Why is oil non-renewable?

Question

i know oil came from dead animals in the ground but animals die sometime and become oil if its the same as the other prehistoric animals. im confused

Answer 1

Well let me put it simple and not give you an essay to read lol. Non renewable energy takes longer to reproduce and renewable is wayy much easier to reproduce. Oil is non- renewable because it can easily run out. as a matter of fact in a couple of years it will probably end up running out and it will be hard to get it back thats why its renewable

Answer 2

Because it takes so long, millions of years, to become oil. Conditions have to be just right geologically. It is not easy to produce oil from dead animals. Their bodies have to be deeply buried and subjected to great heat and pressure, and then, if you are very lucky, turned into oil. Then the produced oil has to be kept in place by a "trap" of impervious rock or it will migrate through other rock layers. Its not just a matter of dead animals.

I think you are a young person so I have tried to make my answer as simple as possible. Crude oil formation is a very complex process involving depositional environments, source rocks, thermodynamics, and other geologic processes.

The crude oil we have now is a finite supply. It is non-renewable in the sense that even though geologic processes are still producing crude oil, the process is so exponentially long, we can say we are producing 0 barrels of new crude oil per year.

Therefore we can say that what we use is not being replaced. The supply is not being renewed, so it is non-renewable.

edit 1 - david_b needs to pay more attention in earth science class.

edit 2 - No the rejuvination of oil or gas wells is more likely by secondary recovery efforts, and/or repressurization of the reservoir. If a depleted well or a well is produced too rapidly (pulling the water driving the oil into the reservoir trap through the oil being produced and watering the well out prematurely) is not produced for a long time, remaining oil and/or gas can migrate to the top of the water drive and be produced. It is not renewing itself. (Petroleum Geology)

Answer 3

It is non-renewable b/c it is way to expensive and resource intensive to produce it synthetically. Naturally it takes millions of years and needs certain things that must "come together" for it to happen in large quantities. You can make different kinds of oils from things that are renewable such as plants, fruits, vegetables, fish, animal fats, and natural gas. You can also make oil from coal as well, although coal is non-renewable like oil. Oil is basically made of hydrogen-carbon bonds, all plant; marine and animal life is based of hydrocarbons.

When things die animal’s plants etc, in the open air out side, bacteria start doing there thing. Due to the oxygen in the atmosphere we breathe, certain bacteria that live in an oxygen rich environment will start eating and decomposing the dead things. As a result mostly carbon dioxide gas is produced, and it just goes into the air. So it will not produce oil.

But in an environment where there is no oxygen such as under water or in the earth, another kind of bacteria starts eating dead things and b/c it uses different chemicals in the way it eats, it produces methane gas. Also in land fills or garbage dumps where you burry the waste methane gas is produced. Some of these dumps today even capture the gas produced and use it to run power units or burn it.

CH4, (Methane) this gas is a hydrocarbon. and is pretty much the same as the natural gas used in homes to heat except for some mercaptons used for smell.

A long time ago there used to be seas where now there is land and there were all these sea bugs and shells and all kinds of marine life, kind of just like how you see a coral reef now. These sea things died and fell into a basin on the bottom of the water and got covered by land and cemented together. As more and more land covered all these dead sea-bug things, the pressure built on it and the temperature as well, cooking the hydrocarbons; just like you would cook a meal in a pressure cooker; making oil and gas. This took millions of years to do.

So this is why oil is non-renewable, because it takes so long naturally to make, and because it is too expensive to do it synthetically in great quantities.

Answer 4

Oil is generally taken to be a fossil fuel which means that it is the combination of dead animals and plants combined with heat and pressure over millions of years. Since these conditions cannot be replicated easily or quickly, it is non-renewable.

On the other hand, there is a Russian school of belief in "abiotic" oil and gas which says that some oil and gas reserves come from deep within the earth, of geological origin and not from fossil remains. Some wells have been reported to have been rejuvenated after apparent depletion which might indicate some degree of renewability

Answer 5

Petroleum originated when organic matter in ancient muds and clays accumulated in subsiding geological basins. This sediment was heated over a period of millions of years as geological processes brought the material deeper underground. The end product depends on just how deep the organic-rich sediments were carried. At 150 - 200 C, natural gas is the end produce. At 60 - 150 C, oils are produced, and leach out of the rocks to form pockets that get trapped between impermeable layers of shale.
(note the period of millions of years part)
It takes several million years for the petroleum products such as oil to migrate out of their parent rocks into the appropriate 'reservoir' rocks where they get trapped and accumulated into sub-surface pools. Radioactive dating of the rocks in which oil deposits occur span the range from the Cambrian Era to the Cretaceous Era between 65 million and 500 million years ago.
Since there is only so much oil, and the earth cannot replace the oil that is pumped out, we will eventually run out of this non-renewable resource.

Answer 6

Well,if you believe the evolution theory,it is because it will take millions of years for them to decompose and turn into oil.
2.According to evolution,it is only because there was a mass kill off because of the "ice age" that the dinosaurs died in such large numbers that created the oil pools we are using now. So while animals die now,they have not died in large enough quantity to replenish the oil supply.
3.If you believe(as I do) that oil did not and does not come from decomposed animals,but was put here by God when he created the earth.There is only just enough for God's purposes and it does not need to be replenished.