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Now they were getting somewhere
“During World War II, refineries in Roary supplied much of Germany’s oil By 1944 those refineries had been bombed to oblivion, and not so coincidentally the war ended soon after Stalin watched as Germany literally ran out of oil He resolved that Russia would always be self-sufficient He saw oil dependency as a catastrophic weakness to be avoided at any cost”
Not a big shock “Wouldn’t everyone?”
“Unlike the rest of the world, including us, Stalin figured out how to do it A professor named Nikolai Kudryavtsev supplied him the answer”
He waited
“Kudryavtsev postulated that oil had nothing to do with fossils”
He knew the conventional wisdom Over millions of years an ancient primeval ulfed by sedimentary deposits Millions more years of heat and pressure eventually coave it the name fossil fuel
“Instead of being biotic, from once-alive material, Kudryavtsev said oil is abiotic—simply a primordial material the earth forms and exudes on a continual basis”
He instantly grasped the implications “It’s endless?”
“That’s the question that’s brought me here, Cotton The one we have to answer”
She explained about Soviet oil exploration in the 1950s that discovered massive reserves thousands of feet deep, at levels far beloould have been expected according to the fossil fuel theory
“And it may have happened to us,” she said, “in the Gulf of Mexico A field was found in 1972at a surprisingly slow rate The sa has occurred at several sites on the Alaskan North Slope It baffles geologists”
“You’re saying wells replenish themselves?”
She shook her head “I’ rock At the Gulf site the ocean floor is cut with deep fissures That would theoretically allow the pressurized oil to move fro, too”
He could tell that, as usual, she’d come prepared
“The geological age of the crude coly replenishing, is different than it enty years ago”
“And that means?”
“The oil is co from a different source”
He also caught what else it meant
Not from dead plants or dinosaurs
“Cotton, biotic oil is shallow Hundreds or a few thousand feet down Abiotic oil is anic material to end up so deep beneath the surface, so there has to be another source for that oil Stalin figured that the Soviet Union could obtain a e if this new theory about oil’s availability could be proven He foresaw back in the early 1950s that oil would become politically important”
He now grasped the implications, but wanted to know, “Why have I never heard of this?”
“Stalin had no reason to infor published on this was printed in Russian, and back then few outside of the Soviet Union read the language The West became locked into the fossil fuel theory and any alternative was quickly deemed crackpot”
“So what’s changed?”
“We don’t think it’s crackpot”
TANG LEFT THE PIT 1 MUSEUM AND STEPPED OUT INTO THE warht The plaza that encoht was approaching
His cell phone vibrated
He re He answered
“Minister,” he was told, “we have good news Lev Sokolov has been found”
“Where?”
“Lanzhou”
Only a few hundred kilometers to the west
“He’s under close surveillance, and is unae are there”
Now he could move forward He listened to the particulars, then ordered, “Keep hi Early”
“There is more,” his assistant said “The supervisor at the drill site called His e says you should hurry”
Gansu lay two hundred kilometers north The final stop on this planned journey His helicopter waited nearby, fueled, ready to go “Tell him I’ll be there within two hours”
“And a final matter”