My education was a little vague on this. Need some info...

Please don't get bogged down in specifics. The issue is of a general nature.
As I understand it, oil comes from a transformation of fossilized material.
Fossils come from previously living matter.
The middle east, in the distant past, was overflowing with life.
That's why there is so much oil there.

Assuming that is basically correct, why is there so much oil in Alaska? And if the argument is "plate movement" (which seems ludicrous to me?), then wouldn't the middle east have moved as well? Thanks ahead of time for your input ATS. The breadth of knowledge, thinking, and wisdom here never ceases to impress me... cheers.
-v

[edit on 1/21/2008 by verbal kint]

umm I never wondered about that before , and have to say that I have not educated myself on that as well. Great question OP and I also would like somebody to explain this if they could .

Alaska would have oil for the same reason as the Middle East; a long time ago, animals lived there. They died and their remains were transformed into oil.

The animals would have lived there about 300 million years ago (?), when Alaska had a warmer climate. Alaska then got "shoved" up north to its current position by the motion of tectonic plates.

Also, the Middle East is moving. If I recall correctly, the Red Sea is slowly expanding, shoving Africa and Saudi Arabia away from each other. It's all happening very slowly, though, and when the oil was deposited, the Middle East had a very different shape.

Does that help?

It kinda helps, but it falls in the category of explanations I mentioned initially. That being it just seems very unlikely that Alaska, in an apparently unique event, moved so far north due to tectonics. Does anyone know of a sight that has animations of theoretical tectonic history? I'll post here if/when i find one...

www.ucmp.berkeley.edu...
this one shows most of alaska being underwater for the majority of history. Regardless it never seems to spend any time functioning in a similar fashion to the middle east. So 1 neg I think? for plate movement...

www.scotese.com...
This clearly shows alaska never spending any time in the tropical belt where saudi arabia and the middle east existed while producing life as a fertile coastline. 2 negs?
[edit on 1/24/2008 by verbal kint]

[edit on 1/24/2008 by verbal kint]