How deep underground is crude oil?

Oil seemingly keeps getting deeper and deeper. But that isn’t the total truth.

In reality, the oil if anything has only ever moved upwards. It is only the drilling for the oil that keeps needing to go deeper, and further, as the higher up and easier to reach oil reservoirs are used up.

The earliest year where data is available, 1949, shows the average depth of oil wells drilled was 3,500 feet.

Not all drilling is straight down, when they say depth it means how far they had to drill, sometimes this means covering huge horizontal distances too.