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To: skinowski who wrote (310104)	6/15/2009 7:39:59 PM
From: Geoff Altman	Respond to of 793587

My personal bias is that oil - or at least some of it - did not come from old forests and dinosaur kaka, but was generated by bacteria. I find that very easy to believe. What if the very process of compression and heat caused the bacteria from decomposing forests to mutate?

To: skinowski who wrote (310104)	6/15/2009 8:08:25 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Respond to of 793587

Definitely. Oil and gas are found in places that are or once were sedimentary basins, which weren't quickly flushed by the greater ocean - like the current GOM and Persian Gulf - looking at a map you can see there are relatively narrow straits that connect them to the larger ocean. We think of algae blooms and dead zones as modern phenomema caused by pollution, but they've always existed from time to time. When ancient algae blooms occurred in an ancient sedimentary basin, everything in a patch of a basin died and sank to the bottom. Fish too of course, but mostly microscopic life by weight. Once on the bottom with no oxygen there the dead organisms didn't decay and geological processes eventually buried them and subjected them to heat and pressure. Which breaks the carbon chains. The more the heat and pressure ie the deeper they were buried, the more the carbon chains break down to small ones. When you get down to one carbon molecule, you have methane CH4, the primary component of natural gas. Depending on the depth things were buried you get everything from heavy oil to light crude to natural gas via this process.