The end of peak oil

One theory knocking around the fringes, back in the 1990s I recall, is that Earth has hydrocarbons as don't come from fossils. Many, many more.

I hasten to affirm that fossil fuels exist. It's a bad idea to ignite them all at the same time.

In the 1970s, before the abiotic theory arose, we all used to worry about Peak Oil, that point when supply trailed demand and drove up prices. We assumed further that as hydrocarbons ran out, CO₂ would be drained from the atmosphere and lead to an Ice Age. To this day I doubt we have nearly as much fossil-fuel as they had back in 260 Mya.

Peak oil didn't happen: we got better at pulling oil and natural gas from wells. Better at catching it too. Also energy use got more efficient therefore scalable. Nuclear power got safer - which I expect we'll be noticing as time goes on. I don't think the abiotic theory ever entered the geologists' calculus; as noted, they've done just fine chasing the fossils, and there hasn't been a need to look elsewhere.

Enter Hokkaido. They address an ongoing Problematic: Earth is within the snow-line, so didn't form with water - and has been impacted since then. To the extent it has likely-foreign water, it isn't cometary. That impactor "Theia" was a thought at some point, which formed further out. But it looks not to have formed outside the snow-line either.

Hokkaido suggests Plastic Planetoid. Here is a water-poor asteroid whose "ices" (in the planetological sense) were carbon monoxide and ammonia (and methane), with several oxygenated minerals. Over millions of years this asteroid could have gone like the moon Titan: rearranging its chemistry toward hydrocarbon chains.

I'll interject all of this still takes place outside the snow-line. The Hokkaido theory allows to keep that foreign molybdenum. This theory simply allows to de-constrain (as much) familiar snow. If meteors like this hit the post-Theia Earth, the organics could add hydrogen to Earth's carbon/oxygen-heavy crust. Hydrogen and oxygen form water...

... and there should remain much organic, abiotic, alien material in Earth's crust, still.