Re the subject line I recall reading a few articles on this subject over the years indicating that the earth’s oil reserves were too vast to be explained by the conversion of vegetation to hydrocarbons and that some supposedly empty oil fields were apparently re-filling.
Some people had theorized that petroleum was being continuously created from ongoing microbical action deep in the bowels of the earth.
Anyone aware of any serious research on this subject beyond SWAG’s.
Most of our hydrocarbons where originally sourced from marine life, particularly micro-marine life. Hydrocarbons are constantly being produced, but they are a non-renewable energy source in a human time scale, i.e., they are not being produced at a rate that can keep up with our consumption. Anaerobic bacteria are thought to be part of the process.
So, you’re not going to see any truly depleted oil fields recharge at any appreciable rate, and most production of new hydrocarbons will be in the younger (i.e., nearer the surface) rocks.
Thomas Gold was the proponent of the idea that there may be abiogenic methane below the earth’s crust, but a test drilled on the Siljan Ring in, oh, the mid-eighties was “inconclusive”.