There was a time, say 75 or even 50 years ago when there still were many simple prospects around to be drilled. Straightforward 4-way closures at moderate depth and pressure. When working up one of those you could get away with a more basic analysis and still get your well approved. But those times are gone. These things have all been drilled (unless they are in unexplored regions, such as nature reserves - which is why oil companies are so keen to get into such areas). Nowadays prospects are far more complicated, with subtleties that introduce all kind of risks that must be understood to be successful.
Another issue is the cyclical nature of the industry. In lean times, with low oil price, Exploration budgets get squeezed (a dry well is a straight hit on the Company’s bottom line) and there is massive competition for the limited company funds. This means that prospects that have been worked up with the most detailed risk assessment have an edge over ones that are less well understood. In short, you do the work or you’re not in the running.
You might argue that smaller Companies won’t have the resources for such detailed Basin Modelling studies. This is where the contracting industry comes in. They will do this work for you at a cost which is a mere fraction of the well cost. If you can spend $10,000 to potentially save $10,000,000 would you not do that?
I am not sure what you are claiming, but I have not heard YEC make this claim. Not only is Flood Geology not needed, neither is radiometric dating needed. That was simply the point of the video. I watched it and you will be hard-pressed to overthrow their argument. It is pretty clear from experts in the field who are not YEC that age of rocks is irrelevant in the search for oil.
Experts in the field? I confess I didn’t get further into the video than 10 minutes or so and the amount of nonsense and misinformation totally put me off watching more.
Now, listen closely. I have 30 years hands-on exprience as an Earth Scientist in the oil and gas industry. I have worked as MSc hands-on geologist and geophysicist in some of the biggest multinational companies in the world and during that time I have been in joint ventures and partnerships with literally dozens of other companies, including pretty much all of the majors. I have done exploration, appraisal and development work. I have worked on the definition and planning of dozens of exploration/appraisal wells and even more production wells.
I am definitely much more of an hands-on expert than that engineer in the video. Engineers are not explorers. I have worked with many engineers in a number of big developments projects both onshore and ofshore. I have great respect for them but they really don’t have much detailed insight in what we do. Well engineers have the most, since they work closely with the Geoscientists, but Facilities engineers really only use our output and on the whole are only vaguely aware of the nitty gritty of our work.
If you truly want the view of someone with decades of actual relevant expertise, go and re-read my earlier posts. I repeat, the absolute age of the rocks is essential because without it we wouldn’t have the understanding of the geological processes that generated our prospects. Deep Time underpins all of our geological models and reasoning.
Since there simply are no geological models of a Young Earth worth more than the paper they are sketched on, YEC just cannot be used in the search for oil. You’d have nowhere to start from.
This explains how hydrocarbons are generated from their precursor, a material called kerogen. “Kerogen, commonly defined as the insoluble macromolecular organic matter (OM) dispersed in sedimentary rocks, is by far the most abundant form of OM on Earth. This fossil material is of prime importance as the source of oil and natural gas” (from Kerogen origin, evolution and structure - ScienceDirect )
A you can see in the linked article, hydrocarbon generation from kerogen is a time-dependent reaction. Reaction rates of different types of kerogen have been determined experimentally in the lab. The general equation is
Unless you know how much time has passed since deposition of the source rocks, plus a number of other factors that make up this equation, you can’t model the timing and volume of generated oil with any precision. Without that, your prospect has huge risks on charge and trap timing that you cannot address.
It should be clear that meaningful volumes are only generated over periods of millions of years, not mere thousands of years.
Yes it is. And this is from their most recent stockholder report:
We incurred net losses of $6,693,000 for the year ended December 31, 2019, and $38,511,000 for the year ended December 31, 2018. We cannot provide any assurance that we will ever be profitable.
We do not have any proved reserves or current production of oil or gas. We cannot assure you that any wells will be completed or produce oil or gas in commercially profitable quantities.
In my limited research into Zion Oil & Gas, I haven’t been able to confirm whether they apply “flood geology” or “creation science” in their oil exploration efforts. But I do get the impression that YECs help support their stock prices.
Ok, I was not going to post here anymore thinking we would simply agree to disagree. But now I can’t resist. Put any t value in your equation that yields relative ages and your research is not hindered in the least. Further, put any graduated value - say from 1 to 13 - in your equation where each ascending integer represents a deeper relative age and still your research is not hindered.
You do not need to, or have to, plug in any radiometric value in the millions of years whatsoever. Any previously agreed upon relative age or graduated integer will work so long as all equations in the analysis conform.
Absolutely true. I’ve designed the control for upstream facilities and there is no way I would have embarrassed myself by taking issue with the geologist about anything down hole.
What a clueless statement.
Have you ever even seen a formation map? Any idea of how they are produced?
From the linked article I see that their technical guy isn’t totally deluded:
"Down the hall, geologist Lee Russell sits in a room surrounded by seismic maps of Israel. Russell spent 35 years working for major oil companies before coming to Zion. As a devout Christian, Lee shares the founder’s vision, but he checks it against modern geoscience.
“Wells should be drilled based on their scientific merit, pure and simple,” Russell says. "
It is about the volumes of oil you need to generate and the time you have available for that. And I still have no idea what you mean by ‘graduated values from 1 to 13’.
Anyway, as I said, the concept of Deep Time underpins all of our geological thinking. Basin formation, sediment deposition, hydrocarbon generation, trap formation, none of that can be done unless you have orders of magnitude more time available than 6000 years.The physics simply don’t work. And because of that, you cannot build predictive geological models unless you build them on Deep Time. These are 4D models where time is just as important as location and depth. And without such models, you won’t get your well drilled.
That is why ultimately we rely on radiometric dating.
On what grounds do you disagree with me, notwithstanding my credentials, and why do you agree with the engineer in the video even though he is not a hands-on explorer?
Man, do you have even the most basic, elementary understanding of how equations, algebra and measurement actually work?
You can’t just “put any t value in your equation that yields relative ages.” Not into this equation nor into any other equation. Your t value has to match reality, otherwise your predictions of what you are going to find will not match reality.
Seriously, this is the kind of stuff you learn in school at age twelve. It’s a fundamental principle of algebra and measurement: garbage in, garbage out.
Actually, you can. So here you are wrong. I have math up through 3 levels of university calculus. It reduces a lot of unnecessary conversions by assigning some constants as equal to 1. As in
But I wonder, have you even listened to the very good podcast above? Listen to it in its entirety, then come back and assert beyond question that radiometric dating is essential in the quest for oil reserves.
Assigning some constants to 1, given a shared, agreed upon conversion factor, is very different from being able to put any old time value in an equation and getting a valid answer.
Does it look like I said you could? I clearly said h bar = c = 1. In physics, c = 300,000 km/sec, so how is it exactly that I gave latitude to plug “any ol # in”?
Well, you are wrong again. Integers exploited in this operation acting as constants, say 1 for youngest through 13 for oldest, that substituted for age ranges of rock, would be perfectly suitable, so long as the constants 1 - 13 were assigned units of “years”. And that, in a more simplified way, is exactly what @jammycakes said I could not do:
“put any t value in your equation that yields relative ages”.
So when @jammycakes added the qualifier “that yields relative ages”, he precisely negated his argument against me.
It is pretty clear from experts in the field who are not YEC that age of rocks is irrelevant in the search for oil.
What’s clear is the video is contradicted by others with decades of experience and the technical literature @GutsickGibbon cited. Why do you think that is? Is the literature wrong to say basin modeling is an integral part of oil exploration, or could those podcasters simply be mistaken?
