Where does oil come from?

Great Debates
1

Like everything else I was taught in school and have questioned later on in life, I have to wonder about what I was taught about the origins of oil. I don’t know why I’m thinking about it, but it just seems impossible that oil has derived from dinosaurs and plant matter alone, if at all. How do we know that deep down in the middle of the Earth, oil isn’t being produced naturally by the day without plant and animal matter, and being channeled to naturally eroded paths down under to the vessels we know of today? After all, we’ve never been to the center of the Earth… no one really knows for sure, right? I understand that plant and animal matter break down, but I just can’t see this happening for millions of years, only to end up as what we know to be crude oil.

So is the plant/animal/millions of years theory still a valid one? Are there other theories as well?

2

You are describing the “abiogenic theory” of the origin of petroleum, which is held by some geologists, but it is definitely a minority viewpoint; most geologists believe petroleum is, indeed, a “fossil fuel,” derived mostly from ancient plant matter. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin.

3

Well, sometimes when a mommy and a daddy love each other they…

oh. oil.
:smack:

4

A very large amount of the planet’s biomass is in the form of bacteria (estimates vary), so this is likely to be a major source of today’s oil.

Also note that whether the abiogenic theory of oil production is true or not it does not affect the amount of oil we can easily recover, although understanding oil formation better might help us find more reserves.