Question: were does petrolium come from

Stuart Archer answered on 25 Jun 2013:

Petroleum is a mixture of hydrocarbons (chemicals containing only hydrogen and carbon) that is one of the many components of crude oil. We get crude oil out of large deposits of it underground which we pump out (at oil rigs for example). The oil is made up of the old decayed remains of sea life that’s been kept underground at high temperature and pressure for millions of years. Because there was no oxygen down there, they couldn’t decay normally into oxygen-containing chemicals, leaving behind crude oil.

We get petrol from crude oil by ‘distilling’ it. The various different components in the oil all boil at different temperatures. So, by boiling the crude oil up, we can then collect the different ‘fractions’ of the oil when the temperature reaches their boiling point.