Science / Medicine : Underwater Discovery Is Young and Crude

Scientists announced last week that they have found an underwater oil deposit that took less than 5,000 years to develop, a discovery that shakes the view that oil formation always requires millions of years.

A team of U.S. and Chilean scientists said their calculations show petroleum coming from hot-water vents on the floor of the Gulf of California is less than 5,000 years old.

Scientists had thought it took millions of years for the remains of microscopic sea life to gather in natural hollows and be compressed into oil.

But in a study published in the scientific journal Nature, Berndt Simoneit of Oregon State University and Borys Didyk of Chile’s Concon Petroleum Refinery said they have discovered an exception to that rule.

The researchers used radioactive carbon dating to determine the age of oily globules emitted from a hydrothermal vent in the central part of the Gulf of California.