In 1999,Thomas Gold published "The Deep Hot Biosphere," a paper that postulated that coal and oil are produced not by the decomposition of organic materials, but in fact are "abiogenic" -- the product of tectonic forces; i.e., deeply embedded hydrocarbons being brought up and through the earth's mantle and transformed into their present states by bacteria living in the earth's crust.
The majority of the world’s scientists scoff at Gold's theory, and "fossil fuel" remains the accepted descriptor of oil. Yet in recent years Russia has quietly become the world's top producer of oil, in part by drilling wells as deep as 40,000 feet -- far below the graveyards of T-Rex and his Mesozoic buddies.
Is it possible that Thomas Gold was right again, and that the earth is actually still producing oil? It's tantalizing to think so. Meantime, whether or not Brazil's recent find adds support to Gold's theory, for sure it's good news for Brazilians: Government-run Petrobras is one of the world's leaders in ultra-deep offshore oil extraction, and Sugarloaf Mountain alone could transform Brazil into another Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.
