Just off the coast of Vietnam, oil exploration companys are drilling more than a mile deep into solid granite-so called basement rock- and finding oil.
Now thats a puzzle: because oil is'nt supposed to be found in basement rock, which never rose near the surface of the Earth where ancient trees and plants grew, and dinosaurs walked.
Yet oil is there. Last year the White Tiger field off the Vietnamese coast produced 338,000 barrels per day (bpd).

These oil finds in granite and even deeper basement rocks is fueling the theorys of maverick scientists who insist that "fossil fuels" is a misnomer, and that the Earth contains an ENDLESS supply of oil. Their ideas fly in the face of conventional wisdom that oil and gas come from the remains of plants and trees buried millions of years ago.
Not so says Warren Hunt, a geologist in Calgary Canada. "What they have been teaching in schools that oil comes from fossil matter is wrong" He is echoing maverick scientists like Thomas Gold, a retired Cornell astronomy professor who stated 20 years ago that primitive hydrocarbons like methane are to be found in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and within interstellar gas clouds.That they certainly did not come from fossil matter. Even Dr Velikovsky who predicted 50 years ago, (and was ostracized thereafter) that hydrocarbons found on Earth may have come from the planet Jupiter, an idea that he based upon biblical, egyptian papirii and other ancient manuscript texts. His hunch that hydrocarbons would be found on Jupiter was proven correct many years later, using satellite data.

Professor Gold was credited in 1960 with figuring out that pulsars were actually radio emissions from rapidly spinning collapsed stars, or neutron stars. But nobody believed his wild theory that oil was manufactured deep within the Earth itself, and had nothing to do with the transformation of organic fossils.
So in 1980 Gold set out to prove to the world he was right by persuading the Swedish Government to drill for oil where everyone knew there was none, in granite basement rock 150 miles north of Stockholm. Professor Gold and his supporters had to drill down 4 miles into bedrock granite, before they struck oil. They were ecstatic and vindicated. Though the drilling had to cease due to the expense and the huge twisting torsions and friction caused by a 4 mile long drill shaft.
The U.S Petroleum community has a viewpoint firmly opposed to the notion of oil being of nonbiological origin- but not the Russians, Chinese and now the Vietnamese, says Gold.
The U.S Petrolium community cite that oil has biological matter within it. But Gold states that hydrocarbons attract a primitive type of microbe called, archaea that lives deep underground; it feeds upon and contaminates the oil. Plant life produced the near surface coal beds, but could never produce oil in rock that has never seen the light of day.
This June, in London scientists from around the world will gather, to debate the 'Origins of Oil' chaired jointly by the British Institute of Petroleum, and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. (end).

*I took that fascinating article from the "The Business" a UK Financial newspaper, (16th Feb)