Is India having the richest petroleum reserve in the world?

The Tethys Ocean:

About 250 million years ago, during the Triassic period, Gondwana and Laurasia were the only continents. Later due to the movement of tectonic plates, present day continents formed. The ocean separating these two continental shelves is called as The Tethys Ocean. A piece of Gondwana known as Cimmeria, traveled north, pushing the floor of the Tethys Ocean under the eastern end of Laurasia. This lead to the formation of present day India and other south-east Asian countries. The pushing of the floor of cimmeria lead to the formation of the Himalayas. Hence my inference is that, an ocean has existed where the Himalayas and the Northern India exists. As a proof of this, geologists have found fossils of ocean creatures in the rocks in the Himalayas.

Now let’s move to the second part of my article.

Origin Of Petroleum:

There are two theories regarding the origin of petroleum, abiogenic theory and biological theory. According to the biological theory, crude oil and natural gas is the product of compression and heating of ancient organic materials over geological time. Today's oil formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae, which had settled to a sea or lake bottom in large quantities and the remains of prehistoric terrestrial plants, on the other hand, tended to form coal. Over geological time the organic matter mixed with mud, and was buried under heavy layers of sediment resulting in high levels of heat and pressure. This caused the organic matter to chemically change into petroleum.

Inference:

Combining these two theories, I infer that the ocean of tethys existed where there is northern India right now. Being an ancient ocean it should have contained lots of organic beings, whose remains must have got settled at the bottom of the ocean over a long period of time i.e. for a period of 100 million years. Also due to the movement of the tectonic plates and eventually due to the formation of present day India, these organic being should have undergone the reactions that led to the formation of petroleum. Hence a very huge reserve of petroleum should exist underneath the northern plains of India and may be under the Himalayas. But this may be found very deep inside the crust of the earth to dig a well or to be detected by the meteorological dept. Hence I conclude that India has a very rich oil reserve which is still undiscovered and unexploited.

This article is purely based on my imagination that occurred to me when I was doing my 10^th grade through my lessons in geography and chemistry. This theory may have been stated before itself by some other people, but I’m not aware of that. This is just a thought which I put into words.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethys_Ocean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation