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[Pyrorex]

Yer all forgettng an important factor - oil shouldn't be in the game, because it's a product of organic decomposing over a very lage (tens/hundreds of thousands of years) time period. From what we know, dinosaurs didn't bless DF's many worlds with their presence, so it's quite possible oil simply does not exist. We could imitate oil by using plants with extracts though, vegetable oil is just as good at suddenly bursting into flame as any other, plus it's a viable fuel.

Dinosaurs were the only living thing alive back then right?

[Sean Mirrsen]

No, but as far as I remember, coal was from plant life while oil was from animals n'stuff. That's the last I remember of my geology lessons anyway.

Since DF worlds lack any sort of prehistory from before known world creation, it would be logical to assume oil would not form. Then again, coal would not form either if that were the case, but my reasoning is that plant life starts existing (in DF world generation anyway) a lot earlier than any animals are spawned, so coal would exist.

Meh, I guess oil could be possible, if it were possible. If natural stone was affected by temperature, you could have a cluster or vein type stone that melts shortly after being discovered, turning into a liquid that can be harvested. Then you'd have to have custom liquids too, so oil is really very very far into the future at this point.

[Normandy]

Eh? I thought oil was formed by the decayed bodies of zooplankton.

[Deon]

I think that formation of different biomes, geological layers and mammal creatures requires very long time too.
And if you admit that everything "pops out" from nowhere immideately, like gods created it, why can't the oil "pop out" too?

[MuonDecay]

As far as I know petroleum oil as a fossil fuel is something that's not a realistic fuel source in the technological era where DF resides. It's very difficult to drill for oil in many cases, and refining it is way harder than a number of other fuel sources which, in that era at least, are just as functional if not moreso, and more readily available.

Pitch, whale oil, alcohols, and similar extracts of more accessible resources are all more sensible fuels for such a civilization, especially since there's little use for the more volatile petrochemicals contained in refined petroleum distillates.

To be a bit simpler in speech: refining oil is hard, and you wind up with a fuel that's probably less useful to dwarven pursuits than more readily available fuels. Why work harder for something you have less need for? Go dig up some pitch, b----!