If oil and gas deposits are really hundreds of millions of years old, then why hasn't the gas pressure diffused up through the overlying rock layers leaving little gas pressure at depth? There are still great gas pressures, so how could this be if that pressure has been escaping upward for supposedly hundreds of millions of years?
James R, they are porous and permeable (interconnected porosity), and Metakron, how do you suppose it's continually produced?
Petroleum is continually produced underground by the action of bacteria on organic matter deep underground. Most oil and natural gas fields were once ocean bottoms. The stuff is still fermenting and still producing oil and gas. The rocks may be porous but they get filled with matter from above and below, and their porosity is a relative thing when simple pressure closes the pores and creates metamorphic rock. Even simple limestone is pretty tight and so is shale. Cracks get filled in with debris and eventually cement shut. Anything that did burst open and release pressure either settled into a different shape or is no longer a natural gas field.
Almost all geologists agree that organic debris was entombed in sedimentary layers to be heated and compressed shortly thereafter to form oil and gas, no continuous process, most would say it's been down there as is for hundreds of millions of years, which makes not sense when you look at the porous and permeable overlying rocks.
Already have, the pressure should have all bled out in much less than a million years, and where do you get the idea that oil and gas bearing zones are continually producing new oil and gas?
Simple, I actually read about the subject, that's how I know that oil and gas bearing zones are continually producing new oil and gas. It's when you realize that river silt has to be the biggest source of organic material for oil and natural gas fields that it becomes clear how they can be so huge, how there can be so much organic material that it takes millions of years for it to digest underground. It is also because it is underground and hot that this is a slow process. The bacteria involved have to be thermophiles and probably can't even function at surface temperatures.
It's a lot more like, you're rehashing very simple and well established material. Of course I can explain it, at a special price to you, just $50 an hour, or you can just Google the subject or go to the library for free. The simple explanation is that anaerobic fermentation breaks down organic matter and leaves behind hydrocarbons, a process that has been observed and used industrially for a long time, and yes, biogas is an established technology, they do use it. There is also simple heat and pressure. Yes, I can explain in a lot more detail than that, but that is why Google is your friend.
So according to your strange logic, a finite amount of organic material has been "fermenting" for hundreds of millions of years, b.s.
Gas gets trapped in porous rocks. It stays there, unless holes get drilled, eroded, etc. The pressure is important. Once there's a certain amount left it can't be extracted so they have to leave it. The only renewable gas I know of comes from landfills.
Well, obviously because God created the world 4000 years ago and it only looks as though the oil has been there for millions of years. Get with the program, silly logically-thinking scientist
What makes you say it "looks as the though the oil has been there for millions of year?" Did you know that coal and oil samples have measurable amounts of C14, far greater amounts than what could be chalked up to contamination?
I guess it is too much trouble to ask a self-important whiner like you to simply look up gas field in wikipedia for your answer.
Yes, I do understand that you do not understand the concept of non-permeable. I will try to explain it to you. It means the opposite of permeable.
Oh, I see, so that pressure will stay down there for hundreds of millions of years more, because the layer about it is "nonpermeable." I've got some lakefront property in the Gobi that I want to sell you.
