(Eli5) If oil isn’t just from dinosaurs, but from algae and phytoplankton, can oil be renewable?

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I recently learned that oil is mostly composed of algae and phytoplankton capturing carbon out the atmosphere thousands of years ago. Later the organisms fall to the bottom of the ocean and through time turn into crude hydrocarbons. So why do we not attempt to create the same crude oil by using alge with waste water from water processing plants?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Oil is totally renewable. There’s plenty of places where oil is being created as we speak. Offshore of major rivers like the Mississippi and Colorado for instance.

Problem is, we’re using it up about a million times faster than it’s being created. We’re well on track to use up all the useful oil created in the past 300 million years within 200 years.

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