"Hydrocarbons are not biology reworked by geology but rather geology reworked by biology." – Thomas Gold

I like to be in the company of nutcases...that helps explain my presence here ;-)

Time will prove Mendeleev and Gold guessed better when the oil keeps flowing...and flowing with no end in sight.

Peak oil is the Oil companies and the environmentalists best friend. That it doesn't explain helium in deposits or that geothermal vents have since been proven to be spewing bacteria from deep inside the earth doesn't help peak oil.

I like Chekaliuk's quote:

“Statistical thermodynamic analysis has established clearly that hydrocarbon molecules which comprise petroleum require very high pressures for their spontaneous formation, comparable to the pressures required for the same of diamond. In that sense, hydrocarbon molecules are the high-pressure polymorphs of the reduced carbon system as is diamond of elemental carbon. Any notion which might suggest that hydrocarbon molecules spontaneously evolve in the regimes of temperature and pressure characterized by the near-surface of the Earth, which are the regimes of methane creation and hydrocarbon destruction, does not even deserve consideration.”

Professor Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, at All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1968.