734 D. WHITE LATE THEORIES REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF OIL 



leums induced by the same geologic causes under which the organic de- 

 tritus remaining in situ as coals, etcetera, has, in eilect, been progres- 

 sively fractioned, especially during periods of rock compression, with 

 losses of methane and other light hydrocarbons, so that the solid residues 

 are undergoing carbonization? Whether the oils were generated in the 

 biochemical process, or, later, in the geochemical process, have they not 

 also been fractioned from time to time — that is, practically redistilled 

 under dynamo-thermic influences, the liquid distillates becoming suc- 

 cessively lighter and the residues more fully solidified? And have not 

 the volatile hydrocarbon stores deeply buried in the strata been perhaps 

 replenished or possibly replaced in times of diastropic stress by additions 

 derived from the reduction, essentially a distillation, of the mother rocks ? 

 That there was some heat resulting, firstly, from the rock compression, 

 and, secondly, from the chemical reactions themselves, all are agreed, 

 though most of us insist that the temperatures were comparatively low.^^ 

 Washburne,^^ on the other hand, pointing out the exothermic nature of 

 petroleum, insists that cons-iderable heat was essential to the reactions. 



Eichardson's Hypothesis 



An undeveloped hypothesis, full of interest and suggestion, that has 

 been presented by Clifford Eichardson,^^ is that the origin of all forms of 

 petroleum is to be viewed with reference to the phenomena of surfaces and 

 films, as demonstrated by recent developments in colloidal chemistry, and 

 that petroleums of all sorts are to be attributed to surface action between 

 a natural gas and the ^'sands/' 



Conclusion 



He who would solve the problems of physical chemistry involved in the 

 origin of petroleum must studiously take account of all the physical fac- 

 tors obtaining in the mother rock and in the oil sand, including among 

 his factors not only temperature and pressure, but the size of the globules 

 in the capillaries and pores, and the physical and chemical relations of 

 the oil, gas, and moisture as they are found disseminated in all the rocks. 

 In this connection it may not be out of place to note that as the condi- 

 tions of nature seem more fully to be imitated in the refiner}^, the larger 

 production of the lighter hydrocarbons is gained, with wider separation 

 between them, and the residues are more fully solidified. 



22 This general point of view is tersely and succinctly summarized by Johnson : See 

 11. ri. .Johnson and L. G. Huntley, Principles of oil and gas production, 1916, p. 24. 

 2=5 Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng., 1914. 

 2* Jour. Indus, and Eng. Chem., vol. 8, no. 1, 1916, p. 4. 



