How Long Can Oil, Which Has Been Said To Be Exhausted, Be Used?

Just like today's "mobile phone battery anxiety", humans have been worried that there will not be enough oil on the earth a long time ago, and have estimated the "life" limit of oil. Decades ago, the answer someone gave was 50 years. Decades later, some people's answer is still 50 years.

Will oil run out? With the development of technology, can the wish of “inexhaustible” oil be realized? Can artificial oil be used? How far are new energy sources from replacing oil?

Voice of China and CCTV have joined hands with the Youth Science and Technology Center of the China Association for Science and Technology to launch an all-media series of science popularization columns - Master Class "Scientists Speak Science". 20 famous academicians talked about hot topics and answered questions for the public.

Today, Wang Tieguan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will explore the "high-energy" site of oil exploration and excavation with you.

How long can oil "last"?

Today, oil participates in human life in various forms. From plastics to lipstick, from fertilizers to asphalt, and of course gasoline, kerosene, etc., petroleum products have a wide range of uses.

Why have people been worried about oil for so many years, but the limit of oil's "life" has been pushed again and again?

Academician Wang Tieguan believes that technological development is one of the important reasons. “The development of technology and the estimation of reserves are completely different.” He explained using the Daqing Oilfield as an example: “When the oil field was first discovered, we had to The oil layer does not have the ability to be exploited. With the advancement of technology, the extraction of crude oil from thin oil layers within two meters has been realized, and the reserves of Daqing Oilfield have doubled. After more than 60 years of exploration and development, the conventional oil and gas resources of Daqing Oilfield have entered the middle and late stages of development. . Last year, Daqing Oilfield announced a major strategic breakthrough in Gulong shale oil exploration."

After worrying about "oil depletion" for a long time, some people have gone to the other extreme: they believe that more and more oil is being extracted and there will be no end to it.

Academician Wang Tieguan said this is not the case. "After all, it takes tens of millions of years to generate oil, and humans are extracting and using oil very quickly. In the long run, fossil fuels will eventually be replaced by new energy sources."

Can new energy and artificial oil replace oil?

So, when will oil be replaced by new energy?

Academician Wang Tieguan said that currently various new energy technologies have not yet matured to the stage where they can completely replace fossil energy. "It must be technically feasible and economically appropriate. Fossil fuels, including oil and natural gas, will not be easily replaced in our foreseeable future."

Regarding the origin of petroleum, there are currently two theories: inorganic origin and organic origin. Internationally, the view of organic origin is more mainstream. This view holds that when organisms die and are buried underground, when the underground temperature increases but usually does not exceed 200 degrees, after a long geological process of tens of millions of years, it can cause kerogen to crack and generate oil.

Another question arises: Can oil be artificially produced?

Academician Wang Tieguan tells everyone that it can. "Kerogen shale, also known as oil shale, is a shale rich in kerogen. After the oil shale is mined and heated, distilled and retorted, the complex organic matter macromolecules in the kerogen can be cracked into hydrocarbons. Generating shale oil that can be used as fuel oil or further making it into gasoline and diesel is one of the ways to create artificial petroleum."

my country's artificial petroleum industry developed rapidly in the 1950s. Fushun, Liaoning and Maoming, Guangdong are important man-made oil production bases in my country.

However, he also pointed out that from an economic perspective, the cost of artificial oil is too high.

Looking for the “DNA code” of crude oil

In oil and gas exploration, people often use petroleum's "DNA code" - biomarker compounds to read crude oil information.

"Oil moves, and the formations and locations where people find oil are generally not the places where oil is generated." Academician Wang Tieguan said that the molecular skeleton of biomarker compounds retains the molecular skeleton of organisms and can characterize the biological sources of organic substances, such as through biological processes. Marker compounds can reveal which formations the oil was produced from, and can also indicate what type of organisms formed the oil.

At present, the c18~c23 13α (n-alkyl)-tricyclic terpene series is the only biomarker compound identified and named by Chinese scholars.

In 1978, Wang Tieguan picked up a piece of gray-green gravel during a field geological survey and observed under a magnifying glass that it contained asphalt.

In petroleum geological work, people often regard natural asphalt as "oil seedlings", so this quickly attracted Wang Tieguan's attention. He immediately selected a spot for manual trench exploration and dug out three-eight-meter-thick black asphalt sandstone. Through organic geochemical analysis and isotope age determination, he determined that this was an ancient oil reservoir.

At that time, instruments and analytical methods were limited. Ten years later, Wang Tieguan's team used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to detect a new series of compounds that had not been reported in the international literature at that time. Later, after co-injection of chromatography-mass spectrometry standards, they determined the structure of this new biomarker compound in 1990 and named it 13α (n-alkyl)-tricyclic terpene.

Academician Wang Tieguan said that so far, the biomarkers of the 13ɑ (n-alkyl)-tricyclic terpene series have only been detected in the strata, oil seedlings, and asphalt of the Proterozoic in my country, which may mean that this series of compounds is the landmark of the Proterozoic period. The products are of practical significance for ancient strata and deep oil and gas exploration in my country.