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But When?

Is there any way of estimating the time of formation of coal and oil deposits? The pressures observed in oil and gas wells make it possible to set some upper limits to the age of petroleum deposits. They are found often to be at geostatic pressure, trapped under various trap rock formations. (Geostatic pressure is the pressure resulting from the weight of overlying rock.) Some wells have registered pressures up to 16,000 pounds per square inch at the surface. The trap rock formations which cover the oil and gas reservoirs are composed of rocks which are relatively impermeable to the flow of gas and oil. Nevertheless, under the very high geostatic pressures found in the reservoirs, gas and oil will slowly escape and finally reach the surface. It has been estimated that the high pressures could not be contained for longer than about 10,000 years before they were dissipated. Yet petroleum is still present under those tremendously high pressures. Is it not evident that the animal life which produced the petroleum was trapped suddenly only a few thousand years ago? The evidence is consistent with the Biblical record of a global flood just a few thousand years ago, not with the evolutionary picture of slow burial over periods of millions of years.