how is oil made?

Question

The oil we pump out of the ground - do we know how it is made? And can we make it synthetically? Or is it yes to both, but too expensive to make?

Answer 1

synthetics yes, but the cheapest source of hydrocarbons is oil, that is why it is used to make plastics. Biodeisel and ethanol are products that can stretch the consumption of oil for fuel, or alternatively vehicles can be re-tuned to run on non-petroleum sourced fuels. A lot of alternative fuels ran the worlds vehicles because of the disruption caused by WWII, such as banana power buses in south america.

Answer 2

Oil is useful as fuel because it has a lot of potential energy in it. That energy is released when it burns and heats things, moves things, etc.

That energy was put into the oil by the Earth burying plant matter and compressing it. To make oil we'd have to use a lot of energy to do something similar. So there's no point to it.

So the right question is not "How can we make oil?" It's "How can we make energy?"

There are non-oil answers; nuclear, solar, wind, biofuels.

Answer 3

natural oil is plant and animal life that has been dead for 200-300 million years, buried deep in the Earth under tremendous pressures for all those hundred of millions of years..........yep, that gasoline in your car? It was once a dinosaur

I am NOT kidding....SInclair Oil in New Jersey had as its mascot Dino the Dinosaur and his motto was "Conserve Energy.......theyre not making any more dinosaurs!"

Answer 4

yeah they teach you in 5th grade science. dead things from millions of years ago die and become oil. we use too much and there isn't enough dead things so we the price is going up. i advise you to get a hybrid or a car that saves gas