How Did So Much Oil Get Trapped Under The Ocean?

What is oil even made of? Here's how fossil fuels form in the ocean and how scientists know where to find it.


Read More:

The Mysterious Origin And Supply Of Oil
"It runs modern society and fuels serious political tension. But where does oil really come from, and how much is left? The far-out possibilities might surprise you. Nature has been transmuting dead life into black gold for millions of years using little more than heat, pressure and time, scientists tell us."

Why Is Oil Usually Found In Deserts And Arctic Areas?
"Plate tectonics determines the location of oil and gas reservoirs and is the best key we have to understanding why deserts and arctic areas seem to hold the largest hydrocarbon reserves on earth. But there are other important locations of large reserves: river deltas and continental margins offshore. Together, these four types of areas hold most of the oil and gas in the world today."

Stanford Scientists Discover How Pangea Helped Make Coal
"The same geologic forces that helped stitch the supercontinent Pangea together also helped form the ancient coal beds that powered the Industrial Revolution."

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[thinklikeido]

This make no sense. This stuff didn't die all at once and fall to the ocean floor to be compressed into crude oil. The shear volume of crude oil means you'd need a volume of living matter probably 10 times that volume.

[themalaymenagerie]

Plastics are from fossil fuels and fossil fuels comes from dead dinosaur and other creatures. So if I'm playing with plastic dinosaurs does that mean I'm playing with actual dinosaurs? MIND BLOWN!

[XofulMaster]

i liked that you guys added the metric system :)

[robertwick]

There are hydrocarbons on other planets and moons. So... dinosaurs and organic material decayed up there too. Also how did these dead dinosaurs and organic materical get 10 to 20 thousand feet below the surface.

[FabledThunder]

Does this mean we have been using the dead as fuel?

[billywilliams]

Nice explanation. Has someone or some company ever tried to make oil? We know how diamonds were formed. We know similarly about pearls. Using the scientific approach to understanding how oil is made, has it been duplicated in the lab? That would really be proof that oil was made a certain way, wouldn't it?

[Master_Therion]

Thanks Trace, your explanation of oceanic oil reserves was... pretty slick.

[ibrayes]

Roses are red,
Water is dirty,
Harambe was here,
But I wasn't ready,
We can save the world,
But we can't our saviour,
If I could go back in time,
Harambe would never be lonely

[HighMojo]

Why is this biotic explanation still being propounded. The alternative abiotic explanation seems more likely now that we have found lakes and oceans of oil on the Saturn moon Titan. If abiotic is not the origin for the hydrocarbons on Titan, then you will have to acknowledge that Titan was once inhabited by life.

[barrywilliams]

So, you nailed it when you said the organic material has to be in an environment where rapid natural decay can't take place. I think that makes it nearly impossible for oil to have formed on earth.

Don't forget that vast clouds of methane exist in space. Vast clouds that are millions of light-years across.

[rosedruid]

Missed the opportunity to throw fracking in after the gushing part. People need to know more about that aspect and how so much oil is made using these new methods.

[candiduscorvus]

What about the hypothesis of abiotic oil, that being hydrocarbons that occur as a result of geological chemistry independent of life? The Soviets used to put a lot of stock in it and I wonder if it might not explain some oil deposits we find. After all we see Titan covered in hydrocarbons and as far as we know there is no life there to explain why.

[paulrades]

Great job covering the biotic oil theory, now can you do an equilly good episode on abiotic oil theory that would explain why we are finding oil significantly deeper than what biotic oil theory can explain. Many oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico and in Russia dify biotic oil theory on where they are, what type of rock they are in, and how deep they are.

[kennethmeeker]

If it’s from decayed plant and animal matter, how many plants n etc does it take to make a barrel of oil . With all the oil being pumped from the ocean floor and on land it seems to me, there was a time when the earth was 2/3 land 1/3 water idk

[dr.trousers]

the great flood just makes sense. like sure tectonic movements do stuff, but if there's fossils on top of mount Everest, then a flood that killed almost everything kinds makes sense

[discountconsulting]

As these oil deposits get buried under the plates, they must get compressed more and more by subsequent weight piling up on them. If the energy isn't released by drilling/mining it, which it presumably hasn't been for most of geological history, then the heat and pressure should lead to further breakdown of the molecular bonds and thus reorganization into denser structures containing the same quantity of stored energy. If no further densification/compression is possible, energy must be squeezed out in the form of conducted-heat, ejected neutrons in the case of radioactive/beta decay, and/or other energy waves, such as seismic waves.

Lateral seismic waves under the plates may build up friction that softens rock into magma, lubricating plates to float and shift position. These plate shifts/tectonics that push land up from the ocean to form new land, mountain ranges, etc. may thus be powered by the biomass that sinks and becomes oil.

If this is the case, then by mining up oil, we are competing with plate tectonics for energy. By releasing that energy above ground, we're adding power to the water cycle and winds that erode current land formations. So instead of allowing that energy to sink and power the formation of new land and mountains, we're using it to erode current land into the oceans, which contributes to sea-level rise.

Amazingly, this equation can be radically simplified by simply understanding Earth's shape as expressing a degree of asymmetry proportional to the energy it transfers between the surface and the plates. More sunken energy causes stronger plate shifts and thus more asymmetry in the shape of the land, which in turn causes the oceans to be deeper and thus lowers sea level. Reverse the process and move energy from the plates to the surface and the released energy causes more erosion, shallower oceans, higher sea-level, and thus rounds out or 'symmetricizes' the shape of the land mass underneath the oceans.

If this symmetricizing of the land-mass continues, we should eventually have a perfectly round land mass covered with an ocean of more-or-less uniform depth. No more potential energy will be stored in the asymmetrical shape of the land, i.e. as mountain ranges, depth-variations, and land-altitude diversity. However, warmer, shallower oceans may foster more biomass growth, which could be harvested as fuel to power the ships we have to live on because there's no land left above sea level. Wasn't this the premise of the movie WaterWorld?

[Dextamartijn]

should make a video about the oil sands in Alberta how they were formed

[taschke]

Jack was on top of the world, now he's at the bottom of the sea.

[Lexyvil]

I can't wait to die and become oil for those who live in the future~...

...If there are any people left ):

[AnimeAllas]

Why did I go to school if I learn more here?!!! Lol Thank you D-News!