Abstract
UNLIKE most problems concerning origins, which have but a philosophic, or academic interest, that of the genesis of petroleum has a distinctly practical significance, for if solved, prospectors for mineral oil would be provided with important data and chemists might learn how to produce artificially valuable sub stances similar to, if not identical with, natural petro leum. Man's fertile imagination has spun not only an embarrassing number of speculations and hypotheses concerning the nature of the raw material or materials from which petroleum has been derived, but also innumerable explanations of the modus operandi of its formation. Of these, only a tithe remains. Explana tions that affirm a cosmic origin or postulate volcanic activity as the effective cause, have long been abandoned, and to-day there are only three which find scientific support. The least popular of these, the inorganic theory, affirms that petroleum originates from the interaction of metallic carbides, presumed to exist immediately below the earth's outer crust, and steam, whereby various hydrocarbons are formed, and these undergo further changes, including polymerisation, to produce the compounds that are found in petroleum. It has recently been suggested that the methane syn thesis from carbon monoxide or dioxide and hydro gen, in the presence of a catalyst, such as vanadium or nickel, of which traces are found in petroleum, might also explain the initial formation of hydrocarbons in Nature, and the presence of methane in natural gas; but these suggestions fail to interpret the occurrence of optically-active substances in petroleum, and the presence of nitrogen in some oils, while geologists have met them with uncompromising hostility.
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The Origin of Petroleum. Nature 112, 627–628 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112627a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112627a0