Why is crude oil called a fossil fuel?

Answer 1

Oil is called a fossil fuel because it is made from animals which died and were cemented in mud and heat many years ago. They turned into oil and a type of gas called methane thousands of years later. They are not actually fossils but the equivalent of them because they have been preserved by the mud and eventually turned into oil, a type of fuel.

Answer 2

fossil fuels are exhaustible, available in limited quantity, takes a long time to replenish & is found under the earth.

Since crude oil satisfies all these conditions, it is a fossil fuel.

Answer 3

No, there are no fossils in oil. Fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) gets its name because it has taken an extremely long time to develop, 300 million years, the same time that fossils take. But the two are quite different.

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More accurately, they are fossils of organic detritus. Coal is fossil peat. Crude oil is similarly a fossil of decay products from dead organisms, and most oil deposits are actually younger than 300M yrs, often about 150M years.

Natural gas derives from these substances breaking down: it is mainly methane, also being produced nowadays by decaying farmyard manure, cows belching, and household waste in land-fill tips.

Answer 4

because it can olny be used once then its gone.

Answer 5

Petrol comes from oil. Oil is a fossil fuel. A fossil fuel is formed in the geological past from the remains of living organisms, and is hundreds of millions of years old.

Answer 6

Yes, yes it is

Answer 7

so cars can run, and planes can fly.