Where does the oil come from?

Jan 02, 2025

For many people, drilling for oil is the same thing as drilling for water Wells: Deep underground, there is a huge liquid space filled with tens of millions of tons of oil, which can be sucked out by drilling through the formation. In fact, oil is the authentic "oil in stone", let's see what the raw material of oil looks like.

This is called Kerogen, transliterated as kerogen, and the rock containing this material is the source rock, which is commonly called source rock or source rock, from which oil is extracted.

The formation of oil parent material is mostly in the early stage of sedimentation and burial, when the ground temperature is not more than 50℃. After about tens of millions of years, the deeper the sediment is buried and the higher the ground temperature (about 100-150 ° C), the maturity of the oil parent material reaches a certain range and is converted into hydrocarbons (hydrocarbons), that is, liquid oil or natural gas. Because these hydrocarbons are lighter than nearby rock, they percolate upward into the pores of the source rock formation. On the way, the oil-impervious formation is blocked and stays down, and slowly gathers in this formation, and the more and more, the formation of oil fields. So coal comes from the accumulation of plant remains, while oil is the deposition of algae, mainly from water bodies. The oil parent material in the sediment of the lake is mostly from algae, bacterial spores, pollen or resin, which mainly produces hydrocarbon petroleum of liquid paraffin. The oil parent material in Marine sediments mostly comes from plankton, algae, bacteria and a few land plants, which mainly produces liquid petroleum, supplemented by natural gas. The oil parent material in land sediments is mostly from lignin of higher plants, which is mainly used to produce natural gas. Therefore, knowing the source of the oil parent material in the source rock can predict the composition of the produced oil and the ratio of oil to gas.