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Decomposing organic matter over millions of years produced oil when underground heat of up to 150\u00b0C kick-started the process of changing it into hydrocarbons, which come in different degrees of complexity from the simple mixture of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms to make methane – CH – to the larger chains of atoms required to make crude oil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over millions of years, much of the oil bubbled through to the surface and bio-degraded. The remaining 10% or so held in under- ground reserves has been producing the oil that has fuelled the modern economy since the first well was drilled in Pennsylvania in of 1859. If you’d like to get a revealing insight into the baby steps the small independent oil-drilling industry in the early twentieth century as oil began to overtake coal as the dominant source of energy, rent a copy of the Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood. The movie provides a remarkable insight into the early oil business and produces an extraordinary performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil-obsessed independent well-owner competing against John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which would later be broken up by the US Department of Justice to become Exxon, Mobil, Chevron (previously Standard of California) and Marathon Oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n