a substitution of organic catalysts, the enzymes, for the metal catalysts that are used industrially.

fossil

The process leading to Stetter et al's. results are seen to arise from the fact that microbiota require more energy than they can get from either kerogen or peat. As hydrogen can provide that energy to them and methane is the richest molecular form available to them, they apply unknown enzymatic processes to strip the methane. The stripping produces fractional molecules that by their nature are relatively unstable and should combine with each other to give larger alkane and other hydrocarbon molecules. Carried to conclusion, dehydrogenation yields pure carbon.

Stetter et al. report on microbiota, hyperthermophillic bacteria and archaea, with the relatively low temperature tolerance level of 110°C. In the Precambrian shield at Ft. McMurray, Alberta, this corresponds to a depth of 3 600m (12,000 feet). Little research has gone into the hyperthermophyllic forms until recently, and it is not unlikely that species tolerant of higher temperatures will be discovered. In any case, the aforesaid depths is near the middle of the zone in which orthodoxy considers that occurs. One must wonder whether it could be coincidental that the depth of productive oil reservoirs coincides approximately with the temperature toleration depth of active hyperthermophyllic bacteria and archaea. Such a coincidence is not inconsistent with the proposition that hyperthermophillic bacteria and archaea are the agents that generate the petroleum.

catagenesis

Methane from earth's interior infused into a terrane rich in kerogen or peat is a setup for synergistic conversion of fossil biomass and immigrant methane. Conversion renders their carbon into petroleum and coal. Neither kerogen nor peat is necessary, however, for the production of petroleum and coal. Hyperthermophillic bacteria and archaea can do it all. This fact is abundantly illustrated by the occurrence of petroleum and veins of asphaltite in igneous and otherwise organically barren rocks worldwide.

Because orthodoxy has not embraced the idea of generation of higher carbon numbered hydrocarbons from methane in nature or the concept of carbon addition to peat in coalification, let us review the evolution of thinking that has led to the present stasis.

The History of the "Fossil Fuel" Theory

In antiquity the Greeks named the oil they found in rocks petroleum, "rock oil," to distinguish it from oil obtained by compressing olives or rendering animal products. To them rock oil was self-evidently and coal was a simple observable fact - or so it seemed.

"abiogenic," "the stone that burns,"

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19th century theorists, understanding fossils and knowing one could not compress or render rock to obtain oil, found it easy to assume that oil originated from the only organic source they could see, fossil biomass. Thus originated the idea of There was no evident alternative hypothesis for the origin of petroleum, and the idea of was born by default, another seemingly simple, observed fact.

"biogenesis.""fossil fuel"

In the 20th century kerogen was recognized as the fossilized, insoluble organic residue found in sedimentary rocks, and porphyrins were observed in petroleum and coal as complex, organic metal-bearing compounds having clear biological origins. These discoveries solidified the support for the concept. In the case of coal, the presence of plant macerals had much earlier led easily into the idea that coal is merely compressed plant material, another The kerogen, porphyrin, and maceral observations gave the interpretation the appearance of truth despite alternative possible interpretations and inconvenient conflicting data.

"fossil fuel""fossil fuel."

"fossil fuel"

Thomas Gold in his book, POWER FROM THE EARTH (Gold, 1987), pointed out the now well known fact that hydrocarbons are present in meteorites and abundant throughout the solar system, apparently in habitats where life as we see it on earth is unable to exist. He reasoned that petroleum must be producible without the help of living organisms, i.e. another seemingly simple, observable fact.

"abiogenically,"

Since 1987, mounting evidence from the space and ocean exploration programs and deep continental drilling are finding life in many habitats that were previously considered hostile. Thus, kerogen recently reported in a martian meteorite is interpreted by the authors as support for abiogenesis ( ). The choices, life in space or inorganic kerogen, are both ineluctable contradictions of theory.

Clemett & Zare 1996, Anders, 1996"fossil fuel"

The initial dismissal of Gold's thesis (often derisive) by most petroleum geoscientists that followed is more muted today. The dismissal derived first from the fact that petroleum has almost exclusively been found in sedimentary rocks, secondly, that the ubiquitous and the kerogen residues are seen to constitute irrefutable evidence for biological origins, and thirdly, that the carbon isotope ratios in petroleum are depleted in C relative to mantle gas, as determined from fluid inclusions in diamonds, kimberlites, and carbonatites, resemble the isotope ratios found in living biological forms (Bromley & Larter, 1986). As fossils have been the only biologically derived material recognized to be associated with petroleum, the fossil fuel theory has prevailed and Gold's abiogenesis has lost according to the consensus.

"porphyrins"

13

Birth of the "Anhydride Theory"

Today, the tables are turning. This author contributed to the turning in his book, EXPANDING GEOSPHERES (Hunt et al, 1992) by drawing attention to the fact that petroleum does, in fact, occur in igneous rocks where no biomass of any kind exists and that Gold's abiogenesis concept deserved serious attention. In the book he also posed the concept that methane is necessary for the creation of coal from peat. He did not, however, link coal with petroleum generation or consider that living biological microflora exist in upper crustal igneous rocks as well as in sedimentary litholgies and could be involved with generation of petroleum.

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Anhydride theory, born of that linkage in 1996, reverses the author's support for Gold's abiogenesis and asserts that biogenesis by , as opposed to

, explains all the observable facts of creation, topology, and trace element composition of terrestrial petroleum and coal. The work of Karl Stetter and associates (Stetter et al, 1993, 1996) in demonstrating the role of living microorganisms to produce alkane hydrocarbons and hydrogen from methane by hyperthermophyllic bacteria and archaea was the seed for the theory and a milestone in organic science. It is a small step from their demonstration to anticipate that such microorganisms should occur in different assemblages in all crustal rocks with appropriate temperatures for their survival. Anhydride theory thus does not require preexisting kerogen and coal macerals for the generation of hydrocarbons or coal.

living microbial forms fossilized forms

The ubiquitous porphyrins found in petroleum are explained in Anhydride theory as the remains of, as opposed to fossilized, biomass. In this context the porphyrins in petroleum represent

organisms that lived beneath the earth's surface where the oil was generated, rather than on the surface, as the fossils once did.

living

It has been pointed out to the writer that the carbon isotope balance in petroleum resembles surficial living organic ( C-rich) molecules more than mantle ( C-rich) molecules. Fractionation of mantle methane by selective microbiotic assimilation of CH from mantle gas could yield

methane with the isotope balance observed in natural petroleum. Whether this occurs is not known.

12 13

124

Another possibility for transfiguring the isotopes is the theory advanced by Louis Kervran (Kervran, 1972), which has never received much attention despite its author's many papers (mostly in French). Kervran reports nuclear division within living floral organisms (yeasts, and others), in a lifetime of exhaustive research and quantization of the products from the 1950s into the 1970s. Determining elemental quantities before and after various lifecycles his findings, which cover many elements, indicate C being produced in three transformations: Mg -> 2 C,

Cl -> C + Na, and 2 N -> C + O. Kervran considered the first of these, magnesium atoms splitting into carbon atoms, to be the source of petroleum.

(Kervran, L., 1972). The addition of a component of C derived in this manner to biologically assimilated methane heavy in C is not inconsistent with Anhydride Theory.

12 24 12

35 12 23 14 12 16

"Nature moves particles from one nucleus to another -- particles such as hydrogen or oxygen nucleii, and in some cases the nucleii of carbon and lithium. There is thus transmutation... Biological transmutation is a phenomenon completely different from the atomic fissions or fusions of physics... it reveals a property of matter not seen prior to this work."

12 13

Today, there is a growing record of petroleum resources in igneous terranes. This implies a much larger domain in which biogenesis can occur than the previously recognized domain of fossil biomass. It also implies that, whereas most oil and gas has been found in sedimentary terranes up to now, these are the terranes where almost all drilling has occurred. Sedimentary rocks still provide the best entrapment structures, far better than igneous rocks without cover. But igneous rocks below sedimentary cover may well have enormous potentials.

Oil fields illustrative of resources in crystalline rocks are typified by the White Tiger field offshore Vietnam. Discovered in the 1970s, this field produces 224,000 barrels per day from a resource that may be six billion barrels. The wells penetrate the granite surface at about 1 000 metres and

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produce oil from multiple zones of fracturing down to 5 000 metres. The bottom of the oil column is unknown. The original field pressure has been maintained sufficiently that a resupply process is suggested. This feature, rejuvenation of depleting reserves, is not suggested only for the White Tiger field, but also for oil fields that produce from sedimentary rocks with no apparent proximal

Such are the Saudi Arabian fields, where production from fractured carbonates is experiencing little drawdown from virgin pressures, while indicating huge net increases in reserves, despite decades of high capacity withdrawals (Mahfoud & Beck, 1995 ).

"source rocks."

The Topology of Petroleum

Topology of petroleum resources represents this author's original argument against fossil biomass as the sole source of petroleum. The argument has two divisions: (1) depth ranges of petroleum occurrences, and (2) quantitative distribution with respect to reservoir rocks.

The depth ranges aspect is highlighted by the fact that kerogen transforming progressively into bitumens and thence to higher gravity oils at increasing depths and pressures should have resulted in prominent resources of black oils and bitumens at . This is not what exploration has found. Worldwide, black oils and bitumens are mostly near or at the surface, well above the supposed generation depths; few resources of black oils and bitumens occur today at

.

generation depths

generation depths

The quantitative distribution aspect is highlighted by the example of western Canada basin reserves, which draw on an in-place resource base of one or two hundred x10 barrels of medium and high gravity "conventional" oil. By contrast, a belt some 500 km length and 50 km width on the northeast edge of the basin contains perhaps 4 x 10 barrels of bituminous oil. This belt of black oils occupy shallow, Early Cretaceous reservoirs; the conventional light and medium oils variously occupy deeper Devonian to Cretaceous reservoirs. Whereas the Cretaceous host rocks are about the same thickness and presumably more or less the same kerogen content over the whole area, some mechanism has concentrated 95% of all the oil in the basin into 10% of the land area and perhaps 5% of the stratigraphic column. Whereas migration can be invoked for some relocation of petroleum, it bends the mind to try to explain such a great quantitative anomaly. The relatively horizontal attitude of the strata at the time of migration (Late Cretaceous) and absence of clear migration paths make migration implausible for high viscosity black oils and bitumens. Loss of light ends (90%?) leads to an absurd initial infusion (40 x 10 barrels). All concepts for concentration of 90% of the oils generated from fossilized biomass in the western Canada basin into 10% of its area appear unreasonable in these lights.

9

12

12

The topology of petroleum occurrences also can be raised in opposition to the Gold view of abiogenesis. That scenario predicts that petroleum created from inner earth methane by pressure and temperature migrates upward from deeper levels. If true, the ratio of gas to oil should increase with the assent to the surface, because gas is far more mobile than oil. And there should be no upward decrease of the ratio at any stage, because gas should always outpace migrating oil in the system.

Thus, Gold's theory should give the result that gas would predominate at shallower depths, while oil should lag at deeper levels. Needless to say, observed conditions are precisely opposite.

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Petroleum geologists know that there is no significant oil found below about six km, that gas is more abundant than oil at four to five km depths, and black oils occur at shallow levels or at the surface.

Coal Seam Methane

Methane in coalbeds has been regarded as largely an evolutionary product from coalified peat, and thus biogenic. The possibility that much methane could result by infusion into the peat and its antecedent coal from external sources has not been given much credence despite some compelling arguments. Let us consider the evidence for infusion.

1. The ash from coal, which is predominantly silica, alumina, oxides of calcium and magnesium, and lesser amounts of water-soluble metal oxides, when compared with the carbon in the coal is often much less than in the supposed precedent vegetation. Where plant ash is normally 8-15% of dry plant weight in the writer's experience, individual coal beds often have only 3% or even as little as 1% ash. Implicitly, the overabundance of carbon in coal compared with the precedent plants suggests that carbon has been concentrated or added from an external source. The addition of carbon as coal or as methane within the coal explains the increase of thermal value in the transition from peat to coal.

2. Trace metals such as gold, silver, copper, nickel, etc., that are foreign to the vegetation before coalification, vary widely among various coals without relation to former subcrop grades, and often at levels far above the levels in present-day vegetation. Metals of this kind could be introduced as metal hydrides accompanying methane and deposit as native or oxidized mineral forms or metabolize as organometallic complexes in microbiota. In any case, they must be regarded as additions in the coalification process.

3. Most coal measures have no fossilized regolith below them that would represent the soil horizon in which the original peat-contributing vegetation was rooted. This suggests that the carbon present volume is far greater than in the original peat or that the final depositional locality of a coal may differ from the site where the precedent plant life grew.

4. Oxidation of peat in situ releases methane along with carbon dioxide. It does not generate petroleum; and oxidation would, in fact, preclude coalification. Thus, further oxidation is not what has happened in the process of coalification. Instead, reduction has led to coalification and, because coal represents more carbon than was present in the original peat, the methane found in coal seams is logically its source. It must be mainly from an external source. Enhancement of calorific values by reduction of peat, an impossibility in an oxidizing regime, demonstrates the fact that reduction has taken place. Let us consider the process of reduction of peat.

Peat contains oxidized organic molecules, i.e. their carbon has given up electrons (C++++) to oxygen or other oxidants. Mantle methane contains reduced organic carbon, i.e. its carbon has received electrons (C----) from hydrogen. In peat the oppositely-charged forms attract one another and result in deposition of neutral, elemental carbon as coal. The behavior of coal to sorb both methane and carbon dioxide is a function of this attraction. Neutral coal is relatively oxidized compared with methane and relatively reduced with respect to carbon dioxide, while being neutral to gases like nitrogen. This relationship shows in the coal adsorption behavior of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen, which occurs in the approximate ratio of 4:2:1 (Stevenson et al, 1991). The affinity of coal to methane is strong: so strong that easily five times as much methane

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can be adsorbed by coal as a conventional sedimentary reservoir can contain with comparable thickness, pressure, and temperature (Gunter et al, 1996). From the foregoing sorption ratio it follows that ten times as much carbon dioxide can be so adsorbed over that which could be accumulated in normal reservoir porosity.

Metals in Petroleum and Coal

are particularly problematical to explain within existing theories. For example, the Firebag coal deposit of northeastern Alberta is laterally contiguous with the Cretaceous Athabasca bituminous sands, which contain over 2 x 10 barrels of bitumens in the contiguous area. The 900 million ton coal deposit is a shoreline replacement of the estuarine, now-bituminous sands, which interfinger northeastward into it and overlap it. Paleozoic carbonates that underlie the sand/coal horizon are not known to be mineralized. Thus, in the Athabasca bituminous sands and Firebag coal metals not normally present in either oil or coal beyond trace amounts occur abundantly.

Metal contents of petroleum and coal

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Trace metal contents of the petroleum fraction of the Early Cretaceous Athabasca bituminous sands are elevated far above the values found in Cretaceous oils to the southwest in the basin. The enhancements of particular metals in the Syncrude bitumens mine some thirty miles to the west of the Firebag site are shown in the following table (Hitchon, & Filby, 1983):

TABLE 1

Comparative Metal Contents of Mannville Group OilsMetals in Syncrude Oil, Ft. McMurray, Alberta

Data source: ALBERTA CRUDE OILS, Hitchon, B, and Filby, R.H.,OFR 1983-02, Alberta Research Council (all values are ppm)

Metal Alberta plains oil Ft. McMurray oil Enhancement----- ------------------ ---------------- -----------Na 0.32 40.33 126 xFe 0.50 141.7 283 x 254 508 xMn n.a. 3.853Ni 0.80 74.11 93 x 71.88 90 xCr n.a. 1.014 1.682Co 0.00125 1.349 1079 x 1.998 1598 xAs 0.00417 0.4003 96 x 0.3209 77 xSe n.a. 0.1907Cs 0.00036 0.0259 72 x 0.0685 190 xV 1.107 176.5 159 xEu 0.000091 0.009 99 xAu n.a. 0.001316Ga n.a. 315 267 Weighted average enhancement 347x

By comparison, some data is available for a coal deposit that is stratigraphically equivalent and immediately northeast of the Athabasca bituminous sands. The few metals shown are

in the coal by comparison with the oil. All values are ppm.super-

enhanced

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TABLE 2

Metal Firebag Coal Ft. McMurray Coal : Oil ---- ------------ ------------ ---------- Au 1.04 0.001316 790 x Ag 0.90 n.a. n.a. Cu 34 n.a. n.a. Pb 9 n.a. n.a. Zn 15 n.a. n.a. Co 35 1.349 25.9 x 1.998 17.5 x Cr 398 1.014 392.5 x 1.682 236.6 x

Average super-enhancement of coal with respect to oil ...... ~375 x

Plant uptake of metals from water where the water has passed through metal ores can impregnate plant ash to levels such as these. But where there is little metal in the rocks, such enhancement is not found. No metal resources are known below either the bituminous sands or the Firebag coal. A better explanation for the metals is that they arrived as hydrides along with methane that made petroleum generation and degradation possible and promoted coalification of peat deposits marginal to the estuarine sands that now contain the oil. Metal hydrides are volatile and would be stable in the reducing environment of effusing methane, but oxidized so as to deposit native metals, oxides, or sulphides when they entered a peat bed in the process of coalification.

Conclusions

It seems clear to this author from the foregoing that an external agency capable of supplying carbon, hydrogen, energy, and metals has been at work in the generation of the world's petroleum and coal deposits.

Anhydride theory supports the proposition that the carbon forms comprising peat and kerogen are partially oxidized and hence carry a slight positive charge, whereas the carbon in methane from earth's highly reduced interior environment carries a negative charge, that methane has been drawn into peat or kerogen and once there, has given the misleading impression that it originated there, that microorganisms, which pervade the shallow crust and all fossil biomass, are demonstrably able to strip hydrogen progressively from the abundant methane that effuses from earth's interior and thus to provide the partial molecules that can recombine to form longer-chain hydrocarbons, and that the end of the process is terminal carbon, either in the form of coal or asphaltite.

2

In conclusion it can be said that Gold's abiogenesis as well as orthodox diagenetic biogenesis as explanations for the origin of petroleum are parlous theories that fail to fit the facts.. Only anhydride theory adequately explains the geological distribution of methane, high gravity oils, black oils, and their contained porphyrins, ash, and metals that are found in igneous rocks as well as sedimentary rocks. Only Anhydride theory allows for rejuvenation of depleting and depleted oil and gas fields, processes that may be happening in our time.

Peat burial and its coalification under the pressures and temperatures of depth fail to explain the carbon enrichment, the metal content, the absence of a growth substrate (soil) below most

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ANDERS, E. 1996. Science, 274, 2119-2121BROMLEY, B.W., & LARTER, S.R., 1986. Biogenic origin of petroleums, a comment on the Gold-Soter deep earth gas hypothesis, C&E News August 25, 3CLEMETT, S.J. & R.N. ZARE, 1996. Science, 274, 2122-2123EVANS, W. C., 1996. A gold mine of methane, Nature, 381, 114-115GOLD, THOMAS, 1987. Power from the earth, Dent & Sons, LondonGUNTER, W.D., T. GENTZIS, B.A. TOTTENFUSSER, R.J.H. RICHARDSON, 1996). Deep Coalbed methane in Alberta, Canada: a fuel resource with the potential of zero greenhouse gas emissions, Reprint of paper presented at 3rd International Conference on carbon dioxide removal, Mass. Inst. Tech. HITCHON, B, & FILBY, R.H., 1983. Alberta Crude Oils, Alberta Research Council , OFR 1983-02HUNT, C.W., 1992. Endogeny and economic minerals, In C.W. Hunt, Ed. Expanding Geospheres, Energy and Mass Transfers from Earth's Interior. Polar Publishing, CalgaryKERVRAN, L., 1972. Biological transmutations, Swan House Publ., Binghamton -- Quoted by R. Nelson, 1998 in Infinite Energy, 4, #19 79-82 MAHFOUD, R.F., & J.N. Beck, 1995. Why the middle east oilfields may produce forever, Offshore Magazine, April, 1995, 56-106ROMANOVA et al, 1998 Preliminary Report on the Scientific Working Conference on Oil in Granite, Kazan, Tatarstan, Dec. 18-19, 1997, 42 authors, p57, Polar Publ., CalgarySTETTER, K.O., R. HUBER, E. BLOCHL, M. KURR, R.D., EDEN, M. FLELDER, H. CASH, I.

coal bodies, or the incremental energy content of coal, above the energy of peat. As in the case of petroleum, only Anhydride Theory accommodates observed data. Observation therefore leads to some permissible deductions:

1. Petroleum produced by dehydrogenation of methane can be interpreted as a "mixture of anhydrides," and hence, to constitute a biogenic, renewable fuel, not a "fossil fuel."

2. Coal in varying degrees can be interpreted as a mixture of peat macerals and terminally dehydrogenated methane. Coal, like petroleum, should then be considered a , renewable resource, not a

biogenic"fossil fuel."

3. Porphyrins and metals that occur in petroleum and coal as well as their carbon isotope ratios can be interpreted as the residues from living, not fossilized, microbial metabolisms that produced the petroleum and coal.

4. Assignments of to oil or coal should be understood as the times when the microbiotas generated the oil or coal, not the age of the host rock, which may be much older in the case of coal or either younger or older in the case of petroleum.

"ages"

5. of oil based on the residues from an originating microbiota cannot be taken to demonstrate an originating but only the spectrum of microbiotas that acted on the petroleum during its post-generational migration.

"Typing""source rock,"

6. Peat and kerogen may or may not have been involved as precedents in the sites where coal and petroleum were generated. In some cases microbiological agents have acted on methane to create petroleum and coal in igneous rocks (Hunt, 1992).

REFERENCES

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VANCE, 1993. Hyperthermophyllic archaea are thriving in deep North Sea and Alaskan oil reservoirs, Nature, 365, 743-745.-, 1996. Hyperthermophyllic procaryotes, FEMS Microbiology Reviews 18, 149-158, ElsevierSTEVENSON, M.D., W.V. PCZEWSKI, M.L., SOMERS, S.E. BAGIO, 1991. Adsorption/desorption of multicomponent gas mixtures at in-seam conditions, Society of Petroleum Engineers, 23026. Proceedings of SPE Asia-Pacific Conference in Perth, Western Australia, 741-756

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