Excellent New York Times article, "
Tracing Oil Reserves to Their Tiny Origins" by William J. Broad on the geological origins of oil reserves:
Today, a principal tenet of geology is that a vast majority of the world’s oil arose not from lumbering beasts on land but tiny organisms at sea. It holds that blizzards of microscopic life fell into the sunless depths over the ages, producing thick sediments that the planet’s inner heat eventually cooked into oil. It is estimated that 95 percent or more of global oil traces its genesis to the sea.
Read the complete article
here.
