Petroleum

What is Petroleum? Petroleum is a naturally occurring mineral primarily made up of hydrogen and carbon. It can be found in a gaseous, liquid or solid state.

Today, refined products of these natural resources have incredibly widespread functionality in the world we live in. Some examples of these include:

• plastic for our fishing rods,
• natural gas and LPG for our cookers,
• fertilizer for our crops,
• fuel for our planes, cars and trucks, and
• bitumen for our roads.

How is Petroleum formed?

Petroleum is created when organic material (animals, plants etc.) is trapped and buried in sedimentary rock where it decomposes. This decomposition process is a consequence of the immense heat and pressure environments which exist in the earths subsurface. The resulting mineral seeps through the rock until it is trapped in what we call accumulations.

The decomposition of the organic material and its underground migration into trapped accumulations occurs over millions of years.