Oil is Not Like Natural Gas

This quote from the best-known writer on geology of our country (and also a writer for the New Yorker):






Natural gas is to oil as politicians are to statesmen. Any organic material whatsoever will form natural gas and will form it rapidly, at earth-surface temperatures and on up to many hundreds of degrees. ... "You get natural gas as soon as anything drops dead." For oil, the requisites are the organic material and [a] thermal window [of 50-150 degrees centigrade over millions of years]. John McPhee, In Suspect Terrain, N.Y. Noonday Press, 1991, p.55