Gas for million years?

Press, 26 November 1982, Page 15

Gas for million years?

Most scientists think fuels such as petrol and natural gas are the remains of living creatures, locked into the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. If that is the case, there can be only a limited supply, and scientists predict that our supplies of such fuels will be exhausted within a century.

A 8.8. C. programme, “Science in Progress: Gas for a Million Years” (Concert programme, 7.30 p.m. tomorrow). looks at the remarkable theory of Professor Thomas Gold, of Cornell University. He believes that the natural gas, methane, is not a product of fossilised animal life but a rich heirloom left locked in the Earth since its formation 4.5 billion years ago. Since then it has been seeping to the surface at a rate that could run the world, even at modern energy consumption rates, for 20 million years, he says. Properly exploited there is still a million years worth of gas available in the Soviet Union, Australia and Africa’s Rift Valley, where immensely deep boreholes might bring such gas to the surface, according to Professor Gold.