II- Review of the Nature Principles (cont.)

d) Cyclicity

All natural events can be depicted by one or several cycles.

Live births, deaths, natural increase, infant deaths, foetal deaths, marriages, divorces, that is to say, natural events are cyclic. In Japan annual events, an anomaly must be taken into account, in 1968/1970, the Hinouema or the malefic year.

Nothing is eternal.

What is born will die.

What goes up will come down.

Sun, earth, mankind, civilization, etc. will die.

Since long time, geoscientists notice the cyclicity of deposition systems and tried to explain it. Admittedly, after Benoit de Maillet and Lavoisier, the majority of them assume that Eustasy, that is to say, sea level variations, is the mainly source of the cyclicity of the depositional systems.

The Earth’s history, at least since Phanerozoic (600 Ma), can be depicted as cyclic. After the gathering of the Proto-Pangea supercontinent, it broke in several continents, which dispersed to a maximum, by sea floor spreading, before gathered, again, to form the Pangea. Then, the Pangea broke up in several continents, which after dispersion are gathering to form a new supercontinent. These major geological cycles, recognized by Wilson Tuzco, are known as Wilson’s cycles.

The Plate Tectonics paradigm, which is a cyclic theory, explains quite well the correlation between major geologic events, which are interlinked and interconnected. Indeed, they cannot be understood in isolation. A systemic, or global approach, is required to understand the whole, which is much more than the sum of the parts. Detail studies can be fascinating, but, unfortunately, we learn from generalities.

The number of wells drilled in petroleum exploration, as all natural events, seems to be cyclic, as suggested by this plot (nº of wells drilled per year). Such a cyclicity can be due to demand problems, new plays (turbidite depositional systems), new technology (deepwater drilling or seismic acquisition), etc.

The stratigraphic distribution of the source rocks, as the majority of geological features, shows a sharp cyclicity, which is explained by Plate Tectonics. The marine source sources are associated with the 1st order eustatic highs, that is to say, Jurassic-Cretaceous and Cambrian-Silurian transgressions. Notice that Hercynian orogeny destroy a huge amount of hydrocarbons which are not taken into account in this plot.

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