not as limited (or dirty) as we thought

Did anyone else know that oil is not technically a finite resource? It's composed of algae and formed underground after "millions" of years. This is something i've been wondering about for a while, since discovering that coal has been forming in the area of Spirit Lake since the Mount St. Helens eruption (upon some further digging, this seems to be controversial and perhaps not as certain).



So apparently Solazyme has been testing this fuel for a couple of years now, on its own and with the US Navy, and now Japanese companies are starting to pursue the same technologies. But interestingly, oil in nature is fossilized algae, but this oil seems to be made by the algae...they feed the algae and it converts plant matter into oil that has less contaminants than what is pumped out of the ground. That's pretty amazing.