Where does oil come from and how can so many useful products be made from it?
Crude oil is found inside the Earth’s crust. Many useful products can be obtained from crude oil by separating the many different substances it contains and by using some of these in chemical reactions to make new substances, for example plastics. F/H Crude oil is obtained from the Earth’s crust. It was formed from the remains of organisms which lived millions of years ago. It is a fossil fuel. The fossil fuels coal, oil and Natural gas have resulted from the action of heat and pressure over millions of years, in the absence of air, on material from animals and plants (organic material) which has been covered by layers of sedimentary rock. Oil and gas are less dense than water and so rise to the top of porous rock layers. They may then become trapped below a layer of non-porous rock. The trapped oil or gas can be obtained by drilling down through the non-porous layer of rock. F/H Crude oil is a mixture of a very large number of compounds. A mixture consists of two or more elements or c
