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The modern theory of the abiotic deep petroleum origins recognizes that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth. In short, petroleum is not a ?fossil fuel? and has no intrinsic connection with any biological detritus ?in the sediments?.
The history of petroleum science might be considered to have begun in the year 1757 when the great Russian scholar Mikhailo V. Lomonosov enunciated the hypothesis that oil might originate from biological detritus. The scientist who first rejected Lomonsov's hypothesis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were the famous German naturalist and geologist Alexander von Humboldt and the French chemist and thermodynamicist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac who together enunciated the proposition that oil is a primordial material erupted from great depth. Following particularly the enunciation of the second law of thermodynamics by Clausius in 1850, Lomonosov's biological hypothesis came inevitably under attack. The great French chemist Marcellin Berthelot was the first scientist who carried out experiments demonstrated the generation of petroleum by dissolving steel in strong acid. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev also examined and rejected Lomonosov's hypothesis of a biological origin for petroleum. With extraordinary perception, Mendeleev hypothesized the existence of geological structures which he called ?deep faults,? and correctly identified such as the locus of weakness in the crust of the Earth via which petroleum would travel from the depths. After the end of World War II, the government of the Soviet Union initiated a program, which was given the highest priority to study every aspect of petroleum, to determine its origins and how petroleum reserves are generated. In 1951, the modern geological conception of deep, abiotic petroleum origins was first enunciated by Nikolai A. Kudryavtsev together with numerous other Russian and Ukrainian geologists. This conception was developed during the last 50 years by the Russian and Ukrainian scientists. They have brought a lot of brilliant ideas and new approaches but nobody could get experimental confirmation of the possibility of abiotic deep synthesis of hydrocarbons. It was the main break in the development of the conception. Until recently the conception of the abiotic deep genesis of hydrocarbons was a geologist's hypothesis. Recently, theoretical arguments and experimental results presented place this conception in the mainstream of modern physics and chemistry and open an enormous practical application. The theory of the abiotic deep genesis of hydrocarbons allows us to apply a new approach to methods for petroleum exploration, to reexamine the structure, size and location of the world's hydrocarbons reserves.
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