One of the more interesting alternative science ideas is that of abiotic oil.

The notion that oil is produced by ongoing geologic processes rather than being ancient

biologic matter.

If oil was indeed abiotic, we'd never run out of it, and therein lies the popularity

of the thoroughly disproven claim.

It plays right into the hands of the conspiracy theorists, who say big oil is lying to all

of us to keep prices artificially high.

A-biotic oil is coming up today on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

A-biotic oil.

Today we're going to trudge through the frozen forests of Siberia until we come to a remote,

ice-incrusted oil derrick.

It's sucking black gold from super deep, deeper than any other wells on earth, pulling

up petroleum, consisting of 100% hydrocarbon fuel, free of the chemical signatures that

characterize all other oil on the planet.

It is a-biotic oil, oil that came to be through means other than biological.

Conventional understanding is that earth's oil and other fossil fuels come from ancient

organic matter, metamorphosed by time and pressure and heat, into a hydrocarbon fuel source

that we're burning through quickly and will eventually run out of.

The hypothesis of a-biotic oil, on the other hand, states that it comes from natural

geological processes which are ongoing and thus we will never run out.

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