Addicted to rock

What is the difference between crude oil, coal and natural gas?

All are fossil fuels which means that they were formed from plants and animals from millions of years ago.
Coal is a solid. It is mostly carbon. It is made from mostly plant materials.
Crude oil is a liquid. It is a mixture of hydrocarbons. It is more animal materials. Its composition is different depending on where it is found.
Natural gas is a gas. It is mostly methane, CH4.

Petroleum is oil that comes from rock (Latin stems petra, "rock," and oleum, "oil."). Oil wells are drilled as deep as six miles into the Earth to search for petroleum. The two most common forms are natural gas and crude oil.

  Only a few generations ago, oil for all uses—fuel, lubrication, nutrition, medicine—was pressed from plant crops or rendered from animal fat. Gas was manufactured from coal. Natural gas was known in England as early as 1659. But it didn't replace coal gas as an important source of energy in the United States until after World War II, when a network of gas pipelines was constructed. By 1980, annual consumption of natural gas had grown to more than 55,000 billion cubic feet, which represented almost 30% of total U.S. energy consumption 

  The first oil well was drilled by Edwin Drake in 1859, in Titusville, PA. It produced up to 800 gallons per day, which far exceeded the demand for this material. By 1980, consumption of oil had reached 2.5 billion gallons per day.