- Key People:
- Sir Frederick Augustus Abel
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Formation process
From planktonic remains to kerogen: the immature stage
Although it is recognized that the original source of carbon and hydrogen was in the materials that made up primordial Earth, it is generally accepted that these two elements had to pass through an organic phase to be combined into the varied complex molecules recognized as hydrocarbons. The organic material that is the source of most hydrocarbons has probably been derived from single-celled planktonic (free-floating) plants, such as diatoms and blue-green algae, and single-celled planktonic animals, such as foraminifera, which live in aquatic environments of marine, brackish, or fresh water. Such simple organisms are known to have been abundant long before the Paleozoic Era, which began some 541 million years ago.
Rapid burial of the remains of the single-celled planktonic plants and animals within fine-grained sediments effectively preserved them. This provided the organic materials, the so-called protopetroleum, for later diagenesis (a series of processes involving biological, chemical, and physical changes) into true petroleum.
The first, or immature, stage of hydrocarbon formation is dominated by biological activity and chemical rearrangement, which convert organic matter to kerogen. This dark-coloured insoluble product of bacterially altered plant and animal detritus is the source of most hydrocarbons generated in the later stages. During the first stage, biogenic methane is the only hydrocarbon generated in commercial quantities. The production of biogenic methane gas is part of the process of decomposition of organic matter carried out by anaerobic microorganisms (those capable of living in the absence of free oxygen).