Except we're consuming them faster than the sun and plankton are making new ones....
@BassWrangler I'm avoiding the heat and decided to check my math. This is a silly exercise to try and demonstrate the unlikely reality of the earth producing oil, at our current rate of consumption, from underneath rather than laid down in sediment from above. Not arguing with you sir. Just ammo against the concept.
Numbers and sources posted so anyone can check and point out mistakes I have made.
100 million barrels per day
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/global_oil.php 36,500 million barrels per year
1 Fluid barrel = 4.21 Cubic feet
153,665 million cubic feet per year
Age of earth = 4.5 billion years
https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html Volume of oil @ 100 million b/d for 4.5 billion years
691,493 million billion cubic feet
6.91E+20 cubic feet
1.47E+11 cubic feet per cubic mile
https://www.convertunits.com/from/cubic+feet/to/cubic+mile 4.70E+09 cubic miles of oil @ 100 million b/d for 4.5 billion years
4,697,704,626 cubic miles of oil @ 100 million b/d for 4.5 billion years
Surface Area of Earth = 1.97E+08 square miles
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/earth/by-the-numbers/ 197,000,000 Surface Area of Earth in square miles
23.85 miles deep of oil on the surface if produced @ 100 million b/d for 4.5 billion years
That value represents the depth if oil existed as a lake. In reality it is found in layers that is mostly rock with oil in void spaces between the grains.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/petroleum-reservoirs If I pick a generous value of 8% porosity like found in a good producing sandstone, that means the depth of layer containing rock becomes much greater
Layer of rock containing oil if earth produced oil @ 100 million b/d for 4.5 billion years
298 miles thick
1,573,850 feet thick
Lots of approximations in the calculation. The whole thing is rather silly. I used a radius found at the out edge of the earth to caluclate the volume of a large layer.
Since the measurement would actually be going down from the surface the layer would actually be significantly larger.
As you can see, this would put us well into the mantle into an extremely hot zone.
https://volcano.oregonstate.edu/earths-layers-lesson-1 The temperature of the mantle is ~1,600 degrees Fahrenheit at the top. This is well above the temperature oil breaks down.
And this only includes crude oil. Natural gas, natural gas liquids and the like would be in addition...