Excerpt from On the Prospect of Mineral Oil Being Found in Payable Quantities in the Federated Malay States and Other Parts of the Malay Peninsula

The question is not decided, but Mr. Cunningham Craig brings such strong reasons to bear against an animal origin that upholders of the theory of a vegetable origin seem likely to win the day. The most weighty objections are: the doubt whether a sufficient amount of the soft parts of animals, from which alone oil could be formed, is ever embedded in sediments and the inability to account for the quantity of phosphates that the animal forms must have left if a sufficient quantity of the soft parts were ever buried.

A query that immediately presents itself is why the vegetable matter should form oil and not coal, lignite, or carbonaceous shales.

It has been proved that the same beds provide coal or lignite in one place and oil in another. The inference is that the accumulated vegetation has formed both carbonaceous deposits and oil. What was the difference of conditions that determined this Pressure and the gradual loss of moisture and volatile matter led to the formation of coal, and it is hard to believe that in the case of oil the nature of the determining factors was totally dissimilar, especially in view of the fact that coal measures generally contain some bituminous matter. It seems that an impervious cover of clay or some such rock is one thing necessary, preventing the escape of volatile matter; but the presence of such a cover raises difficulties about the movement of the oil after its formation. Another condition necessary appears to be high pressure, and it is significant in this connection that series of rocks are known that afford carbonaceous matter - namely, lignite, in the upper portion, and oil in the lower. This suggests strongly that oil requires a higher pressure for its formation than lignite or coal.

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