[GonzoGOP]

It’s seems that old oil wells are filling back up from farther underground. Which could only mean that either the earth is a LOT older than scientists believe and we are only tapping the “top layer” of oil (which seems unlikely as there are other methods to measure the age of the earth)

Or you are over a subduction zone. If the sea floor got shoved down under the continental shelf it would be easy to have layers of oil very deep. If you go to Montana, just East of Glacier National Park you can actually see where the continental shelf buckled and is laying one complete shelf on top of another. No foothills, just flat prairie and then bam! wall o rock. Impressive as heck. Especially when you consider that is just a wrinkle compared with what is going on at the Mariana Trench.

[crusty old prospector]

There has never been nor will there ever be any oil created in a subduction zone. That would be a place where oil fields go to die. The heat would break the oil first into lighter components that we call natural gas. Eventually, the heat and pressure would turn it into elemental carbon. Oil is thermally stable down to around 11,000’ in most basins. Below that, it becomes natural gas. Subduction zones take the rocks several tens of miles below the surface. Go put some Quaker State in a pot and turn on a Bunsen burner beneath it and watch what happens. Eventually, all of the lighter components would cook out and evaporate and you would be left with a pile of crap, figuratively speaking.