Science has always been working on improving processes, that is why it does not sound unreasonable that science has managed to cultivate a microorganism that can convert oil into methane, it would be very good for scientists who have made the discovery and for the entire community in general to know how these microbes achieve this transformation to obtain methane from oil.
In nature we can find small biological organisms (microorganisms) that can transform any compound into a totally different one, in this case it is the case of converting oil to methane gas. The idea of scientists lies in finding laboratory conditions that simulate natural conditions in which microorganisms found naturally in oil deposits can also use oil as a source of energy and food, because when these microorganisms feed on oil and generate methane gas as a by-product.
Some time ago it was considered that this transformation was a somewhat complex process and that different elements had to intervene such as bacteria, fungi, and finally a cooperation of different organisms so that the transformation of oil to methane gas could occur, however in recent studies it has been shown that to achieve this transformation only requires a special type of microorganism to perform this transformation, The microorganism is called Methanoliparia, to study this microorganism and see how it performs the transformation, they have simply managed to cultivate this microorganism in the laboratory, and thus to investigate all the details related to the processes derived in this research.
I believe that these studies will continue to be evaluated, since apart from this microorganism it will be necessary to study others and evaluate the feasibility of being able to degrade other hydrocarbons to see what other valuable by-products can be obtained, with this it is also possible to obtain by-products in the laboratories that do not have a negative environmental impact as the conventional processes do.