Been reading some on this lately, seems to be a wide range of answers.

Best answer I can come up with is, it takes a certain amount of pressure and a certain temperature. I don't know what that pressure is or, what that temp is. ???
When the two correct conditions exist, oil forms very quickly.

But, quick is something I can't define. My wife can but, she claims she's smarter than me.

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Ron

Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture, his mental state but … after a shooting, the problem is the gun?

Definition of a home owner, "see the door threshold, without my permission, there and no futher.......

My Uncle Frank was a staunch Conservative and voted straight Republican until the day he died in Chicago. Since then he has voted Democrat. Shrug

I think a teenager can turn pizza into zits in about 24 hours. Is that crude enough oil for you?

http://www.livescience.com/...igin-supply-oil.html

quote So how long does this process take? Scientists aren't really sure, but they figure it's probably on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.

Pressure and temperature are usually one and the same--sort of. The pressure causes the temperature increase. Bottom of the deepest sea is extremely cold, even tho there is immense pressure on it from the billions of tons of water on it, but water is light compared to the 100s of billions of tons of sedimentation and rock that is between the seabed and the oil bearing formation. But the weight is not the only cause of temperature increase.Proximity to the earth's mantle plays a part. Generally, you will see an average of 4 deg F increase every 100' below surface formation. "Drilling surface hole" mean uncased hole and it's anywhere from several hundred feet to a few thousand feet max) It depends on how conductive the surrounding formation is too.


As far as you question goes, it doesn't take long----once the conditions are set. It can even be made in a lab in a matter of hours--in very small amounts, and not energy efficient either.

The reason people say it takes "millions and millions of years" is because the formations much of the oil came from are millions of years old. The oil we were drilling for here in the mid 80s came from the Austin Chalk, which is from the Cretaceous Period--145 to 66 million years ago. The West Texas Intermediate oil from the Permian Basin is from (naturally) the Permian Age--298.9 to 252.17 million years ago. Jurassic Age of dinosaurs (180 million to 140 million years ago) overlaps Cretaceous. All those ages provided the raw biomass for crude formation. Then there is Tertiary Age (65 million to 5 million years ago). The geologists can tell how old each formation is and how old the crude in it is, but they still cannot say with any certainty how long each batch of crude took to form, but they can get a closer idea by looking for something called Oleanane.

Excellent read Don.

So, I guess I shouldn't be planning on making my net worth increase in the immediate "near' future.

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Ron

Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture, his mental state but … after a shooting, the problem is the gun?

Definition of a home owner, "see the door threshold, without my permission, there and no futher.......

My Uncle Frank was a staunch Conservative and voted straight Republican until the day he died in Chicago. Since then he has voted Democrat. Shrug

Coal in to diamonds, matter into crude, ah, science. The study of.

"scientists still don't know for sure where oil comes from, how long it took to make, or how much there is."
http://www.livescience.com/...sthash.Gef1pZdB.dpuf