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I’m coming around to the notion that the earth does indeed “manufacture” crude oil and gas. There is just too much of it to have been organic deposits of dead animals. This explains to me why we are finding more and more, and gaining the technology to extract it. On the other hand, I don’t think the earth is replacing the oil at anywhere near the pace we are using it. Otherwise, wells in northeastern Ohio and Pennsylvania that started the American oil boom would not have run dry.

But yes, there is a lot of oil out there, and more is extractable every year. Will we eventually reach “peak oil?” Probably. But I’ll be dead, in the ground, converted to oil, and maybe pumped into somebody’s gas tank before that happens.

But I’ll be dead, in the ground, converted to oil, and maybe pumped into somebody’s gas tank before that happens.

I never owned a muscle car in this life so there is my hope for the next! ;^)

It isn’t animals it is algae and the like.

Oil is only found in sedimentary basins. It is often found in layers under sealing rock with another layer above that with another layer of sealing rock.

I’m coming around to the notion that the earth does indeed “manufacture” crude oil and gas.

Oil and gas production is a geological process.

Geological processes are continuous (No catastrophism).

Therefore oil and gas production is continuous.

I’m coming around to the notion that the earth does indeed “manufacture” crude oil and gas.

Some of us came around to that years ago based on Dr. Thomas Gold's writings. That and the discovery that hydrocarbons (methane, etc.) are common on some of the other planets in our solar system and probably in the universe at large. Dead dinosaurs and primordial plant life (the "fossils" in fossil fuel) are not required.

The continued belief that they are is just one more example of the death grip scientists (aka the "experts") use to hold on to whatever conventional wisdom their theses, dissertations, and "publish or perish" writings were based on. People whose entire self image is based on airs of intellectual superiority find it especially hard to admit they could be wrong. I once royally pi**ed of my professor / academic adviser when I told him that I would not pursue a PhD by saying I was not interested in "joining the priesthood". My opinion about that hasn't changed in the 30 plus years since.