Oil—The Renewable Resource
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, April 10, 2024
It is often touted that oil requires “millions of years” to form
and is a “nonrenewable resource”. For example, the Live Science website writes,
“Nature has been transmuting dead
life into black gold for millions of years using little more than heat,
pressure and time, scientists tell us.”[1]
However, when we think in terms of the Bible’s
history, the timeline of formation is much sooner. It’s possible that God
created the world with certain oil reserves in it. However, all that would have
changed at the Flood. The majority of oil today would be produced as a result of the Flood
of Noah’s day—or at least a major supply of it.
Crude oil consists simply of the biological remains
of creatures like plants and animals. During the Flood, plants and animals were
buried—many rotted and decayed, but others were fossilized (i.e., turned into
rock like limestone).
But then…what happened to the biologicals during this
process? Well, water transports them and replaces them with things like
limestone—so the fossil that is left has the shape of the creature or its
impression (as it was buried) but is now rock.
From here, the water takes the biologicals downward due to
gravity through cracks, channels, and striations between the rock layers (that
were just formed in the Flood) until they can’t go any further and then they pool
together. All the while, heat is acting on them. Bingo—now you have crude oil.
So, can oil be made quickly by replicating these processes? Glad
you asked—Yes! Here are a few examples where scientifically, oil is made
rapidly based on similar processes:
· “A $22.4 million tender has been approved in Western Australia for the world’s first plant to make oil from sewage sludge. The sludge is heated without oxygen to 450º C in one reactor, then in a second reactor, the resultant vapors are allowed to contact the ‘char’ residue from the first.”[2]
· “Turkey and pig slaughterhouse wastes are daily trucked into the world’s first biorefinery, a thermal conversion processing plant in Carthage, Missouri. On peak production days, 500 barrels of high-quality fuel oil better than crude oil are made from 270 tons of turkey guts and 20 tons of pig fat.”[3]
· “Thus, for example, it has been demonstrated in the laboratory that moderate heating of the brown coals of the Gippsland Basin of Victoria, Australia, to simulate their rapid deeper burial, will generate crude oil and natural gas similar to that found in reservoir rocks offshore in only 2–5 days.”[4]
· “Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Washington State have pioneered a new technology that makes diesel fuel from algae—and their cutting-edge machine produces the fuel in just minutes….Simply heat pea-green algal soup to 662°F (350°C) at 3,000 psi for almost 60 minutes.”[5]
· “Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are claiming success in perfecting a method that can transform a pea-soupy solution of algae into crude oil by pressure cooking it for about 30 minutes.”[6]
So, oil can be made and manufactured in as little as 5 days
all the way down to 30 minutes—depending on starting material. Thus, oil is a renewable
resource, unlike what we’ve been commonly taught.
[1] K.
Than, “The Mysterious Origin and Supply of Oil,” Live Science, October 10,
2005, http://www.livescience.com/9404-mysterious-origin-supply-oil.html.
[2] Australian Stock Exchange Release,
Environmental Solutions International Ltd, Osborne Park, Western Australia,
Oct. 25, 1996. Media Statement, Minister for Water Resources, Western
Australia, October 25, 1996, http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i3/focus.asp#oil.
[3] Dr.
Andrew Snelling, “The Origin of Oil,” Answers 2, no. 1, pp. 74–77, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n1/origin-of-oil.
[4] Ibid.
[5] B.
Thomas, “One-Hour Oil Production,” ICR, January 13, 2014, https://www.icr.org/article/7874/.
