The ingredients to produce crude oil are not as simple as making olive or corn oil. In living plants, oil is needed for growth, so many fruits and seeds have a ready supply of oil. The olive seed can be pressed to squeeze the oil into a ready-made product. There is no known vegetable matter that can be squeezed to produce crude oil.

Let’s take a look at where we find oil to help us determine its origin. Most oil is found in rocks older than one million years but not older than 560 million years. So time seems to be a factor.

Since, oil is found only in the Phanerozoic (since life has been on our planet), the existence of life must be a factor. Crude is associated mainly with sedimentary rocks deposited in the marine environment. These deposits indicate that high productivity of organic carbon is important and contain many fossil microorganisms like diatoms and radiolarians.

Radiolarians