It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil.
Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intertidal_greenalgae.jpg
Read more:
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-biofuel-breakthrough-quick-cook-method.html
Algae can quickly be turned into crude oil instead of waiting millions of years for it to be produced naturally.