What is Crude Oil?

Question

What is crude oil?

Answer

Crude oil is commonly referred to as “petroleum”. Crude oil is a liquid found within the Earth, comprised of hydrocarbons, organic compounds and small quantities of different metals.

Crude oil is the original source of hydrogen and carbons. These two elements existed during the Primordial Earth, long ago. The elements were required to go through an Organic Phase before they were able to combine, and form hydrocarbons, thus, crude oil. So, where is crude oil derived from? Crude oil existed in marine plants, such as single-celled planktonic (free-floating) plants, such as diatoms and blue-green algae, and single-celled planktonic animals, such as foraminifera, which were in abundance over 542 million years ago, prior to the Paleozoic era.

Since these plants are fossils, crude oil is extracted from beneath the earth’s surface, using drilling wells. These wells could be found in the form of oil rigs in the ocean, or drilling rigs found on land, such as those in Texas USA.