XPost: alt.politics.radical-left, alt.activism, de.soc.politik.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics.india.communist   
   From: rolf.martens@comhem.se   
      
   UNITE! Info #267en: 2/7 The deep drilling for oil in Sweden, 1986-92   
   [Posted: 31.12.2006; at my homepage from 30.12]   
      
   [Continued from part 1/7]   
      
      
   02. THE DALA DEEP GAS PROJECT - SOME GEOGRAPHY   
   AND PRE-HISTORY (ctd.)   
      
   Further in "DHB":   
      
      
   "How could I go about finding hydrocarbons, possibly in com-   
   mercial quantities, in new places - places that might be quite   
   unexpected according to the conventional theory? How could an   
   academic like myself suddenly become an entrepreneur on the   
   scale necessary to prospect and drill in a place of my   
   choosing - or at least guide a relatively technical operation   
   of that kind?   
   ...   
   Sweden would also offer an advantage as a test site, being a   
   prosperous and technologically advanced country that however   
   imported nearly all the fuels it required.   
   ...   
   An opportunity arose unexpectedly when I received an invita-   
   tion to spend a day in Stockholm explaining my ideas to senior   
   officials of the Swedish State Power Board (Vattenfall), an   
   invitation that had been mediated by a lawyer friend in   
   Washington who knew people with Vattenfall. ..."   
      
      
   In an English-language report in November 1989, entitled "The   
   Deep Gas Project - Commercial Evaluation", Tord Lindbo, then   
   managing director of the Dala Deepgas Production company (DDP   
   - see also section 04.) and one of the early enthusiasts for   
   the project, wrote on the initial results of Gold's sugges-   
   tions:   
      
      
   "The deep gas project began in a very small scale in 1983 with   
   documentation of known gas seeps and drilling of a 200 m deep   
   hole. Already in this borehole, located in the eastern part of   
   the Siljan Ring area, there were gas shows.   
   ...   
   During the years 1984 and 1985 nearly all the surface inves-   
   tigations known to the oil and gas industry were performed in   
   the Siljan Ring area. All of them were positive for indica-   
   tions of hydrocarbons."   
      
      
   The types of investigation mentioned by Lindbo were those   
   concerning:   
      
   1) Geology: It was established that the granite indeed was   
   fractured and thus porous, after the meteorite impact 368   
   million years ago. And six further boreholes in the area to   
   depths of 300-700 m all showed "interesting traces of   
   methane".   
      
   2) Gravity anomaly: There was a gravity minimum in the area,   
   centred at Gravberg, which also showed that there was a very   
   large amount of porous granite deep down.   
      
   3) Deep seismics: These investigations showed that there most   
   likely were such caprocks which are necessary to prevent most   
   of the hydrocarbons, if there were such at great depth, from   
   leaking out via the surface. Without a caprock, they would   
   long since have vanished.   
      
   4) Soil sampling: 250 soil samples, both from within and from   
   without the Siljan Ring, showed large remnants of hydrocarbon   
   seeps and also significantly large concentrations of such   
   metals which are rare at the earth's surface but common much   
   deeper down.   
      
   5) Magnetotellurics: In oil and gas reservoirs, there usually   
   is salt water too, a good conductor for electricity. Measure-   
   ments showed that in the Gravberg area, there was good   
   electric conductivity at 7 to 8 km depth.   
      
      
   In 1985 a thin book on this - to most people in Sweden then -   
   new and surprising theory on oil's perhaps having abiotic (or   
   cosmic) origins, and the possibility of its being tested and   
   perhaps even applied commercially in this country, was pub-   
   lished by the geologist Jan Bergström, later a member of a Scientific   
   Advisory Committee which was formed to evaluate the Siljan project   
   (initially an independent body, later apparently integrated in the DDP). The   
   booklet was entitled: "Gas och olja - Kosmiskt eller biologiskt ursprung?"   
      
   I happened to read that book in 1986, and later quoted in   
   translation some parts of it, dealing with that cosmic or   
   abiotic theory in general, in my Info #028en, part 2/8, in   
   1997.   
      
   At a public information meeting on the suggested deep gas   
   project, in the city of Mora in Dalarna (probably) in 1984,   
   Jack F. Kenney, who was later to become the technical   
   director of the company running the project (during a period   
   in 1991), was in the audience as only an "interested by-   
   stander" but spoke up, telling some skeptics that the deep   
   drilling advocated by Gold was quite realistic and had good   
   chances of success; he himself had engaged in the drilling for   
   oil to such depths since 20 years back.   
      
   The government circles in Sweden certainly did not react very   
   quickly or enthusiastically to Gold's suggestion in 1983 of   
   this project. Most probably there was international pressure   
   on them from the beginning on, by the government of the USA   
   above all, not to allow or participate in any such at all. One   
   public expression of such pressure was a protest, signed by   
   119 (so-called) geologists, against "that terrible waste of   
   taxpayers' money" it would be if the state invested its   
   planned 30 million SKR (or some  $5 million - certainly not   
   any "enormous" amount) in such a "completely pointless"   
   project which these "geologists" "could tell in advance" would   
   detect "no oil or gas whatsoever". To another such protest, by   
   3 "geologists" of the same persuasion in the newspaper Dagens   
   Nyheter on 15.11.1985, Gold wrote a reply which was published   
   by that paper too (18.11.1985). On the whole, the Siljan   
   project received very little attention by the media at that   
   time however.   
      
      
      
   03. THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN OIL AND GAS SCIENCE,   
   AND SOME SUCCESSFUL VENTURES IN OTHER COUNTRIES   
      
   As mentioned above, it was in the earlier existing Soviet   
   Union that the modern science on the origins of oil, natural   
   gas and coal was first developed and applied in practice, from   
   the early 1950s on, when that state was still a socialist one,   
   and continuing later too. Those revisionists (bourgeois   
   reactionaries flaunting a false flag) who seized power in it   
   in the late 1950s / early 1960s and turned the Soviet Union   
   into a social-imperialist, very reactionary power found no   
   reason not to use the knowledge gained earlier for their own   
   purposes and in "their own" country at least, eventually   
   making it one of the two biggest oil exporters in the world   
   (beside Saudi Arabia).   
      
   As pointed out in the abovementioned article by Kenney on this   
   (naturally enough it says nothing about the social system's   
   having changed in the Soviet Union), crucial in this develop-   
   ment was the knowledge that much oil and gas was (and still   
   is) to be found at quite great depths and in crystalline   
   types of rock too, not only in sedimentary ones.   
      
   [http://www.gasresources.net/Introduction.htm]   
      
   In some other countries, this at the time of the Siljan   
   project in Sweden had been discovered too, by some practical   
   experience. This fact was pointed to as an argument for this   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)