[norraad]

Anyone working in a refinery knows by his/her nose that the stuff is made by "mutha' Earth any which way she can.

It's just "stuff" composted underground w/o O2, mostly dead plantlife.

Lab guys will tell you many of it's molecules resemble leaf waxes.

[dalereed]

There was an article in the 1958 SAE journal about crude oil being produced at MIT using household garbage in a CO2 atmosphere at 1500 PSI and 1800 degrees but that it cost about 4 times as much to produce as the cost of crude which at the time was if I remember right about $3.50/barrel.

[mjf]

If it's plant life that produces this stuff, why does it exist on Neptune? And, Neptune's rocky moon?

Hydrocarbons are spread throughout the universe.

[mjf]

From the same site:

Uranus is composed primarily of rock and various ices, with only about 15% hydrogen and a little helium (in contrast to Jupiter and Saturn which are mostly hydrogen). Uranus (and Neptune) are in many ways similar to the cores of Jupiter and Saturn minus the massive liquid metallic hydrogen envelope. It appears that Uranus does not have a rocky core like Jupiter and Saturn but rather that its material is more or less uniformly distributed.

Uranus' atmosphere is about 83% hydrogen, 15% helium and 2% methane.

 

83% hydrogen, 15% helium, 2% methane. Seems that there are a lot of hydrocarbons out there. Why the earth's hydrocarbons should be different I don't know. As far as leaf wax is concerned, well, maybe the plant is just using available materials.

I don't know, but I agree with the researchers on oil who say it is not a fossil fuel. Coal is another matter.

[Lester Moore]

It's just "stuff" composted underground w/o O2, mostly dead plantlife.

So where are processes ocurring today like those processes that created the oil we have now? The tropics somewhere?

I've smelled plenty of crude and washed it out of my eyes, ears, crack of my ass and off my dangles and it never struck me as obvious that it is from decomposed plants, certainly not by it's odours which are not uniform from area to area.