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http://home.entouch.net/dmd/petgift.htm
Hugh Ross just wrote an article on how Petroleum is God's well-timed gift to Mankind. The thesis of this article is much like that of other articles by Ross in which if mankind came on the scene too early or too late, there wouldn't be much oil for mankind. Ross argues:
"If the Creator's goal is to provide humanity with the richest possible reserves of fossil hydrocarbons, a fixed period of time must transpire between the epoch when efficient kerogen producers were dominant on Earth (about 500 mya) and the appearance of human beings (some tens of thousands of years ago). (Ross, 2004, p. 2)
Well, this isn't quite true. Kerogen producers have been dominant on earth since the Precambrian, long before 500 million years ago. John M. Hunt writes:
There are two groups of south Oman oils. One is generated by the Precambrian Huff Formation and the other by Paleozoic sediments. The 1.0 Ga Nonesuch shale (United States) is so organic rich that it seeps oil from the White Pine copper mine in Michigan. It is typical of many younger paraffinic oils in composition except that it has no steranes or triterpanes. The oldest oil shows reported as of 1986 are from unmetamorphosed Precambrian sediments of Australia. They are about 1.4 Ga in age. (Hunt, 1996, p. 16-17)
An oil field in Russia, the Markovo field in the Lena-Tunguska province of Siberia, has some reservoirs which are completely surrounded by Precambrian shale, which eliminates any possibility of younger source rocks. Given the quantity of oil in some of these reservoirs, it is clear that much oil was generated during that time. Little has survived to today but if mankind had come on earth in the Cambrian, there probably would have been a sufficient quantity of oil for him to use. Hunt says:
"Finally, there is a tendency for oil accumulations to be lost over geologic time. Lopatin (1980) cites evidence that there may have been large petroleum accumulations formed during the Proterozoic and later destroyed. He mentions black slates with thick lenses and layers of graphitic carbon material in the Proterozoic of southwest Greenland, the Krivoy rog Series of the Ukraineian Shield and the Upper Huronian Series of the Canadian Shield. These could be the residues of rich, oil-generating kerogens. Also, there are thick Proterozoic oil shales in the Onega Basin of Russia, now dehydrogenated but still containing over 2 wt% organic carbon. Lopatin estimates that they could have yielded over 50 billion barrels of oil. The problem is that in the subsequent 1 billion years, most of these oil fields would have been destroyed by tectonic activity, resulting in the reservoirs' leakage. Only a few residual traces of once major accumulations would be left in the metamorphosed rocks. (Hunt, 1996, p. 18)
Ross' lower limit for when mankind could have appeared is not very limiting. If God wanted mankind to have oil, (which is not specified in the Bible and thus is merely a speculation) mankind could have had that oil if he were placed on earth 500 million years ago.
Now, Ross also claims
If too much time had transpired before humans came on the scene the fossil hydrocarbon reservoirs would have emptied, and the resources with which human beings were able to launch an industrial and scientific revolution would have been missing or insufficient. (Ross, 2004, p. 3)
While this is true, it isn't very instructive. Hunt has a chart on p. 621 which shows the percentage of oil in the various geologic ages. 71% of all the oil in our reserves was generated within the past 170 million years. 29% was generated prior to that time, from 545 million years to the 170 million. If these percentages can be taken as typical for any time in the earth's past history, then mankind could have appeared on earth much earlier. We saw above that there were huge Precambrian fields, going back in age to 1.4 billion years. If mankind appeared 800 million years ago, he very well might have had a similar oil endowment. Today's distribution of oil looks like this:
One other thing needs to be considered in this 'good-timing'. Why didn't humanity discover how to use oil 30,000 years ago? Why was the timing of those humans so bad? If God wanted us to have a Western lifestyle based upon a petroleum economy, why are there so many people still living without that life-style?
And most importantly, if the timing is so good, why is the world about to run out of easily producible hydrocarbons just as the world is beginning to lift the economy of many highly populous third world countries, like India and China? I would point people to my other web pages on the coming oil crisis http://home.entouch.net/dmd/oilcrisis.htm
I need to make one comment on an anticipated response to my claims about declining oil production. I feel certain that the reply to my claim that we are about to run out of easily producible oil will be answered by the observation that the world oil reserves go up each and every year. Reserves are the quantity of oil that we will eventually extract from the earth. They do not tell you how rapidly you can get those reserves. Reserves are like money in the bank. One wants to have money in the bank. But what is more important is how rapidly you can withdraw that money. If I put a billion dollars in your bank account, but tell you that you can have it at the rate of $10 per day, are you going to consider yourself rich? I don't think so. What is about to happen to the world is that the reserves will continue to go up, but our ability to get the oil out of the ground at the rates we do today will no longer be possible. So, one must ask, Dr. Ross, is this God's timing also, that we have 100 years of a petroleum economy and then run out? One should be careful what one ascribes to God's desires for mankind.
For those who might think I am a bit pessimistic or don't know what I am talking about, I have spent a career in the oil industry finding hydrocarbons and have been involved in finding 700 million barrels over my career. That is a lot and those in the industry are impressed by that number. We shouldn't be. It is less than a 2 week world supply. For the past 20 years, the oil industry has found less oil than we pumped out of the ground. That means that in the not too distant future, the world's reserves will not be capable of supplying the requisite energy to the world. Some think we have already reached that point.
References.
Hunt, John M., Petroleum Geochemistry and Geology, 2nd ed., (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1996).
Ross, Hugh, "Petroleum: god's Well-timed Gift to Mankind," Connections, Qtr 3, 2004