Flood Geology, Again

[BrushyCanyon (Supercritical Geoscientist)]

Hello @faded_Glory!

I too have been working in the geosciences (including the O&G industry) for over 40 years and am still trying to retire (but they still pay me).

As you clearly said, we need to generate a comprehensive model of our study area, including structure, stratigraphy, and thermal history before we even begin to identify any potential targets for further research, such as costly 3D seismic shoots, etc.

We have to sell our conclusions to a very hard-headed, bottom line driven budget committee. Expect to be cross-examined far worse than any academic dissertation. If the project goes to a regulatory body for permitting, expect to be grilled under oath by the regulators, other companies, and the public.

In many cases our targets are several miles deep, but being off in location by less than a mile can lead to expensive failure. If you are trying to hit a specific reef debris fan from the forefront of a Wolfcampian reef, neither guesses nor prayers will help. And oh, don’t fail to interpret the faults correctly, or your reservior my be a leaker.

I have joined and/led many exporation teams, and intellectual honesty is rule number one. We demand that each other give their most honest and professional efforts, and to immediately point out any potential flaws in our models, be you the VP of E&P, or the most junior tech.

Sure, anyone with the $ can buy a lease in a mature field and have a good chance of a good well in an arbitrary spot, but remenber, that spot is hitchhiking on millions of dollars of exploration and development work built by dozens of real scientists before you.

Many of the honest, hard-working people that I work with in the O&G field are believers of many religions, but from from PhD’s to roustabouts, all of them accept the realities of earth sciences, engineering, and cold hard economics.

How many YEC oil companies are there, and which ones can shows us their balance sheets?

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@faded_Glory

YEC brings absolutely nothing at all to the table to help build such models. It simply doesn’t provide a necessary framework in which to fit our data and arrive at an understanding of the local geological events in time and space.

What, you’re telling me that "billions of dead things in water got buried in a year" doesn’t make for a useful model of Earth’s geological history?

[John_Harshman]

It occurs to me that seismic stratigraphy makes no sense in a YEC context. What would onlap and downlap even mean?

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@PDPrice

YECs usually don’t disagree with mainstream geology in terms of basic features like uplift, stratification, etc. We disagree on the timescale and proposed causation (in some cases) of these changes.

You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. Earlier in this thread you asserted:

“Without a recent global flood, we would not have a geologic column, or at least not one that resembles what we see today.”

Now suddenly you seem to be saying the geologic column makes sense on mainstream science models, you just think it all happened in a single year.

[T_aquaticus]

@PDPrice

The lack of a stratified record full of fossils would be very odd if there were a global flood.

What would we expect from a global flood but not 4.5 billion years of geologic history?

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@T_aquaticus

What would we expect from a global flood but not 4.5 billion years of geologic history?

Massive continuous geologic formations spanning the globe. Evidence for massive catastrophic erosional events. Evidence for huge volumes of water moving rapidly and catastrophically. The majority of the fossils. Flat gaps. Underwater canyons. Giant rock arches. Oceans that are inhabitable and aren’t full of a toxic quantity of salt and nickel, among other elements. Continents that aren’t all eroded away. A moon. Polystrate fossils. Carbon 14 in diamonds. Soft tissue in dinosaur bones. Unpermineralized dino bones.

[faded_Glory]

I may not have been clear enough in my post: we use geological science to build predictive models. If we can’t predict, from these models, with a reasonable certainty that we will find oil, the well will not be drilled. By no-one.

We simply can’t build these models without understanding the geological history of the area we are drilling in. There may have been a time when oil companies drilled simple ‘bumps’ and stood a good chance of success. Those day are long gone - by decades, if not longer. The easy targets have been drilled. These days prospects are subtle, with considerable uncertainty and risk on many of the critical elements. Oil drilling is operational, but working out where to drill is not. Only sound science, sound mainstream science, makes it possible to get a grip on these factors to the extent necessary to secure funding and get the well planned and drilled.

I am telling you how it is, speaking from a life time of industry experience. Don’t for a second think that you know better. You do not, sir.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@faded_Glory

I am telling you how it is, speaking from a life time of industry experience. Don’t for a second think that you know better. You do not, sir.

That’s exactly why I said at the outset that it would be better for Dr. Tim Clarey of ICR, who is also a geologist with experience in the oil industry, to comment on this question. I am not familiar with the ins and outs of these models you’re referring to, which makes it impossible for me to comment on how long-age assumptions may or may not be relevant to them. What I do know is that the oil the companies are paying for exists in the present, not the past (just like all the rest of the geology).

[T_aquaticus]

@PDPrice

Massive continuous geologic formations spanning the globe.

There aren’t any of those.

@PDPrice

Evidence for massive catastrophic erosional events.

How do you determine if a geologic feature was created by a catastrophic erosional event? How do you determine the extent of the event and when it happened?

@PDPrice

The majority of the fossils. Flat gaps. Underwater canyons. Giant rock arches.

Why can’t these be part of an old Earth?

@PDPrice

Oceans that are inhabitable and aren’t full of a toxic quantity of salt and nickel, among other elements.

Why?

@PDPrice

Continents that aren’t all eroded away.

Why can’t continents erode over 4.5 billion years?

@PDPrice

A moon. Polystrate fossils. Carbon 14 in diamonds. Soft tissue in dinosaur bones. Unpermineralized dino bones.

All of those are expected on an old Earth.

[faded_Glory]

@BrushyCanyon

Many of the honest, hard-working people that I work with in the O&G field are believers of many religions, but from from PhD’s to roustabouts, all of them accept the realities of earth sciences, engineering, and cold hard economics.

This merits repeating. In my career I have worked on 6 continents with other geoscientists from from most of the major religions in the world: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus - those are the ones I know for certain. There may have been others too.

All of them work in the mainstream scientific paradigm, and are perfectly happy with that.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@faded_Glory

All of them work in the mainstream scientific paradigm, and are perfectly happy with that.

Ah. Well I guess that settles it then. It’s a consensus, so it’s the truth.

Articles like this one seem to indicate that far from being a requirement for successful oil drilling, apparently long-age uniformitarian assumptions can sometimes get in the way of successful oil drilling:

https://www.icr.org/article/another-new-whopper-sand-discovery

[T_aquaticus]

@PDPrice

That’s exactly why I said at the outset that it would be better for Dr. Tim Clarey of ICR, who is also a geologist with experience in the oil industry, to comment on this question.

Glenn Morton commented on exactly that topic:

But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.

“From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true?”

That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said ‘No!’ A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, “Wait a minute. There has to be one!” But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now, but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.
Why I Left Young-Earth Creationism

Glenn worked in the oil industry interpreting seismic data. Everything he saw falsified a young Earth.

[faded_Glory]

@PDPrice

apparently long-age uniformitarian assumptions can sometimes get in the way of successful oil drilling:

I am 100% cetain that the companies who made the discovery used mainstream scientific thinking when planning the well, and not some YEC mumbo-jumbo, so actually nothing got in the way of this discovery.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

That’s not what Dr. Clarey wrote in the article you didn’t read.

[faded_Glory]

I don’t care what Dr. Clarey wrote. I know what Repsol do, and YEC it ain’t.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

At least you’re being honest that your mind is completely closed on this issue. I think you have that in common with everybody else who participates here at PS as well.

[T_aquaticus]

Food for thought.

This is a polystrate telephone pole. It was created by a catastrophic event, the lahars from a massive volcanic eruption. This polystrate telephone pole did not require the entire globe to be flooded. It also didn’t happen 4,000 years ago.

So how can something spanning two layers of strata be evidence for a global flood that happened exactly 4,000 years ago? That makes no sense.

[faded_Glory]

Next time, let Dr. Clarey make his prediction before someone else spends a lot of their money to drill an exploration well, ok? Then I might listen to him.

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@T_aquaticus

So how can something spanning two layers of strata be evidence for a global flood that happened exactly 4,000 years ago? That makes no sense.

Well, for starters you can read this article on one set of polystrate fossils, the Joggins Cliffs:

https://creation.com/joggins-polystrate-fossils

[Dan_Eastwood]

@PDPrice

Articles like this one seem to indicate that far from being a requirement for successful oil drilling, apparently long-age uniformitarian assumptions can sometimes get in the way of successful oil drilling:

A quick search reveals that good old uniformitarian assumptions have understood much of the Whopper Sand geology for over 15 years. This source (pdf) is slides only, but not too hard to follow along. This article presents similar material, and is mentioned here by the author of my first link (Higgs, in comments).

The ICR article doesn’t reference either of these authors. Perhaps Tim Clarey should have spent a little more time in the library researching his article?

O/T: Clarey received his MS at University of Wyoming (1984) while I was an undergrad. Small world!