What this means is oil is being made NOW as we speak deep in the earth under tremendous pressure. Methane (one of the most common materials in the universe) is being turned into oil.
This story shatters the myth of peak oil. The proof is that oil reserviors that were capped off 20 to 30 years ago are refilling themselve from deep below the eaths surface.
The laws of thermodynamics don't reverse under high temperature and pressure. Complex hydrocarbon molecules like octane and heptane break down into components like ethane and methane. They do not do the reverse.
This is why a refinery can crack or further process heavy hydrocarbons into lighter, but they do not take methane and create octane for transportation fuel.
>>Titan Has More Oil Than Earth<<
You know they probably shouldn’t even call this oil since its unlikely it would be liquid at room temperature and earth pressure.
Even the long chain hydrocarbons they have found called tholins are formed due to solar radiation and thus are not analogous to anything happening underground on earth.
But this is incredibly interesting - for one thing tholins may have been the first organic “food” for organisms on earth.