Origin Of Oil

I was once asked by a friend of mine of this question ” Where does oil originate from ? ” I was like scratching my head and blinking my eyes trying to figure out the answer to the question. I said to him ” I do not know exactly but…….[bla..bla..bla..]“. I was a junior back then in the national oil company in my country. Even though, I worked in the company, my job then was not directly related to oil and gas proper. In 2002, I joined into the Exploration and Production [ E&P] arm of the company and being in the Finance department, I need to understand the business if I were to do my job very well. It was the steepest learning curve that I had for the first 2 weeks, trying to understand such a complicated industry and I was fortunate enough to have boss who really drilled me to understand the business in the shortest time span. I was assigned as Joint Venture auditor then, and the more compelling reasons for me to understand the business to argue, recommend, put forward recommendations for the operational gaps, business controls improvements, financial managements, accounting system improvements and all of them are seasoned and experienced personnel in the oil and gas industry, and some who have been in the industry of more than 20 years plus plus. It was indeed tough and challenging. Now, I have the correct answer for the question asked earlier. The origin of oil and gas [ the word will be used interchangeably with petroleum, hydrocarbon throughout this article] is very much based on the organic theory. It dated back when the earth comes into existence millions of years back. Organically, oil is formed from the materials, particles, plants [ marine and on land], animals and other organic form of existence i.e. those died [ our great great grandparents], trees and animals rot and buried layer after layers million years ago. Imagine, you buried dead animals, and due to the earth movements as a result of both man-made caused and natural disaster such as earthquake, volcanic activities, raining, flooding, storm resulting the layers and it was on-going for million of years ago. Those resulted the remains deposited throughout the years. Due to pressure, volcanic activities and those land movements sometimes in “zing zaging” way, upside down, chemical reactions, bacterial processes that changed the composition of those organics, changed and still change those organic materials into oil and gas. That is why oil and gas is found beneath the ocean or deeper on the ground. My experiences working with geologist during the exploration stage,that they will put assumptions of what had happened in the past[i.e. earth movement, volcanic activities,dinosaurs age, those gigantic mammals those days died, big big trees rotted and etc ] and trying to understand how the existing structure come into the shapes, as it is. You will hear all sort of theories and assumptions which sometimes very hard to comprehend for an accountant like myself. They are bunch of people full of imaginations, surprises and sort of creative lots. They have the sixth sense ! So, that is what I have learned so far and the answer to the question. You know what I did answer to my friend earlier ? I told him, ” The oil is created by God down there. Have faith ” .