Science of Oil – Video

Transcript:

[Dr. Scott W. Tinker] Now, let’s talk about how oils form. It starts out as plankton, just like these. Plankton are just tiny little plants and animals that live in oceans and lakes today, and have through time, and when they die they sink to the bottom of those oceans with sediment, mud, and clay and become thick layers of basically inorganic mud. Now that mud is buried hundreds of feet thick and the organics in there- the plants and animals- get heated and pressured and cooked into crude oil. Now that takes 10 to 100 million years, which is a really long time. It’s hard to understand geologic time, but let’s take a look at a garden hose for example. This house is a hundred feet long. Imagine a foot: that’s a million years. If we walk down this hose 10 feet: 10 million years, 2, 30, 50, 70, 90, a hundred million years in the length of this hose. If we look just at the very end right here at the thread, see that last screw thread- the tiny little one right there- that represents all of human civilization. In fact, United States history: it doesn’t even show up on here. 100 million years is a long time, but that’s what it takes to make oil. Oil is a versatile product but we can’t use it in its native state. We have to refine it to make gasoline, about half of all oil goes into gasoline. We also make jet fuel and diesel fuels. We make lubricants and even propane like you put in your barbecue pit at home, and asphalt like we use in roads. In fact, oil is used for everything, it’s used to make polyester for our clothes, it’s used in building products, plastics which are everywhere in the world. But it all started as plankton.