Nikolai Kudryavtsev

Prof. Nikolai A. Kudryavtsev (1893-1971)

Nikolai Alexandrovich Kudryavtsev Russian: Николай Александрович Кудрявцев (Opochka, October 21, 1893 – Leningrad, December 12, 1971) was a Soviet Russian petroleum geologist. He is the founding father of modern abiogenic theory for origin of petroleum, which states that petroleum is formed from non-biological sources of hydrocarbons located deep in the Earth's crust and mantle.

He graduated from Leningrad Mining Institute in 1922, obtained a Dr.Sc. in Geology and Mineralogy in 1936, and become professor in 1941. Kudryavtsev started his geological career in 1920 at the USSR Geological Committee. In 1929-1971 he worked for All-Union Geological Research Institute (VNIGRI). He suffered from political repressions during Joseph Stalin's regime for his unorthodox thinking, spending several years in Gulag camps in the Transpolar European Russia as an "enemy of the people". After that, he was prohibited from living or staying in central cities of USSR. His only son died defending the Brest Fortress in the beginning of Nazi aggression against USSR.

Kudryavtsev conducted regional geological studies that resulted in discoveries of commercial oil and gas in the Grozny district (Chechnya Autonomy), Central Asia, Timan-Pechora, and other regions of the Soviet Union. He led reconnaissance exploration research in Georgia, and compiled the program of key exploration wells in the West Siberia in 1947 that paved the way to the new era of oil and gas production in Russia that started with first gas gusher near Berezovo in 1953.

Kudryavtsev's Rule

In support of his abiotic theory, Kudryavtsev stated in 1973 (Genesis of Gas and Oil) that any region in which hydrocarbons are found at one level will also have hydrocarbons in large or small quantities at all levels down to and into the basement rock. Thus, where oil and gas deposits are found, there will often be coal seams above them. Gas is usually the deepest in the pattern, and can alternate with oil. All petroleum deposits have a capstone, which is generally impermeable to the upward migration of hydrocarbons. This capstone leads to the accumulation of the hydrocarbon.

Abiogenic theory

Nikolai Kudryavtsev was also a prominent and forceful advocate of the abiogenic theory. He argued that no petroleum resembling the chemical composition of natural crudes has ever been made from plant material in the laboratory under conditions resembling those in nature.

He gave many examples of substantial and sometimes commercial quantities of petroleum being found in crystalline or metamorphic basements, or in sediments directly overlying those. He cited cases in Kansas, California, western Venezuela, and Morocco. He also pointed out that oil pools in sedimentary strata are often related to fractures in the basement directly below. This is evidenced by the Ghawar supergiant oil field (Saudi Arabia); the Panhandle Field in Kansas (United States), which also produces helium; the Tengiz Field (Kazakhstan); the White Tiger Field (Vietnam); and innumerable others. The Lost Soldier Field in Wyoming has oil pools, he stated, at every horizon of the geological section, from the Cambrian sandstone overlying the basement to the upper Cretaceous deposits. A flow of oil was also obtained from the basement itself. Hydrocarbon gases, he noted, are not rare in igneous and metamorphic rocks of the Canadian Shield. Petroleum in Precambrian gneiss is encountered in wells on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal.

Kudryavtsev concluded that commercial accumulations are simply found where permeable zones are overlaid by impermeable ones.

Kudryavtsev introduced a number of other relevant observations into the argument about the theory of abiogenic petroleum origin.

Selected publications

See also


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