The Russian-Ukranian Theory of Abiotic Oil
Why Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas Are NOT Fossil Fuels
Excerpt from The Truth About Energy, Global Warming, and Climate Change.
In the West, we owe our appreciation of the Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic petroleum to petroleum geologist J.F. “Jack” Kenney, who owned and operated the Gas Resources Corporation in Houston, Texas. Kenney was a hands-on international oil entrepreneur affiliated with the Institute of Physics of the Earth (IPE), a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The IPE, founded in 1928, one of the oldest scientific institutes in the Russian Academy of Sciences, is a prominent research center of global and national geophysics. The academic side of the IPE has built university-level schools in geophysics, seismology, experimental geophysics, and geo-electromagnetic research.[1] In the 1960s, Kenney began coauthoring scientific publications with geologists at the IPE who were doing leading research into the abiotic theory of the origin of oil. Kenney coauthored these articles with credentials both from the IPE and from his Houston corporation.
After World War II, Stalin determined that the Soviet Union would never be vulnerable again because of a dependence on foreign oil. In 1947, the U.S.S.R. had limited oil resources, the largest of which were still the Baku oil fields in present-day Azerbaijan. Russian petroleum geologists were convinced that the Baku oil fields were depleting and near exhaustion after World War II. During the war, Russia had occupied Iran, but U.S. President Harry Truman was determined to force Russia out of Iran, believing the Soviets were bent on expansion. Truman took the case to the United Nations and accused the Soviets of interfering with a foreign nation. On March 25, 1946, the Soviets announced they would begin withdrawing their military forces from Iran within six weeks.[1]
As Kenney described, Stalin responded by initiating a “Manhattan Project”–type effort after the pullout from Iran to study every aspect of petroleum to ascertain if Russia had any commercially exploitable petroleum reserves within the country. By 1951, Russian petroleum geologist Nikolai Kudryavtsev articulated what today has become known as the Russian-Ukrainian Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins. Between 1940 and 1995, Russian scientists published more than 300 scientific publications on the Fischer-Tropsch process while obtaining some 170 Fischer-Tropsch patents.[2] Since 1951, Russian and Ukrainian geoscientists have published hundreds of scientific papers rigorously exploring the abiotic theory. However, except for Kenney’s efforts, this body of geoscience has remained largely unknown in the West, primarily due to language.
In recent years, Swedish geophysicists have advanced much of the early work Russian and Ukrainian geoscientists did to promote the abiotic oil theory. In 2010, Vladimir Kutcherov, from the Division of Heat and Power Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, and Vladilen Krayushkin from the Laboratory of Inorganic Petroleum Origin at the Institute of Geological Sciences in the National Academy of Sciences, in Kyiv, Ukraine, coauthored an essential article in Reviews of Geophysics. The paper bore the title “Deep-Seated Abiogenic Origin of Petroleum: From Geological Assessment to Physical Theory.” Kutcherov and Krayushkin presented their reasons for concluding the abiogenic theory had reached a new level of scientific proof.
Experimental results and geological investigations presented in this article convincingly confirm the main postulates of the theory and allow us to reexamine the structure, size, and locality distributions of the world’s hydrocarbon reserves.
Source: Vladimir Kutcherov and Vladilen Krayushkin, “Deep-Seated Abiogenic Origin of Petroleum: From Geological Assessment to Physical Theory,” Reviews of Geophysics, Volume 48, Issue 1 (March 12, 2010), https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008RG000270.
Kutcherov and Krayushkin detailed experiments conducted in Russia that resulted in 1990 with the patenting of a high-pressure chamber that, when fully sealed, reached pressures of 50 kbar and temperatures of 1,200°C for several hours. Using 99 percent pure solid iron oxide, FeO, calcium carbonate, CaCO3, and double-distilled water, H2O, the repeated experiments produced alkanes, i.e., saturated hydrocarbons, with the chemical formula CnH2n+2. The chemical synthesis closely followed the Fischer-Tropsch formula, using calcium carbonate for the source of carbon, water for hydrogen, and zinc for the catalyst in a reaction that called for the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide.
The remainder of the published thirty-page scientific paper analyzed oil fields worldwide, arguing the oil fields’ characteristics are not consistent with organic oil expectations. Kutcherov and Krayushkin document natural gas and petroleum resources in Precambrian crystalline shields where there was no involvement of the sedimentary source rock.
[1] Vladimir Kutcherov and Vladilen Krayushkin, “Deep-Seated Abiogenic Origin of Petroleum: From Geological Assessment to Physical Theory,” Reviews of Geophysics, Volume 48, Issue 1 (March 12, 2010), https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008RG000270.
[1] History.com editors, “March 25, 1946: Soviets announce withdrawal from Iran,” History.com, last updated March 23, 2021, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-announce-withdrawal-from-iran.
[2] V.I. Anikeev, Y. Yermakova, B.L. Moroz, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Novosibirsk, Russia, “The State of Studies of the Fischer-Tropsch Process in Russia,” unpublished paper supported by Syntroleum Corporation, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
[1] Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, Linkedin.com, no date, https://www.linkedin.com/company/institute-of-physics-of-the-earth-russian-academy-of-sciences/.
[2] This chapter subsection is heavily drawn from J.F. Kenney’s website as well as his published articles. See: “Introduction,” GasResources.net, no date, https://www.gasresources.net/introduction.htm.