“The big question is whether or not it is a ‘renewable’ resource.”
The discovery of Methane (a hydrocarbon) on other planets is a strong argument for the idea that at least some oil and gas has non-biological origins. If true, then perhaps the question is the rate of renewal of those reserves coming up from earth’s core.
Just beat me to it by “this much.” I just spoke with a geology major from my daughters college and asked her the very same question. If hydrocarbon is from decomposing organics, how do we have gigantic planets almost completely hydrocarbon with no life? She said that they had discussed that but were still unsure of where all the new oil was coming from. Some oil is several miles deep and it would be difficult for it to migrate that far from where it started. She also admitted that the amount of known oil reserves has been rising faster than anyone could have guessed just a few years ago. Getting a geologist to admit oil could be, ...well, just oil, instead of billions of years worth of rotting plants and animals is like getting them to consider evolution might be wrong. If oil is just a natural product from the earth, we could have a thousand years of it left. It just that we’ve found most of the easy stuff. Finding oil literally miles deep makes it costly to recover along with the danger, but technology has always come through in the past.